Transcreation Case Study – Fair Ferry Website
Karel de Boer – Dutch founder of Fair Ferry, an Amsterdam-based start-up offering sustainable sailing trips across the North Sea and Baltic – wanted to reach English- and German-speaking customers and decided to hire a British/German translator team to localize its website.
About Fair Ferry
Karel de Boer loves sailing, he loves sustainability, and he loves to create new businesses! During one of his sailing trips, he sadly contemplated why we no longer used sailing ships – powered by the wind – as a means of transport. And thus, Fair Ferry was born.
He now offers sustainable ferry services by sailing ship between Rotterdam and London, up and down the Dutch coast, along the German coast from Kiel to Stralsund, and across the Baltic into Scandinavia. His most ambitious plan is to sail from Rotterdam to New York and back!
Challenge
Having launched its Dutch website, Fair Ferry also wanted to tap into a larger pool of British and German customers, especially for its sailing trips to London and around the Baltic.
Its busy founder Karel de Boer was, therefore, looking for a translation vendor to handle and oversee the English and German localization of its website, without having to project-manage this himself.
Solution
Karel got in touch with British translator and copywriter Jamie Lingwood via LinkedIn, who, in turn, asked Silvia Schulz from Win With Words – that's me – to help with the German part of the project. The team discussed the scope of the project at Karel’s offices in a former shipyard in Amsterdam.
Instead of a simple translation of the website, we offered a creative approach called transcreation to create English and German website copy that reads like an original and is appealing and attractive for the intended audiences. Karel also opted for our two-pairs-of-eyes approach, which meant that the English and German translations were double-checked and edited by another set of native English and German translators respectively – a widely accepted practice in the localization industry.
To simplify the process for the client, we also took care of all the project management on Karel's behalf.
Our workflow
1) Receipt of Dutch website copy from client
2) Transcreation into English and German
3) Editing by second pair of native English and German linguists
4) Delivery of translation to client
5) Creation of English and German Fair Ferry website by client’s web designer
6) Proofreading (final check and revision) of English and German copy, online
7) Launch of English and German websites
Results
Fair Ferry now markets their sailing trips to English- and German-speaking customers through its multilingual website. Customers can book a tour, send an inquiry, and find all the information they need in their preferred language, making it more appealing to overseas tourists and expanding Fair Ferry’s business into several new markets.
Advantages of working with an independent translator team
Hiring an independent translator team entails working with a tight-knit group of localization professionals and handing over project management to them, too. You get the job done without having to get involved in the nitty-gritty details and endless email exchanges. What’s more, you benefit directly from the translators’ expertise without the involvement of a go-between, such as a translation agency.
This becomes particularly beneficial for longer-term partnerships because your fixed team of translators already knows your brand and its style and tone of voice. There’s never a guarantee the same translators will work on your copy again when using a translation agency.
So, if you’re a small- or medium-sized company looking for a translation vendor for a limited number of languages, consider hiring a small team of professionals who are used to collaborating closely on this sort of project.