Marketing Translation Services

What Is the Difference Between Translating a Document and Translating a Campaign?

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The difference is what the text is measured against. A document is translated correctly when it says the same thing; a campaign is translated correctly when it still does the same job — getting a reader to click, enquire, book or buy. Marketing translation therefore carries three things at once: the language, the reference frame the local audience brings to it, and the commercial intent the copywriter built in. A straightforward translation delivers the first. A marketing translation service is the one that owes you all three, and Espresso prices that work at £0.10 a word with delivery in 2 to 3 working days.

In practice this covers what a marketing department publishes in a year: websites and landing pages, PPC and display advertising, SEO content, social media posts, email marketing, a product catalogue, a brochure, press releases, video scripts and product launches. A marketing translator reads the brief before the copy, which is why the output reads as though it was written in the market rather than imported into it. Where the source file is British, part of the job is deciding what to do with the assumptions a UK writer makes without noticing: display prices quoted with VAT already in them, dates written day first, distances in miles, a bank-holiday weekend used as a deadline, and the English itself — a campaign moving from London to Chicago is localised rather than translated, and the spelling is the smallest part of it.

Who Handles a Marketing Translation Job, and What Comes Back?

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Two linguists and a project manager handle it. A native marketing translator writes the target-language version, a second native-speaking linguist reads it against the source language line by line, and a project manager holds the dates and the file list. That second read is what ISO 17100 requires and it is why a file is not returned the minute the translator finishes. The linguists we put on marketing work have written or managed campaigns themselves — in advertising, content, digital or communications — so the question they ask of a headline is what it is for, not only what it says. They adapt the argument rather than the sentence, because a word-for-word translation can be accurate and still flatten the line that was carrying the argument.

What comes back is the translated content in the file you sent, with the layout intact and the terminology matching a glossary you have approved. Alongside the copy we keep three working assets for you: the glossary itself, a translation memory of everything already signed off, and a style note recording the decisions — how formal the register is, whether the brand uses the informal second person in German or French, how product names are handled, what is never translated. Those assets are what make the fifth campaign faster to run than the first, and they belong to your account rather than to the translator who happened to be free that week.

Espresso covers over 150 languages through a network of 2,000+ linguists, and the marketing work runs across Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America as well as into US and Canadian English. Volumes range from a single brochure to a full product launch in nine languages on one date. Quality translations at that spread are a staffing problem before they are a linguistic one: the same brief goes to a different specialist marketing translation team in each language, and the glossary is what keeps them saying the same thing. A global marketing programme reaches global audiences through a long series of local decisions, and professional translation services are where most of those decisions actually get made.

Why Does Accurate Language on Its Own Sell Nothing Abroad?

Because accuracy is a floor, not an argument. A reader in Munich or Madrid is not comparing your copy with the English original; they are comparing it with the copy of the company they already buy from, written by somebody who grew up in that market. Marketing campaigns, advertising, websites, social media content and email marketing all get judged on whether they sound like they belong, and that judgement happens in the first line. Businesses expanding into new markets meet this the moment the first translated materials go live.

It is also the point where business translation services stop being enough. A supplier who is excellent on a contract or a manual is being asked, in a marketing brief, to do a different job: hold a tone of voice, keep a claim inside what the destination market allows, and pick the word local buyers actually use rather than the correct one. That is why marketing translation needs are quoted and staffed separately from the rest of a translation programme, whether your marketing team is buying one campaign or a rolling year of marketing collateral, and why a translation service built for documents is rarely the right one for advertising.

There is a limit to what a translation supplier can promise, and it is worth putting plainly. We commit to the language: terminology that matches your approved glossary, a register that fits the market, a claim that survives the destination market’s rules, and human translation checked by a second linguist. We do not commit to a conversion rate. Whether a campaign works is settled by the offer behind it, the media budget, the state of that market and the week it runs, none of which a linguist touches. What good marketing translation removes is one specific failure — the campaign underperforming because the copy read as foreign — and that failure is the part of the problem a translation supplier owns.

Which Parts of a Campaign Need Different Handling, from PPC to Print?

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A campaign is not one text. Each asset has its own constraint — a character count, a platform rule, a design grid, a legal line — and the constraint is usually what decides the wording, so each is handled differently.

When Should a Line Be Rewritten Rather Than Translated?

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A line should be rewritten when its effect comes from how it sounds rather than from what it says. A pun, a rhyme, a rhythm, a borrowed cultural reference, a play on a product name: a direct translation keeps the meaning and loses the mechanism, which is why a slogan can survive translation intact and stop working. That is not a mistake by the translator. It is a brief for a copywriter, and the name for it is transcreation.

Transcreation starts from the objective rather than from the sentence. We take the campaign brief, the target audience, the brand guidelines and the line itself, then a native marketing copywriter writes new options in the target language aimed at the same effect, each with a back-translation so you can see what it says in English before you choose. Marketing translation and transcreation run through the same ISO 17100 workflow — second linguist, project manager, sign-off — and creative translations are quoted per campaign rather than per word, because rewriting a strapline is copywriting and is not measured in words.

The split is easier than it looks. Factual marketing content — product information, a brochure, a press release, a case study, a newsletter, most website pages — takes marketing translation, where accuracy carries the weight and the price is £0.10 a word. Straplines, campaign headlines, radio and video scripts, and anything built on humour or a promise you cannot say twice, take transcreation. A line built to resonate in English rarely resonates word for word in Polish, and knowing which route an asset takes is part of the quote rather than a conversation after delivery. Translation and copywriting are different skills, and the honest version of this page says which one you are buying.

How Much Does a Multilingual Campaign Cost, and How Is Brand Voice Held Steady?

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A multilingual campaign costs £0.10 a word for marketing copy, and brand voice is held by a glossary and a translation memory rather than by hoping each translator guesses the same way. Left to itself, a brand drifts: confident and plain in English, formal and technical in German, chatty in Spanish, because without a written decision every translator makes a different call and every call is defensible on its own. The customer notices it as a company that sounds like two companies. Brand messaging is recognised through vocabulary and register long before anybody looks at the logo.

So the decisions get written down before the first campaign, not after the third. We build a client-specific glossary from what you already have — approved terminology, product names, style guides, past marketing materials, the strings nobody is allowed to touch — and everything signed off goes into a translation memory and a terminology system that every linguist on your account works from, which is how a dozen people maintain tone across a dozen languages. A term can be changed; it is changed once, centrally, and the next campaign inherits it. That is also what keeps organic copy stable when a page is refreshed rather than rewritten.

Over a year these assets are what make marketing workflows predictable. Repeated strings stop being re-decided, a recurring campaign starts from settled wording, and a programme running in nine languages stays consistent without a review meeting per language. Approved terminology also makes a long programme genuinely cost-effective: the tenth campaign contains fewer new words than the first, which is a smaller bill for the same rate.

What Does the Work Cost in Pounds, and When Does It Land?

Our marketing translation service is £0.10 a word and lands in 2 to 3 working days. Subtitling for video campaigns starts at £5 per video minute. Transcreation and creative advertising translation are quoted per campaign once we have read the brief. The per-word rate covers translation by a native marketing translator, the second-linguist read required by ISO 17100, and delivery in the format you sent. What moves a quote is the amount of copy, the language pair, and whether the job also needs desktop publishing, keyword research or video finishing. A free quote, itemised line by line, comes back within 1 hour of your files arriving.

On timing, 2 to 3 working days is the normal slot for marketing material and the 24-hour express option exists for the launch that moved. That express slot is the fastest thing we sell. Nothing ships sooner, because the second-linguist read is not a step we drop to hit a date, and a supplier who offers to would be dropping it too. Where a campaign has to go live in several markets on one day, the project manager sequences the languages backwards from that date and tells you at quote stage which ones need starting first.

The rate is the same on a 300-word advert and on a 30,000-word site: £0.10 a word, at any size. A translation memory does not move the price of a word — it changes how many new words the next campaign contains, which is why the tenth brief is quicker and smaller than the first. Accounts running continuous work get a named project manager, the approved glossary and the memory that carries every decision already made.

Which Numbers Show That a Translated Campaign Is Working?

Judge a translated campaign on the same measures as the original, market by market, and against that market’s own baseline rather than against the UK figure. The useful set is click-through rate on the ads, conversion rate on the landing page, cost per acquisition, organic impressions and average position for the local terms, open and reply rates on email, enquiry volume, and eventually return on investment. A translated page that attracts traffic and converts nobody is usually a copy problem; one that converts the traffic it gets but gets very little is usually a keyword or media problem. The numbers separate those two, which is the practical reason to collect them.

The qualitative signals arrive sooner and are worth logging. The local sales team stops rewriting the copy before they use it. Customer questions in that market stop repeating the same misunderstanding. Journalists quote the release instead of rewriting it. Support tickets stop asking what a feature name means. When the sales team’s edits dry up, the glossary is right; when they do not, the edits are free market research, and they belong in the glossary before the next brief goes out.

What Happens Between Your Brief and the Finished Files?

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Where Do Translated Campaigns Actually Go Wrong?

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They go wrong in five recognisable ways, and only one of them is a language error. First, the mechanism: a headline built on a pun keeps its grammar and loses its joke, so the line is correct and inert. Second, the register: a call to action calibrated for British understatement reads as limp in a market that expects a direct instruction, and the same instruction translated into English for a UK audience reads as shouting. Third, the category word: buyers search for the thing using a word the dictionary does not offer, so a literally correct product name ranks for nothing. Fourth, the rules: non-broadcast advertising in the UK is written against the CAP Code, administered by the Advertising Standards Authority, and every destination market publishes its own — so a comparative claim, a price promise or a superlative that clears here can need rewording before it runs there, and that is a copy decision taken before sign-off rather than a translation error found afterwards. Fifth, the fit: German and Finnish run 30 per cent long, a button label stops fitting its button, and a date written 06/07 means two different days on two sides of the Atlantic.

None of those is fixed by translating harder, which is why we staff marketing work with people who have written advertising and marketing copy rather than only translated it. Marketing translators on our team come out of agencies, in-house marketing teams, SEO and content roles; they know that search behaviour in Spain is not search behaviour in Mexico, that a direct English sales register needs softening before a Japanese reader treats it as credible, and that localised marketing for a German B2B audience puts the specification before the promise. They also know when to stop translating and say a line needs rewriting, which is the single most useful thing a supplier can tell a marketing department.

What Should You Ask a Marketing Translation Agency Before Briefing It?

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Ask six questions, and insist on checkable answers to all six: who writes, where they live, what the quality step actually is, where terminology is kept, what the rate covers, and who you will speak to. Translation agencies that are good at documents are not automatically good at campaigns, and the gap does not show up in a sample of 200 words — it shows up in month four, when nobody can remember why a product feature has two names in French.

Six questions worth putting to any marketing translation company before you brief it:

A marketing translation service that can answer all six is describing a way of working rather than selling one, and that is what gives a multilingual campaign the same chance in its new market that the original had at home. It is also the answer that survives contact with the second campaign.

The difference between suppliers usually shows up in those answers rather than in the pitch. Espresso works with 2,000+ linguists across over 150 languages and has run marketing translation projects in retail, software, manufacturing, travel, professional services and industrial B2B — the sectors matter because the register does. Our project managers, our translators and the customer service team work from one brief, so the commercial intent that was agreed in the kick-off is still there in the tenth campaign.

What Else Can We Localise Once the Campaign Is Translated?

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Translation is one layer of an international marketing programme, and marketing localisation is the rest of it. These are the neighbouring services clients usually bolt on once the first campaign is out, and they are quoted on the same terms.