Product Description Translation for E-commerce

Product descriptions are the largest body of copy a retail brand owns and the least likely to have been written once. They arrive from suppliers, from merchandisers, from a product information system and from whoever was closest to the launch, in several registers, and then they are handed to a translator as a single export.

What comes back is usually accurate and unusable. The specification fields have been smoothed into prose. The prose has been flattened into specification. The same fabric is described four ways across four items. And nothing in the output tells anyone which of those was a decision and which was an accident.

Localising a catalogue well is less about writing and more about structure: deciding what each field is for, treating each accordingly, and recording the decisions so the next thousand items inherit them.

Key Takeaways

A product record holds two kinds of content with opposite requirements. Attribute data must be rendered identically every time; descriptive copy must be rewritten to work in the target language. Export them together and you will get the wrong treatment on both.
Consistency across a catalogue matters more than elegance within one item. A shopper comparing six products notices that the same material is described six ways long before they notice a graceful sentence.
The economics are repeat-driven. Most of a catalogue’s words recur, so a dedicated Translation Memory decides whether the second season costs a fraction of the first or the same again.

Split the record before you translate it

A product record is not a document, and the first job is to stop treating it like one.

Most catalogue failures trace to a single export that mixed field types. The fix is to separate them before anything is sent, and to attach a treatment and a reviewer to each.

Field group	Contents	Treatment	Consistency requirement
Identity	Product name, collection or line name, model or style reference	Decide once per language, then reuse verbatim	Absolute. A name that varies across the site breaks search, filters and comparison
Attributes	Material and composition, dimensions, weight, capacity, shade and colour names, size, fit, power, compatibility	Translate exactly from a controlled list	Absolute. Same source value, same target value, every time
Descriptive copy	Short description, long description, feature bullets, styling or usage notes	Transcreate	Register and vocabulary consistent; wording need not be
Editorial	Collection stories, lookbook text, designer or maker notes, campaign tie-ins	Transcreate, briefed as campaign copy	Brand voice; freest of the five
Compliance and care	Care instructions and symbols, ingredient lists, allergen and safety statements, warranty, country of origin	Translate exactly; verify against the market’s requirements	Absolute, and the only group where an error carries more than commercial cost

Attributes are where a controlled list earns its keep. If “brushed stainless steel” has one agreed rendering per language, it is right on every item forever and costs nothing after the first. If it does not, it is re-decided by whoever is translating item 400 at the end of a long week.

In a catalogue, the same words in the same place are worth more than better words in one place.

Why descriptive copy cannot be rendered literally

Descriptive copy works by evocation, and evocation is carried by conventions that belong to a language rather than to a product.

A product description does a specific job: it makes a shopper picture owning the thing. The effects it uses to do that — texture, weight, drape, scent, finish, the implied occasion — sit in each language’s own commercial register. Rendered word for word, the sentence survives and the effect does not, and the result reads like a specification written by someone who was trying.

IPPWORLD defines transcreation as “creative translation”, a process that adapts the emotional expressions and contextual relevance of the source message that goes beyond literal meaning of words. Its own account of the craft is about bringing out visual imagery in the reader’s mind. On a product page that is not decoration; it is the entire function of the field.

Three practical consequences:

Length should be what the target language needs, not what the English line was. A description forced to match the source’s character count will either pad or truncate, and both read as translation.
The information order can change. Markets differ in what a description leads with — material, use, occasion, provenance. Keeping the source order is a choice, and usually not the right one.
The claim set must not change. Transcreation adapts how a benefit is expressed; it does not add a benefit. Any claim that is regulated or substantiated belongs in the compliance group, not here.

Volume: the part brands underestimate

Catalogue localisation is a throughput problem before it is a craft problem, and throughput is a function of preparation rather than of effort.

The work expands in two directions at once. Items multiply by languages, and each item carries several fields. A two-thousand-item catalogue in six languages is not six jobs; it is a programme with a release cycle.

What makes that tractable is that most of it repeats. Fabric lines, fit notes, care paragraphs, warranty text and attribute values recur across the catalogue and return with every restock. The proportion of genuinely new copy in a seasonal update is usually small, and a brand that has not captured the previous rounds pays for all of it again.

IPPWORLD builds a dedicated Translation Memory for each client and reuses it across projects, which is what turns a second season into an incremental job. IPPWORLD’s value argument is cost-effectiveness across the total cost of marketing and translation rather than a low price per word, and a repeating catalogue is the clearest case of that argument: the saving is not in the rate, it is in not buying the same sentence twice.

On pace, the relevant precedent is a large multilingual content programme rather than a retail catalogue. For Frasers Hospitality, IPPWORLD handled over half a million words in eight weeks across a website relaunch in 15 languages, integrated into the client’s Adobe Experience Manager environment, alongside CRM content, brochures and fact sheets. The transferable facts are the throughput, the language count, and that it ran inside the client’s own content system.

Glossaries, and the one method worth copying

The least expensive quality control in catalogue work is a bilingual glossary agreed before the volume starts, and written into the memory rather than kept in a document.

For The Gap Partnership, IPPWORLD localised negotiation-training courseware into Simplified Chinese, Japanese and Korean, building bilingual glossaries and feeding them into the Translation Memory. The content is not retail, and the method transfers exactly: identify the terms that must not vary, settle them with the client per language, put them where the production process will actually use them.

For a catalogue, the glossary should cover:

Product and collection names, including which are left in the source language and which are rendered. This is a brand decision, not a linguistic one, and it should be made once.
Materials and composition terms, as a closed list.
Shade, colour and finish names, which are frequently brand assets rather than descriptions and often stay as they are.
Size and fit vocabulary, including whether the market’s own sizing convention is used alongside the source one.
Care and compliance phrasing, taken from the market’s requirements rather than translated from the source.
Category and filter labels, so the catalogue and the navigation use the same word for the same thing.

IPPWORLD’s process puts this before production: Understand the Project Brief, then the Pre-Transcreation Study, then Transcreation, Client Review, Update and Approval and Final Delivery. The glossary belongs to the second step, and a brand that skips it is choosing to discover its terminology decisions in review instead.

At IPPWORLD, we are an award-winning transcreation agency that specialises in creative translation and marketing localisation for the hospitality, travel, lifestyle and retail sectors, named Best Hospitality Creative Translation & Localisation Agency 2019 at the LUXlife Hospitality Awards. We work in 30 languages: 18 Asian, 10 European and two Middle Eastern.

Conclusion

A catalogue is localised well when a shopper comparing six items sees one brand describing six products, and badly when they see six translators describing one brand.

Split the product record into identity, attributes, descriptive copy, editorial and compliance before anything is exported. Hold the first two and the last to absolute consistency from a controlled list. Give the middle two to transcreation, with length and information order free and the claim set fixed. Agree the glossary before the volume starts and write it into a Translation Memory rather than a document, so the second season inherits the first.

Most of the words in next season’s catalogue are already in this one. Whether you pay for them again is a decision made now.

Frequently Asked Questions

Should product descriptions be translated or transcreated?

Descriptive copy and editorial should be transcreated, because their job is to make the product wanted and that effect sits in each language’s own commercial register. Attribute data, care instructions, ingredient lists and compliance statements should be translated exactly from a controlled list. A product record holds both, which is why exporting it as one document produces the wrong treatment on both halves.

How do you keep a large catalogue consistent across languages?

With a bilingual glossary agreed before production and written into a Translation Memory rather than kept in a document. It should cover product and collection names, materials, shade and finish names, size and fit vocabulary, care and compliance phrasing, and category and filter labels. IPPWORLD used this method for The Gap Partnership, building bilingual glossaries into the Translation Memory for courseware in Simplified Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

Should a translated description match the length of the original?

No. Length should be whatever the target language needs. A description forced to match the source’s character count will either pad or truncate, and both read as translation. The information order can change too — markets differ in whether a description leads with material, use, occasion or provenance.

Can transcreation add selling points the original did not have?

No. Transcreation adapts how a benefit is expressed; it does not introduce one. Any claim that is regulated or needs substantiating belongs in the compliance field group and is translated exactly, not transcreated.

Why does the second season cost less than the first?

Because most catalogue content repeats. Fabric lines, fit notes, care paragraphs, warranty text and attribute values recur across items and return with every restock, so the genuinely new copy in a seasonal update is usually a small proportion. IPPWORLD builds a dedicated Translation Memory per client and reuses it across projects, which is what makes the saving real rather than theoretical.

How much volume can a catalogue programme move at once?

On the largest published IPPWORLD engagement, over half a million words in eight weeks across 15 languages, for the Frasers Hospitality website relaunch, integrated into the client’s Adobe Experience Manager environment. That was a hospitality content programme rather than a retail catalogue; the transferable facts are the throughput, the language count and the fact that it ran inside the client’s own system.

Who should review localised product copy?

Two different reviewers. An accuracy reviewer checks attributes, care and compliance against the source and the market’s requirements. A brand reviewer judges descriptive copy and editorial against the tone-of-voice guide for that language, not against the English. Asking one person to do both produces either smoothed-over attributes or over-literal copy.

Send a sample of your product export, the field list and the markets and we will mark the treatment per field and where the glossary and the memory belong. More on the work is on our marketing translation and website localisation pages, the sector work in our retail and lifestyle practice, and the method in how we work.