Got burned last month when translated briefs made creators misinterpret our skincare brand’s ‘minimalist’ ethos as ‘cheap’. Now I’m paranoid about auto-translate tools. For those coordinating multilingual campaigns: How do you maintain nuance? Do you back-translate? Hire human validators? Would love war stories about preventing these fails.
We use a three-step process: 1) AI translation 2) Bilingual community manager review 3) 24h ‘cooling period’ before final approval. Caught 83% of mistranslations last campaign. Time-consuming but worth avoiding brand disasters!
Created a glossary of untranslatable brand terms with cultural alternatives. Example: Our Finnish client’s concept of ‘sisu’ gets localized to ‘relentless optimism’ in English and ‘целеустремленность’ in Russian. Creators must use exact approved phrases.
I insist brands provide visual mood boards alongside translations. A picture of their ‘adventure’ aesthetic (rugged landscapes) versus competitors’ (cityscapes) helped me avoid a major tone misalignment in my German campaign.