Translating for the luxury goods industry
CIOL Scottish Society
On 18 May 2024 the CIOL Scottish Society welcomed Felicity Sadler, a French into English freelance translator with 11 years of experience. She always had a creative and analytical personality, apart from a long held interest, and shared with us how she became a translator working in the luxury goods industry; obtaining a degree in Modern Languages followed by an internship in France.
Felicity began the webinar in an interactive way, asking attendees to answer if they have any experience in the luxury goods industry.
We had a good turnout, with 34 participants.
To be a successful translator working in this industry terminology and creativity are crucial, not to mention to sell a product, and a story.
There are many products that fall into the fashion category, plus leather goods, watches and jewellery. These products are produced under high quality standards and crafted.
Hermes, Chanel and Dior are some of these luxury brands, to mention a few. Handbags cannot be bought online, and there is a waiting list to purchase them.
The translator must focus on storytelling and brand history as well.
Clients are driven to buy these items through a desire, and as a status symbol.
There are challenges and advantages for the translator, the challenges being to have an extensive technical and industry knowledge, apart from the exclusivity and sophistication of luxury brands, which can make them inaccessible as private clients. The advantages include the continued growth of luxury market, that is expected to increase in a 4% in 2024, big budgets for translators, copywriting to get the story across, shorter texts, the possibility of being creative and include the ‘soul’ in the translation.
Attendees asked interesting questions, for example if it is possible to have a luxury brand as a private client. Felicity explained that normally it is possible to work for luxury brands through agencies, and that rarely, smaller brands could hire a translator directly, before they grow into becoming a big company.
Felicity recommends to not dedicate too much time to do tests for agencies, she would normally do it in an unpaid basis up to 300 words, and if it is a translation that would take her a maximum of one hour. She firmly believes that translators should take the agencies out of the habit of requesting an unpaid test to assign a job to a translator.
Report by Florencia Pistritto MA DPSI MCIL, member of the CIOL Scottish Society Steering Group
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