In a globalized world, companies need to have their online information linguistically and culturally adapted to access international markets. Transcreation is an interlingual creative re-interpretation of a text made considering the linguistic and cultural differences between the target and the original audiences. One of the main sources of corporate information is the corporate website. The US healthcare sector is one of the major industries in the world. Hence, studying the characteristics of their dissemination of corporate information is relevant to know the keys of a fruitful corporate communication. The main objective of this chapter is to identify the keys of a web transcreation process. It is divided in 1) to elaborate a set of indicators for evaluating web transcreation strategies and 2) to apply these indicators to a corporate website to exemplify their functioning through a case-study. The website of the company Pfizer is analyzed. The original US-English and the Spain-Spanish websites are compared. The analysis provides the keys to a successful transcreation process.
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The term ‘transcreation’ has been a buzz word in the language services industry in the last decade. It is a translation-derived activity characterized by an interlingual creative re-interpretation of a text taking into consideration that the target audience is different from the audience originally intended (Benetello, 2018; Gaballo, 2012; Pedersen, 2017). It is not only a linguistic translation of the content, but also a cultural adaptation (Fernández Rodríguez, 2019; O’Hagan & Mangiron, 2013). For that reason, in the last years, transcreation has played a role in marketing and advertisement as it has been a popular way for companies to adapt their marketing campaigns to international markets. Some of the typical projects that may require the use of transcreation are web campaigns aimed at attracting customers from other markets (Ray & Kelly, 2010).
Globalization brought about by technological advances has opened the world to international trade more than at any other time in history (Song et al., 2016). However, this new scenario has also given rise to many communication problems. One of these problems is the language and cultural barriers between users. Transcreation, along with localization, can represent a crucial activity in the internationalization process of companies of all sizes as it helps to close the gap between them and potential clients from all around the globe. In such a globalized market as today’s, it is essential for companies to have their online corporate information linguistically and culturally adapted. One of the main sources of online corporate information (apart from social media profiles) is the corporate website (Olvera-Lobo & Gutiérrez-Artacho, 2017).
The process of adapting a corporate website for a different audience can be given the name of ‘web transcreation’. For the purpose of this chapter, the following definition of web transcreation will be considered: a subgenre of transcreation characterized by the re-interpretation or new creation of a website, even without reference to the original. This definition is extracted after the revision of the results obtained in this study. In contrast, there is web localization, which only creates something completely new on specific occasions and is not associated with the idea of creativity in the way transcreation is (Rike, 2013). Localization is more constrained than transcreation, which takes place mainly when the translator is granted almost absolute freedom to modify, omit or even add elements in the adapted material (Mangiron & O’Hagan, 2006). Web transcreation is an activity that produces a specific product, which may be a new website, but which continues to transfer the intention of the original website and, in the case of a corporate website, the brand and the message from one culture to another (Pedersen, 2014).
The healthcare sector is one of the largest in the world. In particular, the US healthcare sector is probably one of the major industries in the world. This is evidenced by the fact that in the Global 500 ranking, published annually by Fortune magazine, which includes the largest corporations in the world, of the 26 healthcare companies included in the ranking, 15 were US-based corporations (Fortune, 2019b). For this reason, studying the characteristics of the dissemination of corporate web information of these companies is especially relevant to know the keys of a successful language management for the internationalization of companies.
The main objective of this chapter is to study the keys of a successful web transcreation process. This objective is divided in two specific objectives: SO1) to design and elaborate a set of indicators aimed at evaluating the presence of web transcreation; and SO2) to apply these indicators to a corporate website in order to illustrate their functioning through a case-study. The website chosen is the corporate website of the company Pfizer, a US healthcare sector company considered to be one of the largest in the industry. The original US-English and the Spain-Spanish websites will be compared in terms of the set of selected indicators. Conclusions on the application of transcreation strategies will be drawn from this analysis. The analysis will show which are the keys to a successful transcreation process.