When you’re distributing food and drug products overseas, it’s essential that you’re ready to meet the many different labelling requirements worldwide. If you fail to adhere to the various international requirements, you could find your products are denied entry into their overseas market, or even worse, your overseas end-users could experience serious adverse consequences.
With this in mind, it’s essential to put pharmaceutical and food product labelling at the top of your list of considerations.
What Is the Definition Of Labelling?
There are several different types of labels that require translation into the target language, including brand labels, grade labels, descriptive labels, and informative labels.
- Brand labels appear on a product’s packaging and display the name of the brand so that it can easily be recognised by the purchasers.
- Grade labels show the product’s grade or quality using letters, words, or figures (for example, grades A-D).
- Descriptive labels give the buyer general information regarding the product’s features and how to use it including security and handling of the product.
- Informative labels give more in-depth details about how to use the product, who produced it, the date it was manufactured, and its date of expiry.
Why Is Labelling So Important?
When you sell food or drug products, it’s vital that the user has all the key information that they need about the product that they are purchasing, including its name, production and expiry dates, its manufacturer and location of manufacturing, its quantity, its ingredients, any warnings about its use, and directions about storage, preparation, and use.
This ensures that they have a clear understanding of what they are buying and how to use it appropriately and safely. Furthermore, labelling is an essential component of any company’s product marketing strategy, helping to raise brand awareness and attract customers through recognisable elements.
What Kinds of Labelling Require Translation?
There are many different food and drug products that require labelling translation when exporting them to a foreign market including among others:
- Pharmaceuticals and medicines
- Medical devices
- Foods and beverages
- Pre-packaged non-food products
- Food additives
- Consumables
- Cosmetics and beauty products
What Should Be Researched Before Product Labelling Translation?
Translating product labelling isn’t always as simple as just directly translating the words from one language into another. There are a number of factors that come into play when exporting products to a country overseas that can have an impact on labels. Here are a few elements to research before translating your product labels:
Design or typesetting – when the words on your labels are translated into another language, they may be a different length, and this could negatively impact the appearance of your product label. Consulting with a language service provider is the best way to select the most appropriate desktop publishing and typesetting approach to take to ensure that your labels look their best in the target language.
Legal factors – different countries have different labelling regulations and it’s essential to follow those requirements and formats. For example, some labels have to be presented in the official languages of the country within which the product is being marketed, and it’s essential to adhere to the law in order to avoid any penalties that may arise from unintended non-compliance.
Seeking Professional Advice
Using a team of experienced language service providers is the best way to ensure that any potentially damaging mistakes are avoided. Labelling translations should be written clearly and simply to ensure there are no misunderstandings, and this is particularly vital when labelling medical products – for safety reasons that can be absolutely no risk of errors.
Using a human translator rather than a machine translation is, therefore, always going to be wise to ensure that no unintentional mistakes will be made, and Elite Asia is on hand to help with a team of skilled professionals at your disposal.
