Transcreation is another concept which could easily be mistaken for a buzz word. In reality, it refers to vast areas of translation which have for ever been adapting content rather than simply translating it.
Like “Localisation” itself however, it seems to have been appropriated and reinvented by the Information Technology industry (2). So what do we mean by it and do methodologies really differ enough to warrant the use of this term?

Origins of the Concept

If you’ve grown up in an environment where English wasn’t the first language, chances are you have been exposed to transcreated content from a very young age. It may have been through entertainment, television, or advertising; most likely all of the above.

I never knew, nor did it matter to me, that Musclor was not He-Man’s real name. A more famous example of very liberal marketing translation is the story behind the Mitsubishi Pajero’s alternative name in Spanish-speaking countries. I’m also pretty sure that Smurf is not a literal schtroumpfation for Schtroumpf. Spider-Man: India seems a successful example of a multi-national company truly embracing a local culture.

This phenomenon does not only relate to the “Americanisation” of western-culture or even to the intense globalization of this century. Research (3) has shown that forms of Transcreation have been used in Indian poetry and religious writing, where form and content have always been adapted to some of the many cultures and languages of India.

There, is the key to Transcreation in my opinion: recognising the need to become part of a local culture rather than simply communicate in its language.
While translators always aim to reach out to their audience, the software industry often bounds them to the demands of technical content. Transcreation in its modern sense signals the releasing of these bounds, and gives the explicit brief to stray from the source message in favour a better way to communicate the same idea to the target audience.

Videogames Localisation

The term Transcreation is often attributed to Carmen Mangiron and Minako O’Hagan (1). They were among the first to use it in the context of IT, more precisely of the gaming industry.

They recognised the fact that with most games developed in Japan or the U.S., yet targeting truly global markets, there was an inherent need to free translators from the source text in order better connect to local gamers everywhere. In fact even some of the functionalities of games are sometimes adapted to the local culture: the amount of violence, explicit language etc. is not only changed to meet age ratings, but in cases to actually comply with the cultural and legal requirements of different regions of the world.

Countries such as Germany have laws which regulate video game content and manufacturers are faced with the choice of adapting their games or not being commercialised.

Advertising, Copywriting and SEO

The localisation of advertising, or copywriting is an area where the idea of Transcreation is also very apt.
While in a lot of cases translators are not copywriters themselves, they are given instructions to be creative with their work. Rather than just delivering the meaning in a grammatically correct manner, they have the task to also deliver in a form which creates the same reaction in the potential customer.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) copywriting and translation are a further extension of this, where the translator even has to select the words in a very strategic manner. SEO is of course more than just selecting keywords, but even this part of optimisation has to be translated in ways which achieve the best search engine rankings in the target languages, not the source.

Measuring Quality

But is all this really that progressive an idea? Aren’t all translators always trying to come up with the best possible translation anyway?

Things get complicated when you try to measure or monitor the quality of translations where the translators have been asked to stray from the source in order to convey a marketing campaign’s message in the best possible way.

This becomes a highly subjective exercise where chiefly, the client is right.

Here comes the next hurdle: localisation clients rarely have marketing staff in all the countries they market to. So vendors have to come up with processes which ensure that the product delivered meets those sometimes subjective requirements. This in my mind can only be achieved through a durable relationship between the clients and their translators/reviewers. Processes must transcend the limitations of the outsourcing model and recreate the fuzzy feeling of enlightened ownership once only common to the now endangered species of the in-house translator.

Such is the challenge of Transcreation: creative translation requires creative quality management.

References:

(1) Game Localisation: Unleashing Imagination with ‘Restricted’ Translation
Carmen Mangiron and Minako O’Hagan, Dublin City University, Ireland

(2) On the Translation of Video Games
Miguel Bernal Merino, Roehampton University, London

(3) Elena Di Giovanni “Translations, Transcreations and Transrepresentations of India in the Italian Media” (2008), in Klaus Kaindl and Riitta Oittinen (eds), The Verbal, the Visual, the Translator, special issue of META, 53: l. Les Presses de l’Université de Montreal, pp. 26-43.

Many thanks to Carmen for the tips.

More WordCamp NYC videos and a great tutorial from the community round out the videos published this past week on WordPress.tv. Here’s what you missed:

First, there’s John Hawkins’ talk from WordCamp NYC on how to build your very first WordPress plugin. He’s given this talk at a handful of WordCamps this year, but it’s always packed with great information and serves as a great introduction to building a very basic plugin.

Next, Automattician José Fontainhas gives an overview of how to properly provide for internationalization in your WordPress projects, including a brief look at the new GlotPress system. If you’re building something for WordPress, you should take a look at this presentation to learn how easy it is to help the community translate your project. Much of the WordPress community is not English-speaking.

The last presentation from WordCamp NYC comes from Serena Epstein and Shannon Houser: a talk titled “WordPress As a Gateway Drug“. It’s about how the use of WordPress in an undergraduate coursework setting has influenced students to continue the creative process even post-graduation. It has a unique style and flavor—check it out.

And lastly, we were pointed in the direction of a wonderful example of a tutorial coming out of the WordPress community. In this case, it’s Jesse P. Luna’s howto on using the new WordPress.com geotagging feature. It’s great to see these kinds of things come from dedicated WordPress users like all of you.

This is a great moment to remind you that if you have a WordPress feature you think could use a great tutorial, there’s never a better time to create one and send it on to us! If you’ve seen a tutorial or have made one, drop us a line and let us know about it.

If you’re looking for a suggestion, here’s one: are you one of the many people who are working with WordPress 2.9-beta? There are some excellent new features coming in 2.9, and there will be lots of WordPress users looking for information on those features. Why not consider whipping up a brief and to-the-point tutorial on one of the new features coming in 2.9?

Have a great week!

Thanks to INADA Naoki (and friends?), Bazaar documentation is now available in Japanese.

Thanks to Naoko McCracken the WordPress Beta Tester plugin is now fully translatable and also has a Japanese translation out of the box.

WordPress Beta Tester with Japanese translation enabled

Hopefully this will make it easy for Japanese WordPress users to get involved in the Beta Testing of WordPress 2.9 in the coming weeks. If you would like to submit a translation for your language then you can download the pot file from the WordPress plugins Subversion repository here: wp-beta-tester.pot. If you send me the po and mo files I will add them to the repository and release an updated version of the plugin.

The Bazaar Explorer GUI is now available in 11 human languages (and partially translated into a few more) including Algis Kaballa’s recent translation into Lithuanian.

Summary:
anaconda-12.41
Installation Ok
firstboot ok

Bugs (filed):
Desktop = Nil
i18n =  Nil
l10n = 1

Detail:

Major Changes:
qt-4.5.3-7.fc12
system-config-printer-1.1.13-6.fc12

Summary:
Added Packages: 0
Removed Packages: 0
Modified Packages: 25

Complete Rawhide Report

Bug (or expected Bug):
New Bug:  anaconda Translation bug
Updated bug:
Closed Bug:

installation language: Hindi (hi_IN)

install.log file error/warning: fontpackages-filesystem-1.29-1 Nokey (warning)

install.log file warning:

Machine:
Intel C2Q + Intel Graphics (Profile)

Summary:
anaconda-12.41
Installation Ok
firstboot ok

Bugs (New/Closed):
Desktop = Nil
i18n =  0/2

Detail:

Major Changes:
gcc-4.4.2-7.fc12
openoffice.org-3.1.1-19.14.fc12 rhbz#528409 (si_LK), rhbz#529127 (Indic)
xorg-x11-drv-nv-2.1.15-2.fc12

Summary:
Added Packages: 4
Removed Packages: 0
Modified Packages: 70

Complete Rawhide

Bug (or expected Bug):
2 Bug Closed  Bug 530493, 529125

ATI 785 chipset installation done with Basic video Driver

installation language: Mailthili(mai_IN)/Punjabi (pa_IN)

install.log file error/warning: fontpackages-filesystem-1.29-1 Nokey (warning)

install.log file warning:

Machine:
Intel C2Q + Intel Graphics (Profile)
AMD Phenom II 945 + AMD 745 Chipset + ATI 4200

Summary:
anaconda-12.41
Installation Ok
firstboot Ok

Bugs (filed):
Desktop = Nil
i18n =  Nil

Detail:

Major Changes:
DeviceKit-power-012-2.fc12 – Hibernate Fix
anaconda-12.41-1.fc12 -
cups-1.4.1-12.fc12 – Fixed German translation (bug #531144, #STR3396).
fedora-logos-12.0.2-2.fc12 – improved system-software-install icon
gtk2-2.18.3-15.fc12
metacity-2.28.0-6.fc12

Summary:
Added Packages: 1
Removed Packages: 0
Modified Packages: 69

Complete Rawhide
Bug (or expected Bug):

ATI 785 chipset Error

installation language: Malayalam (ml_IN)

install.log file error:

install.log file warning:

Machine:
Intel C2Q + Intel Graphics (Profile)
AMD Phenom II 945 + AMD 745 Chipset + ATI 4200

We are currently working on the development (or co-development, as a base was made available to us by the Akelos team itself) of a plugin to Akelos that fixes the current problems of language variables duplication, deprecation and need for a manual edition of the files.

There are still a few things to be fixed in terms of getting that into a production environment for Akelos instead of just the development environment, but we’re working on that.

Summary:
anaconda-12.38
Installation ok
firstboot ok

Bugs (filed):
Desktop = Nil
i18n =  Nil

Detail:

Major Changes:
smolt-1.4-4.fc12 – Fixing firstboot for F-12
virtaal-0.4.1-1.fc12 – Update to 0.4.1

Summary:
Added Packages: 11
Removed Packages: 0
Modified Packages: 16

Complete Rawhide report

Bug (or expected Bug):
iok failed to appear second time

installation language: Bengali (India)

install.log file error: No

install.log file warning: No

Machine: Intel C2Q + Intel Graphics (Profile)

Summary:
anaconda-12.38
Installation ok
firstboot ok

Bugs (filed):
Desktop = Nil
i18n =  1 Fail_QA

Detail:

Major Changes:
New package gargi-fonts – Devanagari Font
NetworkManager-0.7.996-5.git20091021.fc12 – Crash fixed (#529854), VPN connection error,
cvs-1.11.23-8.fc12
dogtail-0.7.0-1.fc12 – New release
empathy-2.28.1-1.fc12 – 2.28.1 release
fedora-logos-12.0.1-1.fc12 – update to 12.0.1
fontpackages-1.28-1.fc12
gtk2-2.18.3-7.fc12
ibus-1.2.0.20091014-2.fc12 – update to 1.2.0.20091014
ibus-m17n-1.2.0.20090617-4.fc12 – iok patch to fix build error
ibus-qt-1.2.0.20091014-1.fc12 – update to 1.2.0.20091014
libX11-1.3-1.fc12 – libX11 1.3
pidgin-2.6.3-2.fc12 – Upstream backport
setuptool-1.19.9-1.fc12 – Update translations
tzdata-2009o-2.fc12 -
xorg-x11-server-utils-7.4-13.fc12 -

Summary:
Added Packages: 81
Removed Packages: 1
Modified Packages: 214

Complete Rawhide report

Bug (or expected Bug):
-fc-match – Showing Hindi Lohit for mr_IN lang
iok Bug yet not fixed with ibus-m17n

RH NetworkManger
installation language: Marithi (mr_IN)

install.log file error: No

install.log file warning: No

Machine: Intel C2Q + Intel Graphics (Profile)

Summary:
anaconda-12.38
Installation ok
firstboot ok

Bugs (filed):
Desktop = Nil
i18n =

Detail:

Major Changes:
Gnome Packaged – Upgrade to 2.28.1 release
cups-1.4.1-10.fc12 – de translation update (bz#529575)
gnome-packagekit-2.28.1-1.fc12 – translation update
gnome-power-manager-2.28.1-1.fc12 – translation update
system-config-httpd-1.4.6-1.fc12 -translation update

Summary:
Added Packages: 1
Removed Packages: 0
Modified Packages: 47

Complete Rawhide report

Bug (or expected Bug):
Bug 530085 -  [or_IN] – Editor’s Title appearing with Underline for Oriya Lohit Fonts (Default Fonts)

installation language: Oriya (or_IN)

install.log file error: No

install.log file warning: No

Machine: Intel C2Q + Intel Graphics (Profile)

People see languages as rigid, not mutable. This is a very Victorian concept that is as absolutely wrong as generally accepted.

The most evident fact that denies this precept is that most languages feature some degree of internal variability. Sometimes this is easy to appreciate. People from one city not necessaryly spokes the same way people from other nearby city does. This theme came out in a conversation I had some days ago. In that conversation, being there people from different cities, we suddenly started to debate how some words weren’t used for the same thing on our localities. In fact, I can tell about a funny story related to this. Some years ago, one friend of mine had some holidays in other city here, in Galicia, about 150 km south from where we resides (Same language here and there). So, this friend of mine went to a restaurant and he decided to have “xoubas” for lunch, he thought we was asking for squids. He wasn’t served a squids but some fish that we commonly refer to as “parrocha”. He was shocked so he asked and, for his surprise, he discovered he was served properly. In same that conversation it was told about two very closed small villages with two relevant phonological differences. It was argued that those differences might have developed because of one village having always depended upon fishing while the other had done so upon agriculture. It’s even common for big difference to exist inside the same city; take as an example cockney. But variability is not only limited to geographic variation. People may spoke in a different way depending on social background.

Then, it’s usually forgotten that languages have evolved through time. Indeed this is the main reason why though not speaking the same language we might understand other languages’ words or phrases. Italians understand quite easily Spanish and even Germans could understand some English. This is because those languages have a common origin. Latin evolved very fast once the Roman Empire fall and produced all romance languages, as it’s the case of Spanish and Italian. And if languages have evolved in the past it’s going to be the same in the future. Languages change because people made them change. Today’s English will have nothing to do with tomorrows English. I even dare to state that the moment one language stops changing it’s about to get extinct.

Finally, people communicate differently as they grow. Just as a baby has yet to acquire speech abilities, adults might improve vocabulary, use it grammar differently or even innovate. Young generations don’t use the language as older generations and in fact this is what makes languages change over time, evolve.

If you’ve been reading carefully you might notice that not necessarily languages are a defined entity. Sometimes is very difficult to stablish a limit between two languages. Languages are no more than a property of a speech community, a network odf speakers, which not necessarily is a closed community. I’ll write more about this in the future. For the moment, lets simply state that the Victorian way of conceiving language must die, and a Darwinian vision applied.

Hi,

While playing with quemu+lfslivecd under ubuntu, I came to know about the following commands which sets the locale environment for a linux system(atleast for lfslivecd). Using the following steps, I’ll share the commands and start a new X server with the modified environment.

1. Press ‘ctrl+alt+F1′ to go to virtual terminal 1 or ‘tty1′(To switch back to current gnome session, use ‘ctrl+alt+f7′). Login to that terminal with different userid then the current userid who already logged into current gnome session.

2. type the following command to set the timezone. you can see the timezone data file in /usr/share/zoneinfo/posix/{continent}/{country} where {continent} is the name of your continent like ‘Europe’, ‘Asia’ etc., and {country} is your country name. This file should be pointed by TZ environment variable. The below command will change Timezone to ‘Europe/Spain’.

$ export TZ="Europe/Spain"
$ date

The date command will show the date according to the new timezone.

3. ‘localedef’ command is used to create binary definitions in /usr/lib/locale directory from /usr/share/i18n/ directory, the ‘i18n’ directory contains ‘charmaps’ directory which contains encodings(like ‘UTF-8′ etc). ‘i18n’ also contains ‘locales’ directory which contains definitions for locales. ‘localedef’ will use these two directories to generate a definiton for particular language termed in ‘{LANG}_{COUNTRY}.{ENCODING}’(eg: es_ES.utf8 – means language code ‘es’(spanish), country ‘ES’(spain) and encoding in ‘utf8′). The following command will compile language definition for spanish language in ‘utf8′ encoding.

$ sudo localedef -f UTF-8 -i es_ES --no-archive es_ES.utf8'
$ locale -a | grep 'es_ES.utf8'

‘locale -a’ will show whether language definition added or not.

4. Now we are ready to change the LANG variable, this variable is used by all ‘glibc’s language aware’ applications to switch their output to a particular language, the ourput strings for a particular application for a particular language should be available in ‘{application}.mo’ file inside /usr/share/locale/{LANG}/LC_MESSAGES directory(Distros provide ‘.mo’ files through language specific packages). Now switch the glibc applications to spanish using the following command,

$ export LANG="es_ES.utf8"
$ locale

‘locale’ command will tell the current language.

5. Finally start a new X server using the following command with modified locale. You can switch back to old X server using ‘ctrl+alt+F7′. To switch to new X server, use ‘ctrl+alt+F9′(or ‘ctrl+alt+F10′ if it started in ‘tty10′ virtual terminal)

$ startx -- :1 -br -audit 0 -nolisten tcp

At first, it will ask to change the name of the directories to suite the new language, don’t rename unless you always going to work in the new locale environment.

6. Once you done, ‘Logout’ from the New X server(new gnome session), it will stop the newly started ‘X server’ and put you in ‘tty1′ virtual terminal. ‘exit’ command will exit you from the tty1 terminal. Finally, switch back to old X server’s gnome session using ‘ctrl+alt+F7′.

Thats all.

Summary:
Installation ok
firstboot ok

Bugs (filed):
Desktop = Nil
i18n =

Detail:

Major Changes:
NetworkManager-openconnect-0.7.996-4.git20090921.fc12
smc-fonts-04.2-2.fc12 – bz#523454
sugar-* – Translation Updated for various packages

Summary:
Added Packages: 3
Removed Packages: 0
Modified Packages: 44

Complete Rawhide report

Bug (or expected Bug):
OOwriter Bug is effecting This language

installation language: Telugu (te_IN)

install.log file error: No

install.log file warning: No

Machine: Intel C2Q + Intel Graphics (Profile)

Summary:
Installation ok
firstboot ok

Bugs (filed):
Desktop = Nil
i18n = Nil

Detail:

Major Changes:
anaconda-12.38 – Check Mailing list

Summary:
Added Packages: 0
Removed Packages: 0
Modified Packages: 1

Complete Rawhide report

Bug (or expected Bug):

installation language: Marthi (mr_IN)/ Oriya (or_IN)

install.log file error: No

install.log file warning: No

Machine: Intel C2Q + Intel Graphics (Profile)