TRANSLATORS WRITING ADS

Would you hire a translator to write your ads? As an ECD you wouldn’t even think about it.

But you do. 

From the moment your campaigns cross borders, most ECDs leave it to various managers who leave it to various companies/agencies who leave it to various translators to manage their campaigns on the international stage.

Baffling?

That’s actually what you observe when you look at the background of the employees of the companies that provide language services to advertising agencies. 

None of these people has ever stepped into an advertising agency and couldn’t tell their David Abbott from their John Hegarty. They’re not creatives or copywriters. They are translators, academics, and have no advertising or marketing background whatsoever. 

So why would you let your campaigns be managed by such people?

Because advertising had become an industry far more worried about efficiency, the science of procurement, mergers, buy-outs, and other financial concerns. 

Great copy and localised concepts and taglines aren’t part of them. As long as campaigns are globally implemented as rationally as possible, what’s the problem?

Convenience and the efficiency of a system should never be an argument when it comes to the efficiency of a campaign. 

I keep seeing posts here from creatives who are lamenting the state of advertising today and copy as a forgotten craft. As far as historic campaigns are concerned, nobody cares anymore; technology has replaced traditional skills. Skills that made campaigns human with emotional impact.

This is why the industry is farming out transcreations to untrained, incompetent, and poorly paid translators. Streamlining has become an obstacle to the human factor and creativity, which should be at the heart of any localised campaign.