Our previous piece set out how the EU’s compliance changes fit together: the €3-per-item duty has applied since 1 July, product identifiers become mandatory on 1 November, and the leaked European Product Act ties platforms and sellers into the same liability framework. Several longstanding clients with European storefronts have since asked the same practical question — what exactly do we need to prepare? This piece sets out the multilingual work we handle for exporters as a single “compliance document pack”.
One: product labels and instructions
This is the direct answer to the “missing labels” finding in EU inspections. Product names, model numbers, warnings, and manufacturer and importer details on packaging, together with the instructions supplied with the product, must be available in the language of each country of sale; selling into several countries usually means several languages in parallel. Warnings deserve particular care. A line such as “contains small parts — not suitable for children under three” on an electrical product, toy or cosmetic, if translated wrongly or omitted, becomes a question of liability if anything goes wrong. We ask translators to check every item against the destination-country format, including footnotes, rather than translating only the body text.
Two: declarations of conformity and technical documentation
Products carrying the CE mark require the manufacturer’s declaration of conformity (DoC), supported by technical documentation kept available for inspection for years. The directive numbers, harmonised standards, model references and signatory details all have to match; one mismatch can leave a declaration open to challenge. These files have fixed formats and dense terminology, which makes them well suited to a termbase plus human finalisation, so every new product a client launches reuses a consistent version.
Three: safety data sheets and sector-specific files
Cosmetics, chemicals and batteries require safety data sheets (SDS), while food supplements, medicines and medical-device materials involve still more specialised medical language. We assign this work to translators with the relevant background and check ingredient names, exposure limits and toxicological references individually rather than leaving it to a generalist.
Four: test reports and qualification certificates
Platform onboarding, authorised-representative agreements and customs checks can all call for translated business licences, test reports and system certificates. For these we provide certified translation with an official stamp: the translation corresponds to the original page by page and carries the translation stamp, which is well recognised in platform and customs review. The combination clients ask for most often is a stamped test report alongside a multilingual DoC.
Five: listings and catalogue localisation
Compliance settles whether goods can enter; listings decide whether they sell. Titles, bullet points, detail pages, size charts and plug-and-voltage notes all need rewriting for local shopping habits rather than word-for-word conversion. A shop with hundreds or thousands of SKUs is neither quick nor economical to translate purely by hand, so we typically run an MTPE (machine translation post-editing) workflow: the machine produces a first draft, translators revise it to marketing standard, and flagship lines or new launches receive fuller human refinement, keeping both cost and delivery time under control.
How we work with clients
In practice it comes to four points: tasks are split by destination country and language pair; a glossary is built before translation begins, with product names and model references confirmed with the client; stamped certificates can be turned around quickly when deadlines are tight; and all material is covered by confidentiality arrangements. Clients making small electrical appliances, consumer electronics and toys in Shenzhen and Zhuhai are already working backwards from the 1 November date.
Send us your product category, target countries and document list through the contact page and we will come back with a proposal and a quote. For the wider background, see “Four Weeks to 1 November: Mandatory Product Identifiers and the Turning Point for Low-value Parcels”; the translator’s view is set out in “A New Opening for Translators in the Compliance Era”.