Meet the Team

Meet our team member: Editor and Lead Project Coordinator Sara Marcial

Get to know our lead editor for Latin America who oversees localization projects for several types of digital media.

The Co.Cue Team · May 4, 2026

In our latest team member profile, we introduce you to Sara Marcial, our lead editor for Latin America and one of our project coordinators, who fell in love with translation as a teen.

While technology has certainly made translation faster, we know the value of the human element. It takes a real expert — a real person — to dive into a piece of copy, taking it apart and examining its context and meaning to provide the best localization for the chosen market. Most languages have multiple variations, depending on the country or region, and a professional translator knows how to navigate those nuances with authenticity and without compromising on quality.

Someone who fits this description to a tee is Sara Marcial, who joined Company Cue five years ago as a Spanish translator for the Mexican and Latin American markets. Today, thanks to her versatility and attention to detail, Sara leads our team for this region, overseeing localization projects related to video games, podcasts, apps, music, and more.

Keep reading to learn more about Sara, her work with Co.Cue, what language she's currently studying, and the challenges and rewards of working in localization.

When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

When I was a young girl, I wanted to be a doctor and a secret agent, because I loved spy movies! A little later, thanks to a project I did in high school, I decided I wanted to become a translator. As soon as I made up my mind, I saved some money and bought as many secondhand books on linguistics as I could!

What is your Co.Cue story?

Natalya, who's currently our director of operations, reached out to me in the summer of 2021. The company was looking for someone to join an exciting project that was expanding its reach into Mexican Spanish and Latin America. My main focus was going to be apps and video games, and it sounded like a great match since I love video games and technology/programming stuff. I joined the freelancer team and we happily grew the project until I became the LatAm lead editor. Now I was collaborating with incredible experts across different types of content (podcasts, music, books, and movies) and, around 2023, I got invited to start training as a project coordinator. These new responsibilities tickled my brain in all the right ways, and I was now collaborating with even more awesome people across different timezones!

What are your favorite subjects or areas of expertise?

Video games as a medium of storytelling, software, and process optimization. I sometimes struggle when working with numbers (they mysteriously shift around in my typing and writing) so I try to find ways to make sure that side of work is handled by scripts or automations as much as possible.

Through my work with Co.Cue, I've closely collaborated with music experts in lots of content and I now have a much deeper appreciation of this area of expertise. Inspired by my teammates' passion for their craft, I've now attended many more concerts and listened to tons of new artists and genres!

What have you been working on lately?

For the last few months I've been working on perfecting my Japanese calligraphy. My Japanese teacher is very focused on making sure shodō is an integral part of my language learning experience through daily practice, and it also makes for great meditation and introspection time.

During my free time, I've also been collecting all of the achievements for a recently released Souls-like Metroidvania game.

What are the main challenges of working in localization?

Fully understanding the purpose of the content. Going beyond the text itself and its nuances, and identifying its place within the original and target contexts. How is it connected to the brand/service/market in general? How should it be perceived? Does this approach hit the right tone across borders? Do we need to go even further and re-evaluate distribution, timing of release, images? Is the content medium flexible enough to accommodate all of the changes that are needed? Having a clear picture of the content goals helps us craft the right localization from the very beginning.

What do you love most about the work you do?

There's never a dull moment! I learn something new every day, either through the content itself or through the collaboration with my teammates. There's new challenges all of the time, and tackling them as a team is always refreshing and interesting.

What sets Co.Cue apart?

Its human-centered approach to everything. This is deeply intertwined with how projects, quality, clients, and freelancers are treated.

What does your ideal day look like in a city you love?

It would start as early as possible, since there's nothing quite like a super long day if you can do anything you want, and a hearty breakfast. Then wandering around walking until me and my family find an interesting activity to do. Here in my hometown, Xalapa, there's always something going on: open-air concerts, food fairs, book fairs, art exhibitions. Visiting any of the many tree-filled parks in the city would be the icing on the cake.

What is your most treasured possession?

A key! When I was about to finish primary school, my family decided I was trustworthy enough to have my own key to open the gate to our home. Throughout the years, I've added and removed keys from my keychain as needed: I moved to different apartments; I got married; we updated my mom's front door lock. But I've always kept (and have never lost) that one key that opened the gate to my childhood home.

When and where are you the happiest?

Anywhere near lush green vegetation and hills or mountains. Even better if I'm leisurely walking around, taking in the views.

What's the best piece of professional advice you've ever received?

Embrace change.

What's the best piece of personal advice you've ever received?

Sometimes all it takes is a leap of faith.

LOCALIZATION 101

Translation, Localization, Transcreation: Three Words, Three Different Jobs

If you have ever wondered why one quote lists "localization" and another lists "transcreation," here is the difference — and why it matters for your project.

The Co.Cue Team · May 4, 2026

A brand brief lands on our desk asking for "translation into Spanish." Easy enough — until we open the deck. The headline is a pun built on an English idiom, and the body copy assumes a reader who has watched a specific late-night show. Translated word-for-word, it lands flat in São Paulo or Mexico City. What this client actually needs is not translation. It is transcreation. And the gap between those two words is the gap between a campaign that travels and one that does not.

The three terms get used interchangeably in a lot of the briefs we receive, and most of the time the difference does not matter much — until it does. Here is how we think about each of them, and when we recommend which.

Translation is the narrowest of the three. Source language in, target language out, faithful to meaning. It is the right tool for content where accuracy is the whole job: legal language, technical documentation, product specs, anything where the reader needs to know exactly what the original said. Translation is not glamorous. It is essential.

Localization is translation plus everything around the words. Date formats, currency, units of measure, regional variants of a language (Mexican Spanish is not Castilian Spanish is not Argentine Spanish), images and color choices that read differently in different markets, references that do not survive a border crossing. A user manual translated for the German market is translation. A user manual localized for the German market is the version a German user can actually use. The distinction matters most for product, UX, and long-form content that is going to live in someone else’s hands for a long time.

Transcreation is what we reach for when the source content is a creative artifact — when it is doing more than communicating information. Slogans, ad copy, brand campaigns, tone-driven editorial: any piece where the words are inseparable from the feeling. Transcreation gives us permission to walk away from the literal source and re-create the intent in the target language. Sometimes the result barely resembles the original on the page. That is the point. The job is to land the same emotional beat in a reader who has different cultural reference points.

Most real projects need more than one of these. A product launch in Brazil might call for translation on the legal copy, localization on the website, and transcreation on the campaign tagline — all at once, all consistent. Part of our job is figuring out which lever to pull where. The answer comes from the content itself, in context.

If you are sitting on a brief and unsure which of the three (or which combination) it actually needs, that is a good conversation to have early. We would rather scope the work to the content than the other way around.