Translating a listing is not the same as localising it

The difference, in one sentence

Translation starts from your sentence. Localisation starts from the buyer.

Why it costs you the listing rather than just reading oddly

A clumsy sentence loses a conversion. A missing keyword loses the chance to have one.

Amazon matches a query to the words in your listing. If the phrase a market searches with is not somewhere in your title, bullets or search terms, the listing is not a worse result for that query - it is not a result at all. That is the whole failure: the copy can be grammatical, accurate and professionally produced, and still be invisible.

It is also the failure that is hardest to notice. There is no error and no bad review. The listing simply does less than the one at home, and the usual conclusion is that the market is weaker.

The specific mistake, market by market

It is not one error repeated in seven languages. Each market breaks differently, and two of them break in opposite directions.

amazon.frA word for word translation keeps the German order and produces "cuisine balance", which no shopper searches for.amazon.itItalian phrasing runs longer than the German it came from. A title that sat comfortably inside the limit in German can arrive over it here.amazon.esPicking the dictionary word over the shopping word. The translation is correct and the listing still does not get found.amazon.nlA split compound. It still reads as Dutch, so nothing looks broken, and the title no longer contains the word people search.amazon.plSearch terms lifted straight out of the description. They come out in whatever case the sentence needed and stop matching the query.amazon.seLeaving the listing in English because everyone there reads it. Being understood and being found are different problems.amazon.deAn English title with German words in it. Correct vocabulary, English structure, and it reads as an import on sight.

The clearest case: compound nouns

German, Dutch and Swedish weld words together. French, Italian and Spanish pull them apart. The compound is usually the search term.

A kitchen scale is one word in Dutch, "keukenweegschaal", and that single word is what people type. A translator working from a French "balance de cuisine" may produce "keuken weegschaal", which reads as Dutch and no longer contains the keyword. In the other direction, a translator working from German may weld a French phrase into something no French shopper has ever typed.

Neither mistake looks like a mistake. Both cost the listing its main search term.

What to do about it without buying anything

If you are doing this by hand, these are the steps that matter most.

1. 1Search the destination marketplace firstType what you think the product is called into amazon.fr or amazon.it and look at what comes back. The titles of the products already ranking are the market telling you its vocabulary.
2. 2Use the shopping word, not the dictionary wordA kitchen scale in Spain is usually a "bascula", while "balanza" is laboratory equipment. Both are correct translations. Only one gets typed.
3. 3Check the word order before the wordsRomance languages put the describing word after the noun. A title that leads with the adjective reads as machine output at a glance, before anyone evaluates the vocabulary.
4. 4Never reuse one translation across marketsSpanish and Italian are not interchangeable, and neither are Dutch and German however similar the compounds look. Seven marketplaces means seven pieces of copy.