Copy Localization & Market Adaptation
Localization is not translation. Translation converts words. Localization converts meaning. The difference matters enormously when you are asking someone to buy something.
What this service covers
A French customer buying from an English brand notices immediately when the French copy was translated by someone who does not understand French commercial conventions. The vocabulary choices, the sentence rhythm, the assumed level of formality, the reference points that are taken for granted: all of these differ between markets in ways that are obvious to native readers and invisible to machine translation. We localize English copy into French and French copy into English as a native rewrite process, not as a translation. The source text is the brief, not the template. What we produce in French for a French audience will not read like the English version, because what compels a French reader is genuinely different from what compels an English-speaking one. We work on product descriptions, catalog copy, website copy, packaging, email sequences, and any other commercial content that crosses a language boundary. We also adapt copy for different regional French markets: Metropolitan France, Belgian French, Swiss French, and Quebecois French each have conventions that differ from each other in register, vocabulary, and cultural reference.