A catalog in two languages: how to translate product pages for another country

Translating is not rewriting

When a store starts selling in another language, the temptation is to write each product page again: another writer, another tool, another text. The result is two catalogs that say different things about the same product. A dimension that changed in one language and not the other, a benefit that only appears in English, a warning lost in translation.

The safest way is to translate the approved record from the primary language. That way the version in the other language says the same thing, and reviewing it means comparing two texts that should match, not evaluating a new one.

What gets translated and what is copied as is

Not everything in a product record is text to translate:

• Translated: the commercial name, descriptions, bullet points, search metadata and FAQs.
• Copied as is: SKU, GTIN, brand names and proper names.
• Reviewed carefully: units and sizes, because some markets use another system; and technical terms, which sometimes stay in the original language.

A good translation workflow knows which fields are text and which are data, and never translates a code or a brand.

The words another market searches with

Translating well is not just changing language: it is using the words buyers in that market search with. The same product can have a different name in each country. Before translating a large catalog, check how competitors and channels in that market name the products, and adjust the brand voice for that language.

What Google asks for

For a search engine to show the right version to each person, Google asks for two things:

1. One URL per language. Don't change the language of the same page based on a cookie or the visitor's location.
2. Reference the versions to each other, with hreflang tags, so Google knows the Spanish page and the English page are the same content.

If your store publishes in several languages, these two pieces depend on the store platform; what does depend on the catalog is having each version complete and ready.

Keeping languages in sync

The real problem of a bilingual catalog is not the first translation, it is the second: when the original record changes, who remembers to update the translation? That is why each translation should know which version it came from, so you can detect when it falls behind.

Common mistakes

• Translating the brand or the model name. A proper name stays the same in every language.
• Translating without converting. “12 inches” translated is still a measurement the other market may not use.
• Leaving out the metadata. The search title and description get translated too; otherwise the page presents itself in the wrong language.
• Mixing languages on the same page. A description in English with bullet points in Spanish confuses both buyers and search engines.

How Bruxel handles it

In Bruxel a product record published in the primary language is translated into your organization's other languages —Spanish, English, French and Portuguese— instead of being generated again. Text is translated and codes and proper names are copied as they are. The translation enters the history as one more version, with its origin noted, and each language can be edited by hand separately. The translation guide explains it, and the catalog in two languages use case shows how to send each language to its channel.

Where to start

Start with the products that sell the most and would gain the most in the new market. Check that their record in the primary language is complete and approved, translate them, and ask someone who speaks the language to review a sample before publishing everything. That sample lets you tune the brand voice for that language, and the rest of the catalog comes out with fewer corrections.