Valentina's case study:

Valentina has worked with Allbirds since June of 2021.

How have I helped them?

• Picking the right tone of voice to
  attract their Italian target audience.

• Researching sustainability and
  manufacturing terminology to nail
  the more technical translations.

• QA check the final Italian website
  to spot typos, inconsistencies,
  graphic issues.

Eva's case study:

I've worked for Allbirds since January of 2020 and have worked on multiple website, campaign, and marketing translations.

Here are some examples:

Holiday campaign:

Towards the end of 2020, I was working on the Allbirds holiday campaign. I encountered two challenges along the way. Firstly, the US-based company wanted to remain religiously neutral, i.e. celebrating the holidays, rather than Christmas. This is very important in the US since so many people of different cultures live together there. In Germany, it’s not as common to wish “Happy Holidays” as it is in the US, but we decided to say “holidays” in German too in order to include people of other religions and cultures.

The second challenge was that the holidays are often very cultural. The English text, for example, mentioned things like stockings. Originally, I wanted to replace stockings with the German “Nikolausstiefel”, the boots that children put out for Saint Nicholas to fill with gifts in the night, however, due to the decision to have a non-religious campaign, I opted for “extra little presents” instead. Below are a few transcreation examples from the campaign.

Website transcreation:

Prior to me working with them, Allbirds already had a German website. But it had been translated by an agency and not much attention had been given to maintaining the tone of voice, the many puns/wordplays and the general effect of Allbirds' marketing communication. So I came in to retranslate the website and make it sound more natural.

Allbirds uses a lot of puns and wordplays in its communication. These had not always been translated well on the old website (click to see the screenshots of the old translation). Here are some before/after pictures of the enhanced translations, the English original and a transcreation of one of Allbirds' campaign slogans.