How could Amazon Sweden have avoided those embarrassing translation mistakes

Oh dear 🙈 

Whilst what happened at the launch of Amazon Sweden makes for some funny reading, I'm actually pleased (and not surprised!) it happened. 

It illustrates perfectly why automatic machine translation is a bad idea when it comes to marketing content. I see translation mistakes like this on a daily basis on Amazon.fr, and always wonder why a brand would care so little about their online image and reputation when selling to foreign customers. 

Machines don't understand context, cultural references, puns, emotions and creativity. 

Why would you invest so much time and effort creating marketing copy and exporting your products abroad, only to overlook the translation and localisation of your product listings and fall at the last hurdle? 

I hope this will be a wake-up call for many brands, who will now look at getting their listings translated by a professional and specialised native translator in order to avoid the same negative publicity! 

#freelancetranslator #marketingtranslation #ecommercetranslation #amazontranslation