My client was the Italian subsidiary of a well-known Swiss dairy multinational. The Italian company was formed of three Italian dessert companies with a long history of producing delectable Italian desserts for Italy and abroad.
The client had worked closely with an Italian copywriter who created the Italian copy for the website, along with storytelling content and tone of voice guidelines. The result was a stunning B2B website devoid of the usual clichés. It was inspiring and fitted the young, dynamic brand perfectly.
The client had already realised that a simple translation of its website into English would not do it justice. To maintain the impact of the original, as well as ensure that it was appropriate for an international audience, they decided to get the website transcreated by an Italian-speaking copywriter: me. Read more about transcreation here.
I had the benefit of working very closely with the Italian copywriter. Along with the briefing, this meant that I understood the thinking behind each of the marketing messages. The project included transcreating content, adapting headlines and straplines, and creating the meta titles and meta descriptions for SEO.
There were several concepts which worked perfectly in Italian but could not be directly translated into English. For instance, the Italian concept of a ‘spoon dessert’ (a dessert that you eat with a spoon) sounded clumsy in English and wouldn’t be immediately recognisable for English-speaking clients. I turned this into ‘fresh specialty desserts’, which neatly explained the type of desserts the company produces without sounding like they had invented a new dessert category.
The tone of voice guidelines drawn up with the Italian copywriter meant I had a framework and could easily adapt into English.