Multicultural is mainstream
Head of Think HQ’s CultureVerse, Jessica Billimoria asks: Can we make messages that every Australian, no matter their language or background, can not only understand, but be changed by?
Can a truly great campaign ever resonate with everyone?
When creative is so tightly wound to the experience of the creator, can we make messages that every Australian, no matter their language or background, can not only understand, but be changed by?
We can. By embracing transcreation.
With the last Census underlining just how diverse we are – 51% of Australians were born overseas, for example – multicultural is now mainstream in this country.
For brands, government departments and changemakers of all types, ensuring your campaigns include and represent everyone is no longer a nice to have. It’s a must.
We convened a recent Transcreation Forum for two reasons. Firstly, to bring translators, communicators, and industry leaders together to share their insights on the future of inclusive communications in Australia.
Secondly, we wanted to say a big thanks to all the translators and community leaders we’ve been working with throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
They’ve been in the trenches with us through the pandemic, often working through the night to get materials out to their communities so they could make the best decisions to protect their themselves and their families.
But, given the nature of a translator’s work – irregular and remote – we’ve not had the opportunity to meet face-to-face. We wanted to break bread in person and set the stage for the next steps.
Through this period, huge capacity has been built across the sector to get information rapidly translated, checked, and distributed to Victoria’s multitude of multicultural communities. Now’s the time to capitalise on those gains and bring everything we’ve learned into day-to-day business.
We learned a lot at the forum. Here’s what communicators and marketers can take away from the experience:
Go beyond transactional relationships
Too often, communications processes are extractive. An agency or organisation comes along, holds a workshop to ask a community what they think, then leaves. They never return to explain how that insight was put into practice. They hear nothing until the communicator, organisation or department needs them again.
That bleeds trust and leads to audiences feeling outraged and exploited.
(It’s also a natural way for agencies to work with the resources at hand!)
There are ways to start engaging audiences more authentically. Step one is to recognise this is a journey we’ll all be on forever – inclusion cannot be mastered, and we’re no experts.) Doing so not only mitigates risk but unlocks the potential of audiences as allies and champions. Reciprocal relationships build trust and capacity. By making translators and leaders feel like part of the team and looking for any opportunity to engage them on a paid basis, we’ve noticed they’re ever more willing to get involved and provide advice and support – they’re coming to us with recommendations and offers to help.
Transcreation is a creative practice
To make a message clear to everyone, it is often boiled down to its most basic form, because it’s the in-jokes, jargon and plays on words that are most likely to get literally lost in translation. That smirk of recognition you get from a good reference, joke, or line? That depends on your references, background, and cultural context.
This straight bat chat works for emergency information, but not for the kind of creative, culture-shaking campaigns that shift behaviour and change beliefs. (At best, a straight translation of a quippy campaign will make sense but fall flat. At worst, it could be incomprehensible or even offensive.)
Transcreation is different. It’s the practice of taking a campaign insight, truth, or platform, and remapping it across the context of the audience. As the communicator, you may end up with creative and messages that are unrecognisable from what you started with. By stepping up from translating campaigns to transcreating them, and working alongside communities rather than deciding for them, we can keep the creative, well, creative.
Reimagine translator roles
Translators are often engaged as service providers but should be considered more of a project consultant.
By engaging a translator simply to give you back your specific phrases in their language, you lose the opportunity for them to provide the deeper cultural insights that can make the material truly connect.
Similarly, community leaders are typically deeply embedded in the networks their communities go to for information and advice. These are not channels to buy. They’re relationships to build.
Transcreation is nothing new, but it’s time really is now. It’s an exciting, efficient investment in reaching more of your market and the communities in which we all live.
Jessica Billimoria is the head of Think HQ’s CultureVerse.
Sorry to say this, but Para 4 stood out like the proverbial. Woof, woof.
“With the last Census underlining just how diverse we are – 51% of Australians were born overseas, for example – multicultural is now mainstream in this country.”
Well, not quite what the ABS Census says. The 2021 ERP (Estimated Residential Populations) reported that 70.9% of residents were born in Australia (i.e. 29.1% born overseas).
Link … https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/australias-population-country-birth/latest-release
The closest I could find to the “51% born overseas” was from this ABS summary … “The 2021 Census found that almost half of Australians have a parent born overseas (48.2 per cent) and the population continues to be drawn from around the globe, with 27.6 per cent reporting a birthplace overseas.
Link … https://www.abs.gov.au/media-centre/media-releases/2021-census-nearly-half-australians-have-parent-born-overseas
The claim should be that about half of the Australian population has at least one parent born overseas – a very different thing.
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