The problem
An argan and weaving cooperative near Essaouira wants to sell to Europe. Its catalog exists only in French, professional translation quotes are far beyond budget, and word-for-word machine output kills the storytelling that makes handmade products valuable.
The solution, step by step
- Structure the catalog in Google Sheets: reference, materials, dimensions, crafting story, price — one row per product.
- Use DeepL for a first technical pass on factual fields (materials, dimensions, care instructions), which it handles reliably.
- Use ChatGPT for the storytelling fields with a cultural brief: keep Amazigh and Arabic craft terms with a short gloss, adapt tone per market — warmer for Spain, more factual for Germany.
- Ask for a back-translation check: translate samples back to French to catch meaning drift before publishing.
- Have a native speaker (client, partner or freelancer) review the top 20 products — one focused hour instead of a full translation job.
- Export per language and publish; keep the sheet as the single source of truth for future updates.
- Full trilingual catalog in two days instead of two months.
- Cost divided by roughly 10 compared to a full agency translation, with human review kept where it matters.
- The cooperative can answer European trade-show contacts in their own language the same week.