The Importance of Packaging Translation
Imagine if you were shopping, scouring the shelves in your home town or city, only to see products you couldn’t identify and information you couldn’t understand, as the packaging didn’t feature your language. It’d be highly unusual, right?
Thankfully, organisations involved in global trade use translation services like ours to ensure this doesn’t happen.
All goods packaged for sale overseas require accurate packaging translation, to ensure the packaging’s copy and product information can be understood by consumers in different territories, and to help facilitate and drive global sales.
But this only scrapes the surface of its importance.
4 Reasons Why Packaging Translation Services Are So Important
Though we could expand further, we believe the following points encompass the importance of translating your packaging content, and of services like ours.
- Packaging translation services can be the difference between customers in different territories putting your product in their basket (because they can understand the packaging content), or back on the shelf (in confusion). In short, agencies like Andiamo! can help position you as a reputable international brand.
- Translating your packaging content fundamentally facilitates global trade, as without it your products can only be sold to customers who speak the same language as you.
- Ensuring that your packaging’s product descriptions, information, and country of origin are accurately translated can be the key to entry into some territories, as countries have different packaging regulations that businesses are required to meet.
- Product packaging content serves a marketing and branding function, as it often features product benefits and brand or product slogans. Accurate packaging translation services are essential to communicating your marketing messaging, building brand loyalty, and maximising repeat sales across international territories.
The Challenges of Packaging Translation
With a team of skilled and experienced translators at our disposal, at Andiamo, the main challenges of packaging translation pertain to space.
Packaging usually requires multilingual translations, and can often feature around 6 or more different languages. It can be challenging to fit this many different translations in a space usually designed for text in a single source language. Besides typesetting, which we tackle below, transcreation is the key to creating more concise translations that are accurate and more space-appropriate.
Translation specialists are cultural specialists. Use your chosen LSP’s understanding of global cultures to not only create translations that are culturally appropriate for the territory, but to help you to select the most suitable imagery for your packaging.
The Role of Typesetting for Packaging Projects
It’s important to consider translation when setting up your packaging artwork, to ensure you allow space for the translated copy in a clear and legible font size.
Where multiple languages appear on the package, you should use a marker to distinguish between them, such as a country code, language code or flag. Be sure to maintain the same order of languages across the packaging, and ensure your design factors in right to left languages (if appropriate) and the depth of text required when featuring multiple languages.
At Andiamo, we can tackle your typesetting to offer a complete packaging translation service. We always advise that packaging clients use professional typesetting services, as it’s incredibly easy to make linguistic mistakes (that can be very expensive to rectify) when managing this yourself.
The Role of Localisation in Packaging Translation
Localisation ensures that your translated packaging content is accurate and culturally appropriate in the territory you’re selling to – something that is often not possible with word-for-word translations.
It’s important that your translator considers the culture of the target audience, the style and tone of the original source text, the age group the product is targeted to, and the packaging space available to create localised packaging translations that connect with your international customer bases.
The role of localisation also extends to imagery, which must be culturally appropriate for the region it is sold in. This is especially pertinent when targeting regions which have different religious or sociocultural values.
Professional Services vs Automated Solutions
The accuracy of your packaging translation is essential, which is why professional translation services are so valuable to organisations selling products internationally.
We’ve spoken to many organisations at fairs, exhibitions, and conventions dedicated to trade across specific sectors, who use automated solutions and have been shocked at the poor, almost laughable, quality of the output.
Needless to say, free AI and automated translation solutions have a long way to go before they can rival professional packaging translation services like ours, which span human translation services, and machine translation. Even our machine translation service, used for non-creative texts, is a hybrid solution that always involves a skilled human translator. Be sure to invest in trusted human services for your packaging projects.
Contact our team today to discuss your packaging requirements and learn more about how Andiamo! can support your product’s global success.