Location: Berlin, Germany
Sector: E-commerce / beauty
Project: Post-editing machine-translated product descriptions
Language(s): German > UK English
Client
Our client is one of Europe’s leading online retailers who specialises in selling fashion and beauty products. The company was founded in Berlin and now serves around 25 European markets. In 2023, our client was estimated to have around 50 million active users with a revenue of over 10 billion euros, making it one of the most successful multi-brand fashion/beauty retailers in Europe.
Localising their website’s descriptions for hair, skin and makeup products from German into UK English was essential for our client to:
- Boost their sales in the UK
- Increase consumer trust
- Avoid confusing UK customers with incorrect translations or US versions of beauty and fashion vocabulary
- Improve their search engine rankings for UK-specific searches and drive more organic traffic to their website
Challenge / Solution
Our task was to post-edit around 60,000 words of beauty product descriptions to appear on our client’s website. The content had already been machine translated and it was our task to ensure that the output was accurately localised, consistent and in line with the client’s various stylistic requirements.
A number of reference documents were provided detailing the client’s preferences in relation to terminology, style and tone of voice. Due to the volume of the project and the tight deadline, a small team of specialist translators was selected for their vast experience in post-editing and localising e-commerce content to work on the project simultaneously.
We quickly familiarised ourselves with around 20 reference documents to make sure that the final translations adhered to the client’s preferred terminology and tone of voice. As the descriptions involved products from other retailers that our client would be selling as a third party on their website, we also had to adapt the texts to make sure they didn’t read as if our client had manufactured the products themselves. This involved an element of copy writing and required great attention to detail to spot anything that needed changing, as the machine translation tool would not have been able to follow such an intricate instruction.
As the project was shared across a small team and to maintain consistency, we consulted with each other on the finer details such as the way we approached localising numbers and whether to write them out or use digits, for example.
Impact
Our client was highly impressed with our quick turnaround of their project and they commended us for our attention to detail and strict adherence to the client's stylistic requirements.
Implementing properly localised UK English content on their website will have significant business impact for our client, including:
- Revenue growth: UK customers who encounter familiar terminology, sizing information and cultural references when it comes to fashion and beauty products are more likely to complete their online purchases and return for repeat orders.
- Strengthened market positioning against UK competitors: Localised content will place our client firmly among the top online retailers for UK consumers.
- SEO performance improvement: Accurate UK English terminology will improve our client’s organic search visibility, driving more targeted traffic to their website.
- Increased customer satisfaction: Effectively localised content will reduce customer service queries about sizing and product features, thus improving customer satisfaction and our client’s operational efficiency, reducing costs.
- Brand perception enhancement: Authentic UK English product descriptions will help our client to demonstrate cultural understanding and their commitment to the UK market, which will in turn strengthen brand perception and loyalty among British consumers.
Our team thoroughly enjoyed working on this machine translation post-editing project to help our client reach a broader UK audience thanks to effectively localised product descriptions on their website.
Get in touch with us today for a consultation on your website localisation strategy: info@ecls-translations.com.