Translation vs transcreation: why your best ad flops abroad

You have an ad that works. The hook stops the scroll, the proof lands, the offer converts. So you translate it for a new market, run it, and it underperforms. Nothing about the product changed. What changed is that the ad no longer speaks the way people there speak.

What translation keeps, and what it loses

A straight translation keeps the words. But ads rarely work because of their words alone. They work because of rhythm, references, the price that feels like a bargain, and a voice that sounds like someone the viewer knows.

• A price like 40p means nothing in Mexico City. 9 pesos does.
• An informal, jokey tone that sells in the UK can read as careless in Japan, where a polite register is expected in ads.
• An idiom that works in English often turns into a literal sentence nobody would say.
• A hook that takes two seconds in English may take four in German, and the first seconds are where you win or lose the viewer.

Transcreation: keep the job, change the words

Transcreation starts from what each line of the ad is for, not what it says. The hook's job is to stop the scroll. The proof's job is to make the claim believable. The offer's job is to make acting now feel easy. A transcreated ad gives each line the same job, written the way a local copywriter would write it.

Ask of every line: what is this line doing? Then write a line that does that, for this audience.

What to keep the same everywhere

• The structure: hook, problem, proof, offer, call to action.
• Your brand and product names, and any slogan you've trademarked.
• Claims you can stand behind. Never let a localised version claim more than the original.

How Regionly does it

Regionly asks Claude to rewrite your script for each market using notes on that market's tone, register and currency, while keeping your brand words untouched. Every version comes with an English back-translation, so you can see exactly what it says before it goes live.