Bilingual corporate websites: From translation to transcreation?

Abstract

As an increasing number of companies see the world as their marketplace, bilingual and/or multilingual websites are becoming increasingly common, and the demand for translations in this domain is growing. Corporate websites are multimodal, and verbal messages, images, layout and sometimes animations and sound interact to create the rhetoric on the site. With web texts being instantly available to readers anywhere, the translator's role as a cultural mediator attains a special significance as the texts may be accessed by a diverse audience with a multifaceted cultural background. A concept might be best expressed by a verbal text in one language and by an image in another. The question that then arises is: what are the translator's responsibilities in this situation? How should the translator take account of multiple semiotic resources? New situations may require new approaches and concepts. It is argued that a shift in emphasis from 'translation' to 'transcreation' will broaden perspectives with respect to both translations and translation research.