GOL Airlines / Smiles — Complete multilingual adaptation of Brazil’s largest loyalty program for the Argentine market

The Challenge

GOL Airlines is Brazil’s largest domestic carrier and one of the biggest in Latin America. Their Smiles loyalty program is one of the most widely used airline loyalty programs in the region. When GOL decided to expand Smiles into the Argentine market, they needed more than a straightforward translation — they needed a complete cultural and linguistic adaptation of the entire program into Argentine Spanish.

The scope was enormous. The Smiles program covers dozens of distinct customer touchpoints: the main program pages (categories, membership tiers like Diamante, Ouro, Prata), partner programs (Club Wine, airline partners), transactional pages (buy miles, transfer miles, reactivate miles, redeem miles), booking flows (complex multi-step processes with baggage rules, cancellation policies, no-show rules, car rental, insurance), credit card program pages, and all supporting legal documentation including the full Smiles Fidelidade regulations.

Our Approach

Project Scoping and Team Assembly. We assembled a team of specialized translators, each assigned to their area of expertise. The project ran from late 2017 through February 2018, with deliveries tracked weekly by translator, section, word count, and delivery date.

Cultural Adaptation Strategy. Argentine Spanish differs significantly from neutral Latin American Spanish — the voseo (vos instead of tú), different vocabulary for everyday terms, and distinct formal/informal registers. This wasn’t a generic Latin American translation; it was a localization for the Argentine market with local terminology and cultural expectations. Financial and legal terminology needed to be precise and locally compliant.

Terminology Consistency and QA. Booking flow copy needed to match exactly with the UI elements in GOL’s existing platform. We maintained a shared glossary of Smiles-specific terms (Portuguese original, Argentine Spanish equivalent, and usage notes) that all translators referenced. With four translators working simultaneously across different sections, terminology consistency was the biggest risk. That glossary approach has since become standard practice for all our localization projects.

Phased Delivery and Weekly Tracking. Content was delivered in weekly batches, each tracked by translator and section. Every batch went through translation, review, and QA before delivery to GOL. The Smiles regulations document alone was a major legal translation requiring compliance review.

Project Scope & Coverage

The translation covered:

• Program structure pages (Programa Smiles, Categorías, Privilegios)
• All membership tier pages (Diamante, Ouro, Prata)
• Transaction flows (Comprar Milhas, Transferir Milhas, Reactivar Milhas)
• Booking engine pages (multi-part packages covering baggage, insurance, car rental, cancellation, no-show, history)
• Partner pages (Club Wine, Indicar Amigos/Refer a Friend, Viaje Fácil)
• Credit card program pages
• Email marketing templates (Milhas do Bem)
• Legal documents (Regulamento Programa Smiles, Requalificação de Milhas)

The Results

Every customer-facing element of the Smiles program was delivered in Argentine Spanish, ready for deployment. The translations were production-ready and maintained consistency across all touchpoints — a user reading about Diamante tier membership and then booking a flight would encounter the same terminology and tone throughout. Key outcomes:

• 50,000+ words translated and culturally adapted for Argentine market
• All six major program sections fully localized (loyalty tiers, booking, partners, legal, credit cards, marketing)
• Full cultural adaptation using Argentine Spanish (voseo, local terminology, legal compliance)
• Terminology consistency across all touchpoints maintained through shared glossary approach
• Weekly delivery schedule from late 2017 through February 2018
• Production-ready translations with integrated QA and compliance review

What We Learned

This project demonstrated that multilingual content work for large brands requires both linguistic expertise and project management discipline. With four translators working simultaneously across different sections, terminology consistency was the biggest risk. The shared glossary approach — documenting the Portuguese original, the Argentine Spanish equivalent, and usage notes for every Smiles-specific term — solved this problem and has since become standard practice for all our localization projects.

The GOL/Smiles project also taught us that Argentine Spanish localization is a distinct discipline. A generic “Spanish” translation would have felt off to Argentine readers. The voseo, the local vocabulary, and the specific formal register expected in financial and legal content all need to be handled by translators who understand the Argentine market natively. This experience directly informed the multilingual campaigns we later built for LCR Capital and other clients targeting Latin American markets.