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0 pointsborn2discover7y ago0 comments

I would argue that there are smaller countries where packaging has to be in more than one language and companies that seek to enter that market are fine with it.

If your only argument against doing business in a country because of the language requirements, you aren't a good businessman/woman. Because you are sacrificing a market share for something that can be easily done: translate once, print indefinitely.

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kstenerud7y ago· 1 in thread

It's not just the words themselves; you need a completely different package design. It's not like in Europe where the package is mostly the same except for some language-specific section. In Canada, you need to translate EVERYTHING, including the slogan [1], and even the name in some cases. Every English sentence must be translated and presented in equal size in French.

You can call it good/bad business practice all you want. Real manufacturers do make conscious decisions to avoid the Canadian market due to these costs. The reality is that we suffer because of this policy.

There is one silver lining, however: Online retailers like Amazon seem to be exempt.

[1] http://blog.generalmills.com/wp-content/uploads/Honey-Nut-Ch...

born2discoverOP7y ago

I see! Then I do understand why you'd be in favor of dropping French as it seems to me that Quebec might be doing a bit of a protectionism dance there.

Where I live (Switzerland) the minimum to have is the information text translated (the one at the back). But the brand itself can remain as it is. Usually however, you do see a bit more translated, such as subtitles or things like what type of product that is, like "whole-grained bread" and things like that.

Also we're lucky to be in the middle of Europe, so companies that export to France and Germany tend to create one double translated product for both countries and it's imported to Switzerland as well.

But yea, if you force double work on the companies without any rational reason behind, then they might try to reduce costs by simply avoiding the market altogether.

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