Translations for cosmetics: 23 linguistic nuances for your makeup

INTRODUCTION:

A prestigious company Made in Italy, which has been working in the decorative cosmetics field for over 20 years, entrusted us with the multilingual translation of various product sheets for the launch of a new line.

THE CUSTOMER’S GOAL:

The goal of the customer, who already operate internationally, was to expand their market, enlarging their sales network with the launch of a new makeup collection.
Translations for cosmetics require the assistance of professionals, since they have to use particularly specific terminology and every product requires the translation of informational material into the language of the country where it is marketed. This is why the customer turned to us.

THE CUSTOMER’S REQUEST:

The request resulted in translation of the entire new line’s product sheets into 23 languages: English, French, German, Portuguese, Polish, Dutch, Russian, Arabic, Greek, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Estonian, Finnish, Swedish, Spanish, Czech, Slovak, Lithuanian, Slovene, Danish, Norwegian, Romanian and Latvian.

The customer highlighted the importance of absolute accuracy in the translation, and above all, compliance with European regulations regarding sector-specific terminology. To ensure full compliance with these regulations, it required an additional service to review the artwork − revision of the product preview and therefore of the formatted translation that was ready to print.

The translations had to be delivered in separate e-mails by language, specifying the name of the product and the target language in the subject heading.

PROJECT CHALLENGES:

The challenge of this multilingual translation was the process of selecting 23 qualified native translators, one per language, who all had a high level of experience in the cosmetics industry and could work with uniform timing. Such a diverse, widespread work group only works well with excellent organization and coordination by the project manager.

Additionally, the specific terminology requested by the customer and governed by European regulations for the cosmetics industry required the translators to be specially trained, and called for a meticulous subsequent check on the use of the specific vocabulary.

This was all done while finding the best way to meet the customer’s requests regarding the management of translated material.

SOLUTIONS ADOPTED:

Drawing on a network of cosmetics translators acquired over the course of more than 30 years in the field, we created a team with the 23 best qualified native speakers who could meet the delivery times. To manage the work group in a reasonable time frame and coordinated manner, our dedicated project manager planned the operations in advance, monitoring their progress with constant direct contact with both the translators and the customer for the whole duration of the project.

To comply with the precise terminological standards dictated and controlled by the European regulations for the industry, we relied on the expertise of our professionals, who are specialized in translation for cosmetics. Additionally, the material (regulations and glossaries in all 23 languages) provided to them before the start of the work was fundamental to supporting them in their task and to guaranteeing our customer translations that were perfectly in line with their requirements and international standards.

Finally, the artwork was reviewed by a team made up of translators and our own layout artists. This ensured that the translations contained no errors of any kind, whether in relation to terminology, typing or graphic design, as in the case of Arabic, for which it is necessary to reverse the printing direction.

Our dedicated project manager also set up a workflow specially structured around the customer’s needs, generating a stream of e-mails divided by languages in order to deliver the work in an orderly manner.

RESULT:

The customer was able to market their new product line in the target countries within the given time frame. Our fast, customized, high-quality cosmetics translation service enabled us to respect the launch times. The customer also recognized this advantage in their feedback:

“Excellent as always.
And enormous thanks for the speed.”