Get more Etsy international sales with the new translation feature

If you have language skills, or access to them, you can help make more Etsy international sales by using their new translation feature. This helps you add multi-language titles and descriptions to your listings.

Etsy are providing more options when it comes to encouraging international trade. But they strongly advice you to use manual, human translation, rather than automated translation system.

As they say: “We know from buyer research, as well as Etsy sales data, that buyers prefer products listed in their own language. Buyers interpret manual translations as more trustworthy than translations clearly written by a machine. Manually translated listings also let shoppers know that you speak their language. This helps buyers feel safe when ordering from your shop knowing that they’ll be able to communicate with you. By adding your own translations and choosing your own translated keywords you can also optimise your performance in search.”

To add an additional language, visit Shop Manager > Settings > Languages and translations. You then follow the prompts to start translating your shop and select Manage languages to add a new language to your shop.

Once you add a new language, you can translate the following elements of your shop directly from your “Languages and translations” field including your shop info and appearance, sections, your about shop information and also policies. You can find out all about the new feature here.

Currently the Etsy marketplace is presented in English (US), English (UK), German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Dutch. So those would be the most sensible languages to start with, of you have skills in any of them.

Looking at that list of languages, it’s interesting to note that Etsy has a great deal of scope for international expansion because for the moment it is very much focussed on the US and Europe. Perhaps this development is part of a shift to generate more Etsy international sales.