Collaborate With Fashion Translators for Growing Internationally

Fashion is a constantly evolving industry that is not limited by any boundaries or cultures. Fashion brands are continuously seeking opportunities to expand their branches to different countries around the world. Serving customers from different cultures with diverse and unique aesthetics and values, fashion brands need more than just displaying their work.

They need creative communication that resonates with the target country’s culture and customers’ values. One important factor that contributes to the successful international growth of fashion brands is the involvement of professional fashion translators and creative translation.

In this blog post, we will discuss the important roles of fashion translation and how fashion translators contribute to the success of fashion global expansion.

1. Why is Fashion Translation More Than Just Words?

Fashion translation can be considered the most creatively challenging area of translation. Fashion translators’ job is to convert fashion-related content from one language to another. Fashion-related content involves product names, product descriptions, marketing materials, and social media posts. What makes the job of fashion translators challenging is that fashion is not just garments, but also the reflection of a culture, identity, and aesthetics.

In other words, fashion translators are required to retain the brand’s voice, artistic vision, values, and the intended message of products while adapting the tone and styles to evoke fresh emotions in the target audiences. Fashion translation involves a lot of cultural adaptation that ensures the messages are culturally appropriate to the audience in the target market, especially when the cultures of the source and target markets are significantly different.

People are no strangers to numerous case studies of failed localization efforts of world-famous fashion brands. Misunderstanding (and sometimes the ignorance) of the target market’s culture and values, together with mistranslation has resulted in backlash for many famous brands, costing them both financial damages and reputation.

2. Areas in Fashion Businesses that Require Specialized Translation

It is not exaggerating to say that all aspects of your fashion business should be properly translated and localized when you expand into a new market. Below are some main areas that you should pay extra attention to ensure a consistent and successful international presence.

• Product Descriptions: With the booming of online shopping, product descriptions on your website and social media play an important role in customers’ purchase decisions. This content needs to be accurately and attractively translated to encourage customers to buy and guarantee high customer satisfaction.
• Marketing Campaigns: Translating creative elements for a fashion marketing campaign is a challenging task for any fashion translator. The translation of slogans, taglines, and promotional content requires a balance between language clarity and cultural relevance.
• Website and e-Commerce Platforms: As mentioned, with the increasing popularity of online shopping, websites, and e-commerce platforms are important touchpoints for customers. A skilled fashion translation guarantees that your online content is not only linguistically accurate but also culturally interesting, promoting easy navigation and better conversions.
• Fashion Shows and Events: Adapting invitations, press releases, and event materials that are appropriate for international audiences demands fashion translators to have a thorough awareness of local cultures and fashion trends.
• Legal and Regulatory Documents: Fashion, like any other business, requires legal requirements to be met when entering a new market. A fashion translator with an understanding of the local legal nuances can help you with legal and regulatory documents such as agreements, contracts, environmental requirements, and more.

3. Qualities of an Expert Fashion Translator

A reliable fashion translator should have a combination of excellent linguistic skills, cultural sensitivity, and a deep passion and understanding of fashion trends in both markets. These are the prerequisites for fashion translators to be able to capture a brand’s personality and style while adjusting and adapting it to suit customers’ preferences in different countries.

As the fashion industry is fast-paced and evolving every day, fashion translators need to have good acumen to keep themselves updated with the latest fashion trends. This is to guarantee that their translations are relevant and aligned with the quick movements of the industry.

4. Evaluating Potential Fashion Translators

Selecting a suitable fashion translator for your brand is far from an easy task. Besides paying attention to basic requirements such as linguistic qualifications, portfolio, and expertise, you should look for fashion translators with experience working with fashion brands that have similar values to yours. Reading their previous work for other brands to get a feel for their writing styles and tones to evaluate their suitability is always a great recruitment approach.

Most translators are willing to do a free test (usually for short documents around 200-300 words). Don’t hesitate to ask them to translate a small piece of your brand’s content and see their work quality and compatibility with the voice of your business.

5. The Cost-Benefit Analysis for Fashion Translation

Investing in professional fashion translation service providers is the investment that significantly supports your fashion brand’s success in global markets. Professional and experienced fashion translators are undeniably not cheap. However, if you consider the damages, both financially and reputationally, that your brand might suffer from having low-quality fashion translations, you can see that the benefits you reap from working with a professional fashion translator far transcend the costs. Well-translated fashion content helps boost conversion, sales, customers’ trust, and brand loyalty.

You might want to read:

• How a Global Fashion Brand Became a Localization Leader
• A Popular Japanese Fashion Brand Turns From Zero to Hero With Thai Translation Services

6. Conclusion

Fashion translation is no doubt a critical part of any brand’s global fashion expansion plan. Linguistically and culturally accurate fashion translation is key for fashion brands to effectively communicate and build long-term connections with their international customers.

If you are looking for a professional fashion translator who can help you successfully transform your fashion-related content for a new market, look no further than GTE Localize. With a global team of fashion translators who are enthusiastic about fashion trends and experienced in working for numerous fashion businesses around the world, we are confident to bring you top-notch fashion translation services for all major languages. Simply contact our team to receive a free consultancy for your upcoming fashion translation project. Our team is more than happy to do a free 300-word translation test to show you why GTE Localize is the best partner for your project.