Specialist Marketing Translators

Many translators and agencies claim to work with marketing texts. They’ll often class marketing as one of their specialities, but it usually appears at the bottom of a long list behind more technical forms of translation, such as legal and medical. The implication is that if you can translate technical documents, then you must also be able to translate marketing material as well, because it’s much easier. But is that really the case? My answer is: not if you’re doing it properly and taking it seriously.

Marketing translation often requires substantially more creativity than translating a technical text. Your role isn’t to just translate what’s in front of you as accurately as possible – you have to consider the effect that the language you’re using is having on the reader. Brands have a specific style and tone in mind, because they want to connect with their customers in a very particular way. As a marketing translator, it’s your job to re-create this in your native language. It’s a completely separate skill and you aren’t going to learn it second-hand by primarily translating technical documents and dabbling in a bit of marketing on the side. 

Specialist marketing translators can hone their skills by incorporating marketing theory into their translation practice. By flexing their creative muscles on a regular basis, they become better able to quickly think up clever solutions for translating the kinds of tricky phrases you only really encounter in marketing texts – whether they be puns, idioms or slogans. For specialist marketing translators, their work is a highly-developed, mindful act. It’s not something that “makes a nice break” from the stuff they usually do. Ultimately, you’re never really going to get good at something unless you make it a priority.