For brand content, marketing, and consumer-facing localization: how cultural adaptation differs from direct translation, and when each approach is appropriate.
- Two different jobs
- How to tell which you need
- Brief for adaptation properly
Two different jobs
Translation asks whether the target says what the source says. Adaptation asks whether it does what the source does — persuades, amuses, reassures — for a different audience.
For a specification, the first question is the only one that matters. For a campaign line, answering only the first question reliably produces something accurate and dead.
How to tell which you need
Ask what the content is for. If it informs, translate precisely. If it is meant to move someone, adapt. Most real projects contain both, and the mistake is applying one setting to the whole.
A product page is usually a mix: the feature table is translation, the headline is adaptation. Splitting the brief along that line costs nothing and improves both.
Brief for adaptation properly
Adaptation needs inputs translation does not: the intent behind the line, the audience, the tone, what must be preserved, and what is negotiable. Without them the adapter is guessing at your strategy.
Expect and welcome back-translation queries. An adapter asking "is it more important that this rhymes or that it names the product?" is doing the job correctly.