Jill Kushner Bishop discusses how to write instruction manuals and marketing content for translation into multiple languages. Use graphics and bullet points to cut word count and translation costs. Know when to transcreate, not just translate, especially for titles and marketing that need cultural resonance.
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past with instruction manuals is do 80% of the material with graphics. So it's sort of like a comic book. And then you— what you're basically doing is you're limiting the number of words. And that way, because if you're going to have to translate it into 17 languages, you want to keep that— the verbiage as small as possible if you can, right? So if you plan that out strategically, you can save yourself a fortune and, and have a very good product that way. And not, you know, there are people who don't go into the EU because of that linguistic issue, right? Because they, they can't, they don't see how they can get around it. They can't afford to deal with it. And it's a shame to walk away from a market because of a reason that you can solve with the right vendor, right?
Right. And your point about having, um, having graphics, who as a user doesn't prefer to have graphics over a long, you know, rambling paragraph. If you can make it more simple, your users are going to appreciate that as well. And that goes back to having the best written original to start with. And so have graphics if you can, have it less text-heavy if you can, shorter bullet points, make sure you're not using sports metaphors and, you know, humor that might not translate. And, you know, there's translation and then there's what's called transcreation. Transcreation, which is creating something new when there's no equivalent. So like the Netflix show Orange Is the New Black, you could translate that literally, but it's not going to mean anything. Right. And that's because you have to transcreate it. And so if you can be more— and sometimes your marketing content is going to require transcreation, and that's going to be ultimately what you're going to want to do, but you want to make that decision intentionally and not Not because your content is so nuanced and culturally specific when it doesn't need to be, and then it gets kind of dismantled and then recreated.
