Translation, optimisation, and cultural adaptation of blog articles for a client from the fashion industry

Translation and SEO services for the fashion industry locatheart works with numerous international fashion enterprises. One of them is a company selling clothes, shoes, and accessories produced by global brands, including premium ones. What’s more, our client runs a blog featuring fashion tips, descriptions of the latest trends, and the most inspirational outfits in a given season.


From this case study, you’ll learn how we localise and optimise fashion content so that it effectively attracts new audiences.

Challenges and objectives

Writing their blog posts in Polish, our client uses various SEO techniques that allow for boosting the site’s visibility and reaching a wider group of potential customers.

Our client was looking for a trusted partner who’d create optimised content in Bulgarian, Czech, German, Greek, Italian, Lithuanian, and Romanian. As a test task, we received five different texts to render into these languages. The articles discussed, among other things, the differences between the business casual and the smart casual styles, the trendiest colour of the season – indigo – as well as the idea of wearing a black dress to a wedding.

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Step 1: Preliminary text analysis

Our client’s content is created with Polish audiences in mind and thus deeply rooted in Polish reality. As an experienced localisation agency, however, we are fully aware that each text needs to be properly adjusted to the requirements of the target market. That’s why we work solely with native speakers – this not only lets us achieve the highest quality possible, but also gives us access to key information about a given region.

Before we entrusted our linguists with the rendition, we had them analyse the texts in terms of cultural implications. The Greek translator drew our attention to the article about wearing a black dress to a wedding. Until not so long ago, Poles associated black chiefly with grief, but in recent years, the wedding dress code has become a little more lenient, and Polish women opt for black wedding-reception dresses more and more often.

As it turned out, however, black is often the first, most natural choice in Greece, and doesn’t raise such doubts as in Poland. That’s why we suggested to our client that in the case of the Greek market, we could give up the text about wedding dresses completely and translate a different one instead.

Step 2: Translation through a proxy language

To guarantee the highest quality and consistency of the resulting content, and to reduce project costs and duration, we suggested a process consisting in translation through an English master version.

In the phase of translation from Polish into English, we noticed several inaccuracies in the source texts – typos in designers’ names, factual errors, and outdated information. We let the client know about the matter – they decided to correct the erroneous Polish files and asked us to introduce relevant changes into the English translations.

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Step 3: Keyword analysis

As client’s chief objective was to boost the visibility of their blog in search results, for each translator, we prepared an individual list of the most popular keywords to use in a given article.

For SEO purposes, key phrases need to be researched for each market separately, as inhabitants of various countries look for content in a different way. Even if a phrase works in the domestic market, it won’t necessarily work anywhere else. Translating keywords (especially the long-tail ones) literally from one language to another won’t cut the deal – primarily due to specific vocabulary, naming conventions, and syntax of a given language, as well as unique habits related to conducting search.

At locatheart, keyword research is always carried out by our internal SEO department, which then sends keyword lists to respective linguists for verification. Thanks to this process, we can be sure that the phrases sound natural and will be well received by search engine algorithms.

Step 4: New language versions

Ultimately, we provided our translators with the following materials:

  • English texts,
  • lists of keywords to be used in translations,
  •  a style guide we prepared based on our client’s requirements regarding style, popular slogans, and the brand voice.

The Polish source texts contained numerous links – both to specific product categories in the shop, such as “women’s shirts”, and to related blog articles. To make the task easier for our linguists, we wrote a manual on how to use the SEO Peek add-on, which allowed for quick and simple link localisation.

Respective translations were additionally annotated – the comments concerned, among other things, transliteration in Bulgarian and Greek.

The test project has resulted in full-blown cooperation.

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Conclusions

Both adjusting content to respective local markets and using properly chosen keywords play a vital role in international SEO. What’s more, this project clearly shows that not every text will work in all markets and that cooperation with native speakers is essential to a successful global expansion.

To effectively build brand awareness, reach new customers, and boost sales, one needs to rely on expert help – after all, specialists know localisation and optimisation processes inside out.

Read what the client thinks about cooperation with locatheart:

“The translated articles are a smooth read. The texts don’t seem to have been rendered literally. They are well written, reader-friendly, and clear. You can read them in one go and easily understand all information. You don’t have to stop and rack your brains, trying to comprehend the previous line.”