Translating for Essity: Keeping it clean across different languages
CiklopeaFounded in 1929 in Sweden, Essity is a leading global hygiene and health company that conducts sales in approximately 150 countries.
Essity’s purpose is to break barriers for well-being and contribute to a healthy, sustainable and circular society. Essity is to be a positive force for change and break and overcome barriers that stand in the way of improved well-being across the globe.
Dedicated to improving well-being through leading hygiene and health solutions, Essity strives to achieve long-term value creation for customers, consumers, society, employees and shareholders.
Ciklopea has been providing translations into CEE languages (such as Hungarian, Croatian and Slovenian) for Essity and now we’re having a chat with Zorica Lušić, who is the Brand and Digital Manager for the Essity Marketing Department in Hungary, Slovenia and Croatia and the Brand and Digital Manager HR&SI for TENA, the leading global brand in incontinence care.
How did your cooperation with Ciklopea begin?
Although we work with global suppliers of language solutions, we needed a more local one at some point, a partner who would be able to provide translations to two or three regional languages. On the basis of its experience in the life sciences sector and other factors such as its custom-developed process, Ciklopea fit the bill, and here we are.
What types of documents do you usually need translated?
Mostly health-related content: documents, articles about our products, presentations and product inserts/instructions for use.
Do you think that the role of translation and localization services is important in your line of work?
Although it may not be obvious at first glance, translation and localization play a tremendously important role. People relate to language as a natural phenomenon, everybody is using it, right, so they naturally tend to overlook the hard work of communicating the messages across different languages.
We provide products designed to make people’s lives easier and better, and if they do not have the relevant information in their language on what is the intended use of a product or how and when they should use it, we may achieve exactly the opposite effect. Of course, we do not want this to happen, so we delegate the language-related tasks to the professionals.
Your projects usually come with very specific sets of instructions.
That is right, but most of them are marketing-related.
Healthcare and hygiene products are delicate by their nature, and we do not want the people who use them to feel embarrassed in any way.
Our message needs to remain positive at all times, and that is why we are very careful about the words that we use, particularly about the words with any negative connotations. So, in addition to being accurate and having a natural flow, the translated versions of our materials also need to make people feel good about themselves in relation to our products.
Is there any particular challenge that Ciklopea helped you with?
It is clear that our products require a particular tone of voice that combines expertise, careful language and a positive message, and Ciklopea provided exactly what we needed in the target languages.