#Transcreation #MAGA #AI

By Gonzalo López Martí – Creative Director
www.LopezMartiMiami.com

• We LOVE a portmanteau in the corporate world.
• In real life too, truth be told.
• Brunch (breakfast + lunch, possibly the grandpa of all portmanteaux).
• Infotainment (information + entertainment).
• Comcast (communications + broadcast).
• A good portmanteau should be self-explanatory.
• There are a few though that are a bit too jargony and require a slight learning curve.
• Churnalism (churn + journalism): hastily put together reporting or coverage that regurgitates stale data (e.g., Wikipedia) or manufactured information (press releases) and is devoid of proper research or fact-checking.
• Athleisure (athlete + leisure): the dress code that turned Lululemon into a bootylicious money printing machine.
• Bootylicious (booty + delicious).
• Labradoodle (labrador + poodle).
• In the ad world we coined “transcreation” (translation + creation, duh).
• When simply translating and ad campaign will not suffice and an extra dosage of creative brainpower is required to make it target specific and/or culturally relevant,
• For instance, let’s take the most famous* slogan of the last ten years: Make America great again.
• How would you transcreate it to appeal to Spanish-speaking potential constituents?
• Not easy.
• See, for native Spanish-speakers América is a single continent, all the way from Antarctica to the Arctic, including chunks of both.
• Whereas for English-speakers, America is a country.
• Additionally, “grande” and “great” are not exactly the same thing.
• Hagamos América grande de nuevo?
• It lacks oomph, assertiveness, braggadocio.
• Haz Estados Unidos grande de vuelta?
• Meh.
• Lots of little nuances get lost in the process.
• The mojo is gone.
• The juice is just not there.
• It just sounds clunky.
• It’s Colombia, not Columbia.
• This very transcreative process takes place every single day in agencies all across the world.
• Particularly in the US Hispanic realm.
• Methinks it is the very barrier to entry that will protect our sorry flesh & bone asses from artificial intelligence rendering us all unemployable.
• We’ve seen it a hundred times: a flagship agency wins a global account with an idea that is supposedly global in scope.
• Inevitably, however, some localization will be necessary to run it in dozens of countries.
• The transcreation thingy, unfortunately, is sporadically frowned upon by some monolingual clients.
• They think it is just a creative pretext to pad our timesheets.
• Trust us, dear client.
• It is for the greater good.

*Famous or infamous, depending on your political inclinations.