ORANGEPOWERDMH | DELFINA MORGANTI HERNANDEZ | COPYWRITING - TRANSCREATION - STORYTELLING

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Founded in Transcreation
delving into how bands cross borders

TRANSLATING SONGS: THE AWAKENING OF BABEL IN ME

19/10/2020

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By Delfina Morganti Hernández✍️
When I was a pre-teen, and all through my adolescence, I was curious to try and find out what certain songs would sound like if they were rewritten in a language different than their own.

As with every creative endeavour, the human spirit may be as motivated to doing what feels propelled to do as not doing it because of fear—the famous fear of not reaching a satisfactory outcome, of not giving birth to a piece of work worth sharing with others or even looking at.

When you want to create something and you give in to resistance because you fear that the result may not be good enough, fear wins, and you end up creating nothing at all, which was true for me for a while.

Somehow, though, opportunities would present themselves through my teenage that pushed me to create stuff, one of which eventually led me to try rewriting a few songs from English into Spanish or vice versa. 

This is the story of how I found a way to connect my curiosity about what it was like rewriting songs and what it was like to actually hear them sung in a new language.

OPERA SINGING: A STAR WASN’T BORN

When I was 15—rather late, according to the Golden Book of When Talent Can Be Successfully Pursued and Developed—, I decided I wanted to study music apart from regular schooling and English as a second language.

I wanted to sing like professional singers do at the opera—right, you may giggle.

But you see, we had a piano at home. My mum speaks five languages and she’s a real pianist, so I guess I was inspired by a number of facts and factors.

One day, I went to the local public school of music to apply for a spot in the Lyrical Singing class. It’s a state-run school and education there is really good, which means everybody wants to study music there, so it’s not easy to get in.

For about a week, I attended all the pre-entrance lessons with absolute joy, driven by my mild curiosity.

In percussion class, I’d clap and stamp my foot to set the pace, while reading elementary music on the blackboard.

During melodic dictations, I’d be virtually teleported to that well-known scene from The Sound of Music, as I’d eagerly hum do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-si and down, si-la-sol-fa-mi-re-do.

To say I was filled with adrenaline when I sat for the three qualifying examinations would only partially account for my experience—and I hadn’t even been officially admitted as an opera singing student yet! 

The day of checking the results of my exams came. Naturally, I’d eagerly awaited the date.
Going over countless surnames of prospective students posted on the school hall walls, I finally spotted mine—I was in!

But then, I wasn’t.

As it turned out, I was too ‘young’ for singing as opera people do on FIlm & Arts. The school secretary said that the teachers said that my vocal chords weren’t ready for such professional training yet.

What? I went from ecstasy to despair. Didn’t she realise she was crushing my dream here? The reason seemed lousy, too.

‘But I’ve passed all your three exams with 90/100 marks.’

‘I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do. It’s school policy. You must be at least 16.’

‘But that’s not happening until November next year—I’ll miss a whole year!’

My heart sank. My career in the opera world had ended before it had even begun.

‘Unless…’ began the woman with a tone that gave me a lurch of hope. ‘Unless you signed up for a different course of studies. It would be a pity… I mean, since you passed all our exams. Your application did get accepted—.’

‘Sure! What other courses do you offer?’

LEARNING TO PROPERLY PLAY THE PIANO—FOR A WHILE

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I did tell you we had a piano at home, right? When I opted for piano as a consolation prize, little did I know that I would fall in love with it.

The course included learning not just to play the piano, but also to read and write music as well.
For five years non-stop, I studied piano for 15-40 minutes a day at home, while I kept attending my piano and musical language lessons once a week each. 

Mozart, Czerny, Bach, my dearest Chopin all landed in my hands as my teacher would challenge me to play their works. Every lesson I attended, every exam I passed, I felt as challenged as I felt drawn to stepping out of my comfort zone and playing in front of others works which I’d only dreamt of ever playing.

Every such instance of discomfort resulted in my overcoming my old fear of not being good enough for the stage, whenever the time would come for me to finally sing, with confidence, like opera singers do.

After five years of playing the classics and very much enjoying the training, I got a little tired of following the rules and doing as my masters said. I started adding chunks of songs to Bach’s works by accidentally misreading his staves. My teacher would tell me I should be more attentive to detail, to which I’d retort that I was pretty sure my accidental changes in the piece itself didn’t sound so bad, hu?
​

He’d scowl and gesture for me to go again: ‘Da capo, Delfina!’

ENTERING THE PATH OF CREATIVE FREEDOM

Certainly, I wasn’t made for professional piano playing. But did I long to be a professional pianist?

No, I wanted to play stuff for fun, form a band maybe. I was more into songs by The Carpenters, the Bee Gees, Celine Dion, Modern Talking, Madonna, Carly Simon, Ace of Base, Phill Collins, and inspiring movie soundtracks by Hans Zimmer and Rachel Portman and...

Needless to say, by the age of 20, I stopped sticking to the school plan and decided to drop out. 
When your creative endeavours cause you more pain than relish, whether it be due to your teachers’ teachings or your own ‘I’ve had enough of my failing here,’ you are allowed to stop for a while. 

So I did exactly that. I passed my last exam of the essential course (5 years of study) and stopped attending formal piano lessons.

And that’s when my movie soundtrack composer career began. 

This one did last… I did write about five or six songs, for my own unpublished novels. Ta-da.

Did I stop playing the piano altogether? Not really. It’s just I decided my freedom to play whatever I chose, mostly by ear, was a much more enjoyable task than strictly following an ambitious, static plan to play ‘the greatest works’ by the ‘greatest composers.’

Also, I realised I could play the piano as a hobby, whenever I wanted to, which literally took the self-imposed pressure of aiming at perfection off my shoulders, just like that.
​

As a mark of gratitude to my mum’s piano and all those years he and I had co-existed together on a daily basis, I wrote him a sonnet, which goes as follows:

Sonnet to my Piano

No drums or flute or strident xylophone
Will please me more than does my precious prompter;
No cello, bass nor saffon saxophone
Shall prompt my hands to play as does my Pianoforte.

The castanets I have tried, yet I have found
No bliss in hearing such consistent knocking;
Thy keys, my Piano, do produce such sounds
That bear no resemblance to the cornet’s.

All rhythms bear Thou, all flats and sharps,
Regardless of all chords and scores or lyrics;
For Thou shall let me play as many staves
As symphonies shall plead my manqué spirit.  

Now, Piano, make me a Pianist so unique
​That no such player plays our music!

OPERA SINGING, THE RELAPSE

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My miscellaneous taste for music, my having made it to a massively sought-for place at an elite music school and a mother pianist had all led me to properly learn musical language and play the piano, but, during my twenties, as I was taking a course in Translation Studies, I began to toy with the idea of giving opera singing a second chance.

Stubborn as I wasam, I signed up for lyrical singing class and, because I had already done all the years of music theory while training as a pianist, I was told I could just skip musical language lessons. What a bargain, right?

Only it wasn’t. Trying to sing like opera singers do turned out to be nothing short of a struggle. What’s worse, I was cursed—I was diagnosed with a soprano vocal range.

Have you any idea how hard reaching the high notes while sounding perfectly tuned is? 

I remember thinking, ‘I used to be so much better as a chorist.’

Why couldn’t I just settle with singing as a chorus girl at school? Or better, in the shower, as most humans do. Why did I have to embark on this tough path to becoming an opera singer? What was I thinking?

Anyway, as I’m not the kind of learner who’d instantly give up on a subject she’s purposefully chosen to study, my struggle lasted for about two years.

I’m still in touch with one of my opera singing teachers on Facebook. She’s a fabulous pianist by the way. Thank God I never got to sing in public with her playing—the difference in talent would have been strikingly against me. 

CONNECTING THE DOTS: HOBBY MEETS PROFESSION

I don’t regret the slightest part of investing so much time in my failed attempt to become an opera singer.

Hey, I learnt how to breathe properly before singing. That set of techniques is the same I currently use for my public speaking career, whenever I need to deliver a conference, seminar or workshop online or offline.

In fact, I even used my vocal training for the few interpreting jobs I did in the past. 

As life would have it, in 2012 I was hired as one of several consecutive interpreters for an American guitar teacher who came to my town to deliver a Suzuki Method Workshop to our local music school for two weeks. That was the same school where, a few years ago, I’d studied piano and opera singing.

The American teacher spoke American English, but the workshop attendants spoke Argentinian Spanish, so they would’ve been quite lost in translation had they not relied on professional interpreters, and I happened to be one of them :)

As my colleagues struggled with devising their bilingual glossaries for all the musical terminology involved, I was entrusted with the role of ‘team leader,’ which included validating and ensuring consistency across all interpreter materials. For the first time in my career as a professional linguist, I was the ‘expert in the field.’

HOW CREATIVITY MADE ME DO IT

It is often said that creativity is something only some of us have or can actually exercise as we grow older.

I personally believe that we can all lead a creative life, provided we are determined enough to make room for creativity, regardless of how busy our days get.

This story begins with my curiosity to find out what certain songs would sound like if they were rewritten in a new language. Well, around the time I started learning piano at my local music school, I also started rewriting a few songs, and writing my own, for leisure.

Sometimes I’d change the lyrics almost completely, like when I took Andrea Bocelli’s Vivo per lei in Italian and turned it into Vivo por la patria (I live for my homeland), the Spanish version I dared to sing at a school assembly in homage to National Flag Day in Argentina, back in 2005.

Sometimes, though, I’d recreate the meaning in a more commercially valid manner, which led to me feel courageous enough to wish the original artists would hear of my translated versions into English or Spanish. 

Not a chance, though; there would be a long time until social media platforms would be born.
​

Again, I did all of this for fun, just out of curiosity. What I didn’t know it then was that I was a transcreator in training.

FOUND IN TRANSCREATION

Transcreation, also known as re-writing or trans-adaptation, is the art and science of rendering a text in one language into another, seeking to recreate the effect—rather than the words, the grammatical structures, etc.— of the source text in the new context of reception.

Every now and then, as I grew up, I’d take to transcreating songs for leisure, all while studying languages and writing fiction as my deepest vocation. 

One day, back in 2014, I was offered a transcreation job by one of the translation agencies I was working with at the time.

The job consisted of transcreating a few branded character taglines from English into Spanish for Latin America. 

These taglines included rhythm, rhyme and all sorts of rhetorical devices.
‘These are impossible to translate!’ I remember thinking.

But then, wasn’t I familiar with such creative challenges due to my fiction writing vocation, my reading literature for pleasure, and, last but not least, my old song transcreation hobby?

Some people find their call to do what they do very early in their lives; others will never find it, and that’s all right.

You don’t need to be passionate about art to enjoy or even try making some of it.
When transcreation found me six years ago, suddenly everything else clicked into place.
 

The reason why I’d always been fascinated by and connected with music and the performing arts was there, right before my eyes: they would all serve the purpose of making me a unique transcreator in my language pair, a professional linguist with an ability to transcreate all sorts of messages, jingles and songs included.

‘You should send your work to Pixar or Disney,’ texted me a friend and translator colleague the other day.

But my contract with creativity is not necessarily destined for commercial purposes.
When I am transcreating songs, I actually enjoy the relief of doing it out of pure pleasure, as a leisurely activity that is nonetheless as demanding as a regular transcreation job, or perhaps more.

Transcreating songs is quite a challenge, and you never know whether the result will be anything worthy of your own personal satisfaction until you’re done.

This year, what with quarantine and everything covid-19, I decided to use my talents to transcreate a few songs à la carte and share the results on my Instagram account. 
​

One of such posts, I think, is worth sharing here.

​HOPE’S TRUE COLOURS—A TRANSCREATION

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On October 18th, 2020, I shared my transcreated version of Color Esperanza, a widely popular song written by Argentinian composer Coti Sorokin and rendered widely popular by Argentinian singer Diego Torres back in the year 2001.

The song remains a global hit, and because of its powerful message of hope and courage, some artist will do a new version here or there, in Spanish, and Diego Torres himself once sang it in front of Pope John Paul II.

Earlier in May 2020, a new version came out, where several Latin American artists joined forces to send a message of relief to the Latin American people in the midst of the crisis due to the outbreak of covid-19.

Now, while you will find the song lyrics translated into English on some websites (some use machine translation :O), as well as a few videos on YouTube with English subtitles, I am proud to say that, as far as my research goes, my transcreation into English is the first every version in English of Color Esperanza which not only translates the lyrics, but also proposes a creative translation that perfectly fits in the instrumental version of the song—meaning, you can sing it in English now!

Here you will find my original post on Instagram with the results, me singing included.
Meanwhile, in case you don’t use Instagram, you can take a listen below and read the lyrics in the short videos below.

As the saying goes, hope springs eternal. 
​

I honestly hope you enjoy listening and never give up on hope.

Delfina
#orangepowerDMH

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Being a freelance solopreneur: What it means to me

2/10/2020

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By Delfina Morganti Hernández✍️

Owning a #freelance business is very challenging. If you have a restless entrepreneurial spirit, it's even more challenging and fascinating.

Earlier this year, some people hinted that freelance workers are kind of IDLE human beings who casually work in thetr pajamas (work? Well, every now and then...).

Let's set things straight with kindness and facts😇

Hi, my name is Delfina and I am a freelance solopreneur😃

That doesn't mean...
❌I work part-time.

❌I'm willing to work for peanuts.

❌I'm going to work weekends, holidays and on vacation.

❌You can call me after regular business hours.

❌You can tell me how much I should charge for my services.

❌You can regard me as an alien old hippie with some twisted ideas about what the future of work looks like.

It means…
✅I’m a #business owner, so we are equal😉

✅I choose what projects I work on and the people I work with

✅I set my own rates based on multiple fair factors

✅I choose to work weekends sometimes (nobody forces me to)

✅I'm not idly expecting for clients, they come to me and I seek them actively so they will come to me; it’s a never-ending, yet very fulfilling virtuous circle once you choose to go this way

✅I am my own boss, HR Manager, #Marketing and Branding Director, Content Creator Strategist and, in my case, I also like to bill my clients myself

✅Last year I created the “Free Freelancer Me-Time Day” initiative, to help my brain understand that it's OK to not be working all the time and take a day off in the middle of the week to recharge my batteries and keep doing awesome work. The FREE in freelancer is also about setting boundaries with your hard-working self, before attempting to do so with your clients, as I've come to learn throughout the years.

✅I learnt time management, healthy teamwork skills and autonomy from an early age

✅I can create the best workspace for #productivity and creativity to bring the best results to the table

✅I started small, but I think big. Like Steve Jobs did😍

✅I’m not afraid of tight deadlines and I know when to say no to impossible ones

If you're an independent worker, what does it mean to you?

If you're an independent worker, what does it mean to you?

Delfina
#orangepowerDMH


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Delfina Morganti Hernández is a writer, marketer and English-Spanish (LATAM, Argentina) transcreator and reviewer, and the creator of the first podcast on transcreation. Her purpose is to help fellow brands and people with a true entrepreneurial spirit shine through their communication strategy in English and in Spanish.

She provides marketing consultancy, brand assessment and cross-cultural creative services for high-end brands in multiple industries, such as Digital Advertising, Food & Beverage, Travel & Hospitality, e-Learning and Video Games.

Delfina is a self-published author of an essay on literary translation in Spanish and of a collection of poems in English, Spanish and French, and has been delivering training on literary translation and marketing for translators for 8 years now.

In 2018, she was invited to work as social media strategist and co-host of Traductores al Aire, the first online radio show and podcast by and for translators in Spanish.

In 2020, her branded hashtag #HablemosDeMarketing made it to YouTube, where she hosts her own podcast to discuss marketing and branding for freelance translators and budding entrepreneurs in Spanish.

You can learn more about her at en.traduccionescreativas.com or by searching her hashtags #orangepowerDMH and #BrandingBrain on LinkedIn and Instagram.

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Myths about translators: Translators are frustrated writers

1/10/2020

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By Delfina Morganti Hernández✍️

Every translator is a frustrated writer. Those who can, write. Those who can't... translate.

translation_transcreation_myths
I once had a teacher who proudly claimed that all translators are frustrated #writers by definition, that those who can, write, and those who can’t… #translate

As far as I am concerned, not all translators have ever wanted to become published writers. Similarly, not all translators seem to realise that their work already involves a highly complex act of #writing.

When we translate a text, what we render into the target language is not the source text proper. That’s just an illusion, translation’s own version of “suspension of disbelief”—we believe that we’re capable of translating a text, and so does everyone else, but what we actually translate is our own subjective interpretation of that source text, for which there is no set of instructions that could anticipate the result or limit it to one version only.

That’s why you'll get multiple possible #translations based on one given source text. No two #translators will ever read the same text when reading the “same” text. Their translations will differ.

​When we translate a text, don’t we write our version of it
in a new language?


Translators ARE #writers. What do you think?

Delfina
#orangepowerDMH

Enjoyed this blog? Check out the original LinkedIn post, comment and see what others have to say!


Transcreation_Specialist_English_Spanish_Transcreator
Delfina Morganti Hernández is a writer, marketer and English-Spanish (LATAM, Argentina) transcreator and reviewer, and the creator of the first podcast on transcreation. Her purpose is to help fellow brands and people with a true entrepreneurial spirit shine through their communication strategy in English and in Spanish.

She provides marketing consultancy, brand assessment and cross-cultural creative services for high-end brands in multiple industries, such as Digital Advertising, Food & Beverage, Travel & Hospitality, e-Learning and Video Games.

Delfina is a self-published author of an essay on literary translation in Spanish and of a collection of poems in English, Spanish and French, and has been delivering training on literary translation and marketing for translators for 8 years now.

In 2018, she was invited to work as social media strategist and co-host of Traductores al Aire, the first online radio show and podcast by and for translators in Spanish.

In 2020, her branded hashtag #HablemosDeMarketing made it to YouTube, where she hosts her own podcast to discuss marketing and branding for freelance translators and budding entrepreneurs in Spanish.

You can learn more about her at en.traduccionescreativas.com or by searching her hashtags #orangepowerDMH and #BrandingBrain on LinkedIn and Instagram.

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Thoughts on personal branding and personality

1/10/2020

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By Delfina Morganti Hernández✍️

“You have to become somebody else to create your own brand and stand out.” Ouch.

"Hey, look! I’m great. Be like me, I rock.” Nope, that’s not a #brand, that’s just a self-centred someone trying to gain your attention.

You don’t have to sound like them.

.Being different (from what/whom?) is in vogue.

The less you look and sound like the person next to you, the more striking you'll be to the eyes of passers-by, so seize the moment!

The time has come to stop hiding and give free reign to the idea of being that which your family, your teachers, your class-mates may have feared you could be: yourself.

That’s personal branding: your inimitable style despite those trying to steal your content.

It’s the trace you leave in everything you do and say.

It’s being consistent with yourself.

It’s finding that which makes you memorable to others that you do without thinking, by just being you.


So no, you don’t have to be an impostor.

We the people love genuine #brands, brands who dare to be authentic will win our hearts.

#Branding is the 21st century’s massive call for you to be yourself.

Who am I to say this? Well, I’m myself.

Thanks for reading this very me-like blog. Hope it’s inspired you to post like yourself.
Delfina
#orangepowerDMH

Enjoyed this blog? Check out the original LinkedIn post, comment and see what others have to say!


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Delfina Morganti Hernández is a writer, marketer and English-Spanish (LATAM, Argentina) transcreator and reviewer, and the creator of the first podcast on transcreation. Her purpose is to help fellow brands and people with a true entrepreneurial spirit shine through their communication strategy in English and in Spanish.

She provides marketing consultancy, brand assessment and cross-cultural creative services for high-end brands in multiple industries, such as Digital Advertising, Food & Beverage, Travel & Hospitality, e-Learning and Video Games.

Delfina is a self-published author of an essay on literary translation in Spanish and of a collection of poems in English, Spanish and French, and has been delivering training on literary translation and marketing for translators for 8 years now.

In 2018, she was invited to work as social media strategist and co-host of Traductores al Aire, the first online radio show and podcast by and for translators in Spanish.

In 2020, her branded hashtag #HablemosDeMarketing made it to YouTube, where she hosts her own podcast to discuss marketing and branding for freelance translators and budding entrepreneurs in Spanish.

You can learn more about her at en.traduccionescreativas.com or by searching her hashtags #orangepowerDMH and #BrandingBrain on LinkedIn and Instagram.

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Transcreation tips: The challenges of working in the transcreation of content for apps for kids

30/6/2020

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​By Delfina Morganti Hernández✍️

There's more to transcreating app content for children than meets the eye. Here's a short take on some general challenges I've come across in the transcreation of an app for kids from English into Spanish LATAM.

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Photo by Ketut Subiyanto from Pexels.

WORDPLAY AND COINAGES ARE A KEY INGREDIENT

There’s more to the #transcreation of content in apps for kids than meets the eye.

For one, wordplay and humour may be just around the corner. Coinages, too, are quite frequent, since kids love creating words and picking up on new ones, even when they don't know exactly what they mean and content creators know that. They play with that idea and they infuse their content with made-up words to render their messages appealing and amusing to the eyes and ears of youngsters and pre-teens.

How can a transcreator get ready for this and do these figures of speech justice? Well, I always say that a transcreator is the result of the content they consume: from the books you read to the films and series you watch to the side projects you keep when you're not doing your job, everything you do will influence your creativity.

So watch out for tasks and hobbies that will boost it and keep you on the alert to spot puns, alliteration and more rhetorical devices whenever you attempt to work in a transcreation project!

CHARACTER LIMITS ARE THE ORDER OF THE DAY

​Add to the above linguistic challenges a set of character limitations depending on whether you’re transcreating a title or a description of some feature within your app for kids, and you’ll find yourself wondering if the job could get any more challenging😌

​How can you tackle this challenge and still stay true to the creative concept behind every message in the app?

Not an easy mission, but it's possible. At least, into Spanish for LATAM, I've managed to keep within the character limit so far. How?

Well, by inevitably shortening certain strings, which sometimes required me to do a lot of rephrasing, other times I've had to omit an adjective altogether AND send a note as well as a query to the client.


This is really important:  If you're going to erode part of the message when rendering into a new language because you know the client wants and needs you to prioritise character limitations, it's essential to create a separate document with a table or list of the things you've had to cut off on behalf of those character restrictions. This way, the client can gain insights into what their content sounds like in its 'new life' within the new language system. This extra task may even require you to send some back-translations, which is another common practice in transcreation as a service.

MORALE?

This year I started working as the lead transcreator for a children’s app into Spanish for LATAM which gets as exciting as a new transcreation account can get: while the jobs I’m entrusted with are always 300 words or less, I never trust appearances. Because I know that regardless of the word count, the challenge is bound to be great. Both big and awesome, if you like a challenge😍

So if you’re working in transcreation or looking forward to it, never underestimate the complexity of a task beyond, regardless of the word count. Chances are that the smaller the word count, the bigger the creative challenge for you as the transcreator in charge.

​Delfina

#orangepowerDMH🍊

Want to learn more about transcreation?
Join me on July 18th for a webinar with theory, techniques, examples and a live Q&A with me!
Learn all the details and sign up here!

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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Delfina Morganti Hernández is a writer, marketer and English-Spanish (LATAM, Argentina) transcreator and reviewer, and the creator of the first podcast on transcreation. Her purpose is to help fellow brands and people with a true entrepreneurial spirit shine through their communication strategy in English and in Spanish.

She provides marketing consultancy, brand assessment and cross-cultural services for high-end brands in Digital Advertising, Human Resources, Corporate Communications and Video Games.

Delfina is a self-published author of an essay on literary translation in Spanish and of a collection of poems in English, Spanish and French, and has been delivering training on literary translation and marketing for translators for 8 years now.

In 2018, she was invited to work as social media strategist and co-host of Traductores al Aire, the first online radio show and podcast by and for translators in Spanish.

In 2020, her branded hashtag #HablemosDeMarketing made it to YouTube, where she hosts her own podcast to discuss marketing and branding for freelance translators and budding entrepreneurs in Spanish.

You can learn more about her at en.traduccionescreativas.com or by searching her hashtags #orangepowerDMH and #BrandingBrain on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.
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3 main differences between marketing translation and transcreation

25/6/2020

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​​By Delfina Morganti Hernández✍️

But is there any difference between marketing translation and transcreation?

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And if so, “where's for you the limit between transcreation and marketing translation?”, ​asked me Barbara Allione, an Italian transcreator recently. Well, I’m glad she asked for my personal take on this one, because as she described in her email, “even expert transcreators don't agree on a unique definition.”

ONCE UPON A TIME... I HAD NO IDEA

When I started out as a transcreator, I wasn’t aware of the difference between transcreation and marketing translation. I didn’t even know what transcreation was until I was asked to provide this service for a cereal brand that needed to transcreate a few character taglines for their cereal boxes and merchandising. I had been working in marketing translation, but this was my first transcreation project and there were a few similarities between one service and the other.

Throughout history, transcreation has been closely linked with the marketing and advertising industries (rooted from these, even, according to some sources), and more often than not transcreation will require knowledge from such domains, so it’s easy to take marketing translation and transcreation as one.
 
But there are a few differences, and from my experience with localization companies, they are most likely to differentiate between marketing translation and transcreation both internally, within their language teams, and externally, with their clients.
 
What are some of those differences I perceive and focus on when setting to work in marketing translation or transcreation?
 
I’ll get down to that in a minute, but first, a word on ‘ the original’.

THE ORIGINAL ISN'T THAT ORIGINAL

I believe there is no such thing as an original in communication, language and literature. There are source texts, yes, but those are not, strictly speaking, ‘original’ texts.
​As Michael Cunningham put it once, ‘all literature is a product of translation,’ since ‘the original novel is, in a way, a translation itself. It is not, of course, translated into another language but it is a translation from the images in the author’s mind to that which he is able to put down on paper.’

Personally, I’d say the same thesis is applicable to every text imaginable—every message, every piece of content of whatever its kind, is nothing but an intersemiotic translation (I’m slightly adapting Roman Jakobson’s definition of ‘intersemiotic’ here), by which signs from one particular semiotic system are rendered into another, whether it be verbal or non-verbal. 

So the writer of any text is actually producing a translation when creating their source text: they translate or code their images, their ideas, the concepts they mean to convey into words within a certain language system. Aha! So the source text for us translators is not an original any more—it’s just the text from which the target text results. The translation of a translation.

1. THE STATUS OF THE SOURCE TEXT

That being said, marketing translation will require that the translator sticks close to the source text as in other types of translation. By sticking close to the source text I mean that the translator’s output will be judged based on the commonly used error categories of accuracy, mistranslation, addition and omission. For instance, if the marketing translator adds a sentence in the translation just because (and there’s no correlation between such sentence and the source text), they will be accused of being unfaithful to the source by means of an irrelevant or unsolicited addition.

However, such error categories, which may seem like an obvious set of categories for either celebrating or condemning a translator for their work, lose a great deal of relevance if applied to transcreation.

​Because the apparently sacred question of fidelity falls to pieces when we move on to the shifting sands of the realms of transcreation.

As a transcreator, I am not only allowed, but also expected to stray from the source text. If someone asks me to transcreate a message, they will probably expect some major additions, omissions, rephrasing, replacing of cultural referents and shifting of rhetorical devices in my end product, the target text. 

So here the traditional error categories that we use for measuring a translation’s level of appropriateness won’t do, as transcreation inherently requires that the source is taken more as a basis or initial input for rendering the message into a different language, rather than as the sacred original against which the target text will be compared, and to which the linguist owes their due fidelity and respect.

2. THE STATUS OF WORDS, STRUCTURE AND TERMINOLOGY

A marketing text may be anything from a case study to a report on marketing trends for mobile apps to an article on digital marketing metrics to a brochure for a new product in a particular industry to… The list could take hours to make. Because the “marketing translation” term is an umbrella term, encompassing source texts that are likely to be packed with marketing verbiage and marketing terminology.

​As a marketing translator, I will have to create and use glossaries to do such terminology justice in my translation. Again, accuracy will play the leading role, and while I may certainly need to slightly change word order due to grammatical and style rules of my target language, I’ll still need to stick to the general structure of the text and reflect that terminology in the translation. Sometimes my clients will expect me to follow the source wording or calque acronyms where possible as well.

Transcreation will not necessarily require you to use marketing terminology in that sense. The kind of texts that are often subject to transcreation—from my experience at least—are not so full of marketing verbiage as they are of rhetorical devices that make it essential for me to focus on conveying the ideas, the concepts, rather than mirroring wording and structure.

This is because marketing translation, while not necessarily being literal, is used for more factual and informative texts which, despite being also appealing and persuasive to some extent, are not so often packed with rhetorical devices as the kind of texts that will definitely require transcreation in order to ‘work’ in the target culture. Which leads me to the third and last difference I will share today (there may be more).

3. TEXT TYPES AND FUNCTIONS

Marketing translation may be suitable for email marketing messages, product descriptions, reports, sales presentations, websites, blog articles and market research content, to name just a few examples.

Transcreation will often be used for slogans, ad copy, full advertising campaigns, storyboards, movie titles, subtitles, video game dialogue and any source text where creativity played a major role with the aim to seduce, persuade and evoke a particular effect among the target audience.
​

​Figures of speech such as metaphors, alliteration, wordplay, rhythm, rhyme, irony, humor, paradox, allusions and other cultural references are often used in such texts in order to extort certain associations with a brand or their product, and ultimately lead to a change in the audience’s perceptions and conduct. Thus, messages that need to be transcreated prioritise rendering the effect, rather than the words or the structure of source.

For that purpose, a transcreator may be allowed or even asked to rewrite the source text, while a marketing translator would probably be penalised for rewriting the ‘original’ unasked.

Finally, a good transcreation may result in a text that looks totally different and independent from the source that inspired it, where cultural relevance of the target message requires rewriting the source. Conversely, if a marketing translation bears no resemblance to the source text, chances are your client will not pay for the work you’ve done; you will lose your reputation as a good marketing translator and you may have to do the work again and again until it meets the requirements of an accurate translation.

DON'T COUNT YOUR CHICKENS

Writing this article was challenging because the differences between marketing translation and transcreation are not always clear-cut.
​

For example, a project may require you to combine both service types when working on the same content or text.

Or your client may be new to both marketing translation and transcreation, and you may have to explain the differences between one and the other to let them have their say as to what they want you to do with their message.​

​Did you know about these differences?
What’s your take on this issue?

Delfina
#orangepowerDMH
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Delfina Morganti Hernández is a writer, marketer and English-Spanish (LATAM, Argentina) transcreator and reviewer, and the creator of the first podcast on transcreation. Her purpose is to help fellow brands and people with a true entrepreneurial spirit shine through their communication strategy in English and in Spanish.

She provides marketing consultancy, brand assessment and cross-cultural services for high-end brands in Digital Advertising, Human Resources, Corporate Communications and Video Games.

Delfina is a self-published author of an essay on literary translation in Spanish and of a collection of poems in English, Spanish and French, and has been delivering training on literary translation and marketing for translators for 8 years now.

In 2018, she was invited to work as social media strategist and co-host of Traductores al Aire, the first online radio show and podcast by and for translators in Spanish.

In 2020, her branded hashtag #HablemosDeMarketing made it to YouTube, where she hosts her own podcast to discuss marketing and branding for freelance translators and budding entrepreneurs in Spanish.

You can learn more about her at en.traduccionescreativas.com or by searching her hashtags #orangepowerDMH and #BrandingBrain on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.
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Content marketing: You don’t need to be an influencer to make an impact on other people’s lives

12/6/2020

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​By Delfina Morganti Hernández✍️

So, you write content. You create content. You are in the content writing business, and yet...

Few comments? No “tribe”? It’s OK. You don’t need to be an influencer to make an impact on other people’s lives.

You don’t need to reach out to thousands of strangers on social media to create content that matters.
​
You don’t need to post every day to help someone see something in a ground-breaking light, and suddenly see that post go viral.

And nope, you don’t need tons of Likes and comments to know your content is helping one person out there.

Right now, you're reading this post, but will you comment on it? Chances are, you won't, and that's OK.

Those who want to have a share in your magic are likely to be reading anyway.

So if you think you aren't good enough because you aren't getting any Likes or leads this week, you are missing (at least part of) the point.

Content writing is not (just) about generating leads. It’s about connecting with people through the value you can provide them with.

Will they buy from you afterwards?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

In the meantime, keep writing.

Because even when you lack the numbers that tell you you are doing awesome, odds are you're already making a difference to someone. Yourself and your brand included.

That's content writing with a purpose.
​Delfina
#orangepowerDMH
#BrandingBrain
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Delfina Morganti Hernández is a writer, marketer and English-Spanish (LATAM, Argentina) transcreator and reviewer. Her purpose is to help fellow brands and people with a true entrepreneurial spirit shine through their communication strategy in English and in Spanish.

She provides marketing consultancy, brand assessment and cross-cultural services for high-end brands in Digital Advertising, Human Resources, Corporate Communications and Video Games.

Delfina is a self-published author of an essay on literary translation in Spanish and of a collection of poems in English, Spanish and French, and has been delivering training on literary translation and marketing for translators for 8 years now.

In 2018, she was invited to work as social media strategist and co-host of Traductores al Aire, the first online radio show and podcast by and for translators in Spanish.

In 2020, her branded hashtag #HablemosDeMarketing made it to YouTube, where she hosts her own podcast to discuss marketing and branding for freelance translators and budding entrepreneurs in Spanish.

You can learn more about her at en.traduccionescreativas.com or by searching her hashtags #orangepowerDMH and #BrandingBrain on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.
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Founded in Transcreation, the first ever podcast on transcreation, lands on Anchor, Google Podcasts, Spotify and more!

9/6/2020

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By Delfina Morganti Hernández✍️

Founded in Transcreation is the first ever podcast on transcreation as a service blending translation and rewriting, where we delve into how brands cross borders

english_spanish_transcreation

Also referred to as rewriting or transadaptation, transcreation is the value-added language service required to render creative content into a new language for marketing purposes. Slogans, film titles, video games, app content and ad copy are some examples of content that will most likely require a brand to use transcreation.

?This podcast is about entering the realms of language and creativity with brands.

It was on my 2020 Wish List, but I never thought I'd make it: because I lack the perfect equipment and I thought that was the most important thing to have... for a podcast. Turns out it isn’t.

Your content, what you have to say about the subject matter, that’s what counts.

A few days ago, I recorded the first episode of Founded in #Transcreation, the first ever podcast on transcreation where I delve into how #brands cross borders

It was a totally new experience, different from doing videos and writing posts, and I was so excited! But… I had no idea how I was going to put it out there.

Until a post landed in my feed last week, by Rafa Lombardino, where she talked about her own podcast Translation Confessional on Anchor, and so my prayers were answered! I had the what, I knew my why, now ’d just found my how!

With special thanks to Rafa, Anchor and my mystery guest for episode 2 (currently in the making), today I'm proud to announce the first episode is out! 

Click on the link in the comments below to listen to it on multiple platforms, like Google Podcasts and Spotify!

In this first episode, I define transcreation and talk about (even sing to) “CocaCola Is It”!

Stay tuned!

Delfina
#orangepowerDMH
#BrandingBrain

Here's the link to the podcast on Anchor, where you'll find out more about this first podcast ever on transcreation and how you can listen to it on multiple platforms!

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Delfina Morganti Hernández is a writer, marketer and English-Spanish (LATAM, Argentina) transcreator and reviewer. Her purpose is to help fellow brands and people with a true entrepreneurial spirit shine through their communication strategy in English and in Spanish.

She provides marketing consultancy, brand assessment and cross-cultural services for high-end brands in Digital Advertising, Human Resources, Corporate Communications and Video Games.

Delfina is a self-published author of an essay on literary translation in Spanish and of a collection of poems in English, Spanish and French, and has been delivering training on literary translation and marketing for translators for 8 years now.

In 2018, she was invited to work as social media strategist and co-host of Traductores al Aire, the first online radio show and podcast by and for translators in Spanish.

In 2020, her branded hashtag #HablemosDeMarketing made it to YouTube, where she hosts her own podcast to discuss marketing and branding for freelance translators and budding entrepreneurs in Spanish.

You can learn more about her at en.traduccionescreativas.com or by searching her hashtags #orangepowerDMH and #BrandingBrain on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.
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Transcreation: Pride and Prejudice III

6/6/2020

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By Delfina Morganti Hernández✍️

 Transcreation is in high demand today. Global brands, advertising agencies and translation companies are seeing the need to use transcreators to meet target audiences’ expectations by increasing the relevance of their marketing communications. But what are some myths and truths around transcreation?

transcreation_localization_brands
Photo by Bran Sodre from Pexels
SEE PART 1
READ PART 2
For my third and last article on transcreation prejudice, I have chosen to address a rather specific issue that links transcreation with a brand’s digital marketing and advertising efforts.
#3: Transcreation can be used as a one-size-fits-all solution for a brand’s marketing campaign across platforms.
Transcreation is in high demand today. Global brands, advertising agencies and translation companies are seeing the need to use transcreators to meet target audiences’ expectations by increasing the relevance of their marketing communications (MarCom).

So you've identified the need to use transcreation for your next project. You are an online business willing to hire transcreators to do their best at conquering a target audience within a certain market. Or you are a translation company in dire need of expanding your lines of business and meeting clients’ demand for transcreation.

When it comes to translating a brand’s marketing assets from one language to another, it’s not enough to just spot the need for transcreation instead of regular localisation.

You have to be aware—and let your clients know—that just as the creative and marketing teams have not used exactly the same catchy line on a blog post when they crafted the copy for a web banner or a Facebook ad, so will be the case with the transcreation team: in all likelihood, it will be necessary to adapt the source copy to fit the different formats and character limits posed by the various ad platforms the brand aims to use.

LISTEN TO THE FIRST EVER PODCAST ON TRANSCREATION!
FIND OUT MORE ABOUT TRANSCREATION THROUGH AN EXAMPLE:
Coca-Cola Is It

So you've identified the need to use transcreation for your next project.

You are an online business willing to hire transcreators to do their best at conquering a target audience within a certain market.

Or you are a translation company in dire need of expanding your lines of business and meeting clients’ demand for transcreation.

When it comes to translating a brand’s marketing assets from one language to another, it’s not enough to just spot the need for transcreation instead of regular localisation.

You have to be aware—and let your clients know—that just as the creative and marketing teams have not used exactly the same catchy line on a blog post when they crafted the copy for a web banner or a Facebook ad, so will be the case with the transcreation team: in all likelihood, it will be necessary to adapt the source copy to fit the different formats and character limits posed by the various ad platforms the brand aims to use.

Now, I’ve been working in transcreation for several years now, long before what I like to call the ‘transcreation boom’ (nowadays), and it is fascinating to see just how close the transcreation pipeline is to the copywriting process often carried out by a brand’s creatives. As opposed to other services in the translation and localisation industry, transcreation is a hybrid concept infused with marketing, branding, copywriting, cultural adaptation and even literary translation ingredients.

As a result, the transcreation process closely mirrors the phases involved in the creative process behind every MarCom strategy: from market research to brainstorming and re-writing, transcreators often imitate specific tasks traditionally attributed to a brand’s marketing and copywriting teams. From this point of view, transcreation may as well be defined as a cross-cultural duplicate of a few key phases involved in a brand’s copywriting and marketing processes.
​

As such, a brand’s ad copy transcreated for signage purposes may not be equally effective on a Facebook ad. In turn, a brand’s transcreated copy aimed at Facebook users may not prove to be as relevant for Instagrammers. Each advertising platform has its own rules. The marketing team knows it. The copywriting team knows it. And a professional transcreator knows it too.

So how can brands, advertising agencies and localisation companies ensure consistency despite the need to adapt their copy to several different platforms?

1. Create a clear and specific brief for the project that addresses the differences between each platform and warns transcreators against adhering to each platform’s expected style and number of characters.

2. Provide context to transcreators, whether it be descriptive metadata, reference URLs, screenshots, explanatory notes, etc.

3. Given a certain ad campaign, use the same transcreator or transcreation team across platforms.
Hope this article’s helped shed some light on transcreation as applied to digital marketing campaigns :)

If you've missed on PART 1 and PART 2, check them out to learn more about transcreation as a service and why there's more to it than meets the eye.

Want to learn more about transcreation as a service? Think you could use it for your brand's messaging?

Listen to the first episode of Founded in Transcreation, the first ever podcast on transcreation where I delve into how brands cross borders. You can follow all episodes on Anchor or Spotify as well.

Or tell me about your project, the languages you need to transcreate into and let's see how I can help or assemble a creative language team for you.
Delfina
​#orangepowerDMH
Picture
Delfina Morganti Hernández is a writer, marketer and English-Spanish (LATAM, Argentina) transcreator and reviewer. Her purpose is to help fellow brands and people with a true entrepreneurial spirit shine through their communication strategy in English and in Spanish.

She provides marketing consultancy, brand assessment and cross-cultural services for high-end brands in Digital Advertising, Human Resources, Corporate Communications and Video Games.

Delfina is a self-published author of an essay on literary translation in Spanish and of a collection of poems in English, Spanish and French, and has been delivering training on literary translation and marketing for translators for 8 years now.

In 2018, she was invited to work as social media strategist and co-host of Traductores al Aire, the first online radio show and podcast by and for translators in Spanish.

In 2020, her branded hashtag #HablemosDeMarketing made it to YouTube, where she hosts her own podcast to discuss marketing and branding for freelance translators and budding entrepreneurs in Spanish.

You can learn more about her at en.traduccionescreativas.com or by searching her hashtags #orangepowerDMH and #BrandingBrain on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.
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Transcreation: Pride and Prejudice II

6/6/2020

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​By Delfina Morganti Hernández✍️

Transcreation is in vogue.
​So I've decided to try and demystify some key prejudices and stereotypes around transcreation and transcreators...

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TAKE ME TO PART 1
So for my second review on transcreation prejudice, I’ll demystify the following widely accepted statement:
#2: Transcreation is a service somewhere between translation and copywriting which is used for advertising campaigns.
Indeed, I agree with considering transcreation as a service between translation, writing, copywriting and perhaps even literary translation. However, while this statement focuses on transcreation as applied to the advertising industry (slogans, web banners, etc.), transcreation is also very much used when it comes to adapting app and video game content.

​Now, when we think of translating games, most translation industry players will talk about “game localisation”; only seldom do we hear the phrase “game transcreation”.
Both localisation and transcreation address and generally prioritise cultural sensitivities, but while localisation implies adapting the source message to a target language and audience customising a few features, transcreation goes a step further when it comes to the recreation of the source.

LET'S DEFINE LOCALISATION AND TRANSCREATION

Localisation closely follows the source and ensures it fits the target market or region from the point of view of cultural issues and legal requirements. This service is often performed by translators specialised in the field in question and it is done in one direction only: from a certain source language into a particular target language, e.g., from English (US) into Spanish (Argentina).

Transcreation is more subjective than localisation. It entails a series of creative strategies (such as brainstorming, euphonic pattern analysis, rewriting, market research). Such strategies often lead to “authorised” deviations from the source text in order to achieve a certain effect on the target audience. Therefore, transcreation allows for a more creative touch when adapting the text to suit a target locale and it’s performed by transcreators.

Finally, transcreation may imply working into the transcreator’s second language, such as when a client requests back-translations. For example, when a game title is transcreated from English (UK) into Spanish (Mexico), and then, the resulting text in Mexican Spanish is translated back into English (UK). This is usually done in order for the client to have an idea of what their transcreated content sounds or reads like in the target market.

Want to learn more about transcreation as a service? Think you could use it for your brand's messaging?

Listen to the first episode of Founded in Transcreation, the first ever podcast on transcreation where I delve into how brands cross borders. You can follow all episodes on Anchor or Spotify as well.

Or tell me about your project, the languages you need to transcreate into and let's see how I can help or assemble a creative language team for you.

​Delfina
​#orangepowerDMH
Picture
Delfina Morganti Hernández is a writer, marketer and English-Spanish (LATAM, Argentina) transcreator and reviewer. Her purpose is to help fellow brands and people with a true entrepreneurial spirit shine through their communication strategy in English and in Spanish.

She provides marketing consultancy, brand assessment and cross-cultural services for high-end brands in Digital Advertising, Human Resources, Corporate Communications and Video Games.

Delfina is a self-published author of an essay on literary translation in Spanish and of a collection of poems in English, Spanish and French, and has been delivering training on literary translation and marketing for translators for 8 years now.

In 2018, she was invited to work as social media strategist and co-host of Traductores al Aire, the first online radio show and podcast by and for translators in Spanish.

In 2020, her branded hashtag #HablemosDeMarketing made it to YouTube, where she hosts her own podcast to discuss marketing and branding for freelance translators and budding entrepreneurs in Spanish.

You can learn more about her at en.traduccionescreativas.com or by searching her hashtags #orangepowerDMH and #BrandingBrain on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.
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    About🍊

    I'm Delfina Morganti Hernández and I am the creator and host of Founded in Transcreation, the first podcast🎧 on transcreation, where I delve into how brands cross borders. Listen to the podcast on Anchor, Spotify and YouTube. 

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