CASE STUDY: E-COMMERCE TRANSLATIONS FOR TRUFFLEHUNTER

We recently had the pleasure of working with Cotswolds’ based TruffleHunter, the UK’s leading supplier of fresh truffles and truffle products, offering Amazon translation services to them.

TruffleHunter

As well as pleasing the tastebuds of many foodies around the UK, they sell their delicious products to many other countries around the world, one of which is Spain.

The team at TruffleHunter wanted to increase their Amazon ES sales, and that’s why Genuine Translations came in to help.

You may have occasionally noticed brands with badly translated listings on Amazon and other marketplaces when shopping online. Many sellers use automated machine translation tools such as Amazon Translate (aws translation) or Google Translate and hope for the best. But as a buyer, would you buy a foreign product with a well written translated description that’s easy to understand, or a badly translated one? Which one would inspire you more trust?

Apart from inspiring trust to their potential Spanish customers, TruffleHunter knew the listings they had to translate for Amazon had to meet the following criteria before the company could see some growth in their Spanish sales:

  1. They had to be relevant and follow Amazon guidelines re. formatting and amount and type of information displayed;
  2. They had to be fully optimised with SEO keywords in order for the products to be found;
  3. They had to be catchy and engaging.

And this is how our Spanish and English Genuine team worked with TruffleHunter to meet that criteria:

  1. Before providing our listing translation services, we learned about the company, the brand, their products and their customers. We also learnt about their preferences when following Amazon guidelines – all our clients have their own “rules” based on what their preferences are and what works best for them. This meant we could keep consistency across the UK and ES marketplaces;
  2. We carried out keyword research for each of their product categories (oils, conserves, etc.) for Spain and, of course, in Spanish! We used Google’s Keyword Planner tool, as this was their preferred one (we also often use a tool called “Helium”). When providing SEO translation services, it’s really important to know the target culture really well in order to know which keywords people would typically search for in order to find a particular product. Also, different cultures have different culinary preferences and traditions, so this has to be taken into account for the listings to be relevant;
  3. As a creative translation agency, and thanks to our expertise in marketing translations, we were able to keep the listings catchy and engaging in a way they didn’t read like translations.

We did not only reviewed existing translations and translated new listings, but also created Amazon advertising campaigns for TruffleHunter’s product categories. The campaign for truffle oils, for example, proved very successful, and with just a two figures’ investment, we made a four figures’ return.

If you see translation as an investment and not a cost, and work with your language services partner to discuss the best cost-efficient approach to reaching overseas customers, you too, like TruffleHunter, will enjoy the taste of victory.

CASE STUDY: “TAKE YOUR SHOT”

A few months ago, our Director, Eva Tunez Salvador, had the honour of carrying out the book translation of “Take your shot” by business coach Robin Waite from English into Spanish. Eva tells us a bit more about the project.

How it all began

“I met Robin at one of his workshops. When I told him about Genuine Translations, he said he was looking for someone to do the translation into Spanish of his latest book, Take your shot, because Spanish is the second most spoken language in the World (after Chinese) and he wanted to reach a wider audience.

He was right in doing so. He is a fantastic coach and Take your shot gives key advice in the form of a case study story to any business owner (no matter the country) who wants to grow their business rapidly. I read the book, I loved it, and I wanted to make it available to the 500+ million Spanish speakers in the World.

We started working together.

European Spanish or Latin American Spanish?

TAKE YOUR SHOTThe first thing Robin and I discussed was whether to do a version for Spain and another one for Latin America’s Spanish speakers, or whether to do just one version using a neutral Spanish. We chose the latter. This meant I had to be very careful not to use certain words which are very common in European Spanish but very offensive in Latin American Spanish, and not to use colloquial expressions which were too specific to any of the Spanish-speaking countries. Only Spanish translators with experience in both dialects can do this well. Apart from my own experience in these dialects, having a team of fantastic translators from those countries at hand was useful when I needed to ask any queries.

What the translation service included

The project involved not only the translation, but also several proofreading, reviewing and editing stages, taking into consideration the formatting and layout of text and graphics/drawings and some cultural adaptations. For example, the change of currency references in the text from pounds to dollars, to make it more international.

I also had to do some terminology research on the field of golf, as there are many references to this sport in the book. That is something I really enjoyed and that I quite like in general about translation – you learn with every project, no matter how much you already know about the field.

The title translation

Like any good literary translator, I left the title for the end. The reason for this is that the title is the summary of the book, the hook that gets (or doesn’t get) people to read it. The translation of the title has to be spot on, and it is easier to achieve this after translating the entire book rather than at any earlier stage.

Take Your Shot - SpanishSince there is no equivalent literal translation of “take your shot” in Spanish, I had to be very creative and look at the reasons why the English title was chosen in the first instance. In this case, one of the characters asks one of the main characters to “take his shot” during a golf game; and that main character has a lightbulb moment and uses that sentence (“take your shot”) as motivation to grow his business. A wonderfully clever title for the book, in my opinion. Now, how could I make it work the same way for the Spanish version?

There were a few options which I ran through Robin, and we both agreed on “Ve a por ello”, which can be translated in English as “go for it” and “go get them” (also used in the sports’ context) and has the same strength as “take your shot”.

Don’t miss out!

It was truly an honour working with Robin Waite and translating what is surely one of my favourite books, “Take your shot”.”

If you haven’t read it yet, you can get your English or Spanish copy here:
Take your shot: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Take-Your-Shot-Business-Attract-ebook/dp/B074679GZ6
Ve a por ello: https://www.amazon.es/Ve-Por-Ello-clientes-negocio-ebook/dp/B07RC31RPJ

Contact us

If you are an author and want to reach a wider international audience like Robin did, please get in touch with us. Genuine Translations work with a team of book translators and cover several languages.

CASE STUDY: Translation of Amazon Listings

Genuine Translations had the pleasure of working with one of the UK’s leading watch accessories companies.

They had received a few Amazon orders from Spain when they realised the potential of the Spanish market. Amazon was their main marketplace, but all their listings were in English, which didn’t attract as many non-English speakers as it could.

They decided to meet with the Genuine Translations team to see how we could help. We sat down over a cup of coffee and listened to their issues and what they were trying to achieve. They wanted to develop an offering to the Spanish market and also be able to reply to any enquiry in Spanish and deal with any issues effectively.

We suggested a monthly project whereby we did the following:

  • Translate any new listings from English into Spanish directly into the client’s cloud-base file;
  • Proofread any previously translated listings before they went live on their website and on Amazon;
  • Research the most used Spanish terminology for their specialisation and create a glossary of terms and expressions;
  • Contact potential distributors in Spain; and
  • Reply to any Spanish enquiries following the client’s guidelines on customer service.

As a result of the work we completed, their Spanish orders increased significantly. They also found they were able to deal with Spanish enquiries much more effectively.

Their next step was carrying out their website localisation and blog translation into Spanish and targeting the Latin American market too; and Genuine Translations was there to help.

They were so pleased with the quality of the work delivered by our team that we were engaged to translate their website and blog into Spanish and localise it for use in Latin America too.

I’ve had the opportunity to work with Eva and she’s done an exemplary job prioritizing tasks and ensuring the work was delivered on time. Her professionalism and attention to detail, along with her friendly personality make her a great collaborator.
I will definitely work with Eva again and highly recommend Genuine Translations.

Drissia Zidat

Account Expert, Expert Edge

I used Genuine Translations for the review of a research study I had drafted in English. Since this is not my native language, I asked Genuine Translations to review it, tracking the changes for my own learning. I was amazed by the quality of their work and their fast turnaround. They tracked the changes, but also explained why they needed implementing and how I could improve the writing style. The report now reads in perfect English! I will be using Genuine Translations again soon.

David Uclés Aguilera

Economic Analysis Director, Grupo Cajamar-BCC

Eva and the team at Genuine Translations were extremely helpful when they translated our brochure. From the beginning, they were very interested in what Paygevity does and is trying to achieve, they suggested an easy way of presenting the Spanish translation alongside the English version and they suggested some cultural adaptations for the Spanish market. They were also very understanding and flexible regarding the timezone differences. I can highly recommend Genuine Translations to any business expanding overseas.

William Christian

Chief Technology Officer, Paygevity, Inc