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Beauty products are an essential part of everyone’s daily routine, whether they are personal care goods, skin care items or cosmetics. When it comes to such products, their packaging usually contains key elements such as the brand name, main features, ingredients list, company address and other types of standard things that belong there. But what happens to them during translation?
Let’s start with the brand name. It’s usually kept in the source language so that the brand remains universally recognisable. We can see similar examples in cosmetics brands such as Lush, Le Petit Marseillais or Jo Malone: one of them has a simple word in its name, another has a phrase, while the third one includes the name of its founder. In each case, the brand name could have been translated or transliterated, but the strategy was to keep the original.
The name can be localised, transliterated, fully translated or simply tweaked by changing a few letters.
There are also cases where the emphasis is on appealing to new audiences by providing the brand name in the source language. Or where the name may happen to sound inappropriate in the country where the product is being launched. Then it can be localised, transliterated, fully translated or simply tweaked by changing a few letters. Each of these options can be optimal, depending on the situation. Brand name translation encompasses a number of aspects. Does the name sound appropriate in the target language? Are there any legal requirements for foreign brands to be written or duplicated in the target language? These are only some of the important questions to consider.
What about slogans and product features described on the package? We’re not referring to product effects that are written down in instructions, because those are meant to encapsulate the effect directly, without blurring the original meaning. When it’s a matter of capturing a potential buyer’s attention with a short but engaging collocation, that’s where transcreation usually comes in. It’s done to better reflect the intent of the original textual descriptions in the target language, if that’s a priority. Sometimes a literal or even slightly adapted translation is not enough, as the pragmatic effect is especially crucial for information on cosmetic labels. After all, this is one of the promotional tools of the product.
The lists of ingredients are guided by INCI (International Nomenclature of Cosmetic Ingredients).
When it comes to ingredient lists, it’s not always a matter of choice and purpose. These lists are guided by INCI (International Nomenclature of Cosmetic Ingredients), which requires the ingredients of products in this group to be written in English. More specifically, an INCI-based ingredients list is a mixture of conventional scientific names, Latin and English words. This may be obvious to manufacturers, but less so to consumers. People who buy products might be confused as to why the ingredients are not translated so that they can understand them. As we can see, this aspect is regulated by industry-specific standards. Still, some of the active ingredients are usually written and/or described separately because they form one of the main features of the product (e.g., beauty creams, serums, etc.).
Product: La Roche Posay ANTHELIOS sunscreen
Replacing the original descriptions with their translations is one thing, but there’s another question that arises at this point. Why do some of the labels not only contain the translated text, but also its original version? The thing is, not every company has a manufacturing facility in the country where they sell their product. So, at times it’s much more convenient to produce items in versatile batches that are suitable for distribution in a larger number of countries. Moreover, such duplication makes it possible to check everything and be sure that the information is correct.
Another aspect worth mentioning is the lack of translation as it is. To make the distribution process easier and keep the product in its original form, companies opt to leave the original label and offer the next members of the supply/sale chain to include all the necessary details on a price tag or a website page (if the product is sold online).
Product: Rimmel Foundation Lasting Matte 203
A cosmetic label takes up a small, sometimes tiny, amount of space. Don’t let this fact mislead you into thinking it’s easy to translate them. Sometimes the shorter the text, the more difficult it is to process. But it is precisely because there is so much complexity in the process that the result is always rewarding. With a properly developed strategy, translated labels make the product shine.
