Once, an airline invited readers to “Fly Naked*”.

Suppose you have a terrific ad campaign and are dying to share it with your potential Spanish-speaking customers. You pick up the phone and ask your cousin’s friend who once spent a summer in Spain –or for that matter, a translations agency– to translate it. A few weeks later your shiny new Spanish ads run in the paper, and air on TV and radio.

And then… nothing happens. Nothing.

A few days later, a call delivers the bad news: your ad makes no sense. Worse still, some words are offensive to a large segment of the Hispanic population…

“I don’t understand… what happened?” you say. The answer is, you made the same mistake so many unsuccessful advertisers do: you trusted your business’ reputation and resources to someone without the right advertising and marketing experience.
A “straight” translation will kill even the most cleverly written ad, because a word-by-word translation cannot communicate the creative approach that’s essential to conveying your message. An –if your translator is not thoroughly familiar with the various expressions used in different Spanish-speaking countries and regions– you could risk alienating the very people you’re trying to attract!

When it comes to marketing and advertising, translations don’t work. Trans-creations do.

• Trans-Creating isn’t just translating words. The ideas, concepts, images – even the design of the marketing materials – are adapted to the culture associated with the target language.
• Trans-Creations help you reach your target audience in a language they understand both literally and metaphorically.
• Trans-Creating is creative work, blending solid advertising and marketing knowledge with native fluency in the culture and the language of your target audience.

As a creative director and copywriter I have trans-created countless advertising campaigns and marketing materials into solid Spanish-language executions for some of the world’s most renowned companies and advertising agencies.

To see some samples of my trans-creation work in action, click here.

* The airline ran ads with the headline “Fly in Leather” after spending tons of money re-upholstering their seatsin their entire fleet. They spent another small fortune running ads with the literal Spanish translation “Vuele en Cuero”, which is slang for “fly naked”! Needless to say, nobody disrobed (airplanes are cold!) but lots of people called to complain. The agency lost the account and the people in charge now work as fry cooks somewhere in North Dakota.