Transcreation…yes, in a CAT tool!

This presentation was part of the SDL Trados Virtual Conference, held on the 3^rd of November 2020 and was about transcreation, a creative process that refers to transferring the essential message of a text into the target language and culture, maintaining the style, intent, tone and context. It is not the formal translation that we all know, but an adaptation of a text in an artistic way, you can break away the barrier of formal translation and create something new with a localization input.  

What is even more astonishing is that now you can transcreate in a CAT tool. It is not something normally encountered when using a CAT tool, because of this process’ creative nature. Fortunately, within SDL Trados Studio 2021 we are now able to transcreate, not only translate, thanks to Paul Filkin who helped develop it. It is a very administrative procedure and if you have to deal with a multilingual project things will get a little bit messy. For every transcreation process there is a back-translation process that is happening. So if you have one source language to ten target languages that would create ten back-translation projects.

The presentation was very pleasant, firstly because the subject is of present interest and and very popular, since subtitling is a form of transcreation, that people are enjoying it every day and secondly because the host, Paul Filkien introduced this matter in a very relaxed friendly way, which made the presentation easy to follow. He talked about the transcreation in a commercial context, which is highly demanded these days with all the digitalization that happens around us and he mentioned the importance of integrating the transcreation in a CAT tool, using the translation memory and all the features it compounds. Another part that was interesting to watch was the Q&A section, which encompassed some questions or comments that people who watched the presentation made, that clarified some of the unicity and the usability of this application, which can be found only within SDL Trados Studio 2021.