FranceRetail and e-commerce2017 – ongoingVestiaire Collective
Automatic translation of item descriptions with Cloud Translation API
Vestiaire Collective cut translation costs 82% after machine translation replaced a translation agency
Problem
Vestiaire Collective paid a translation company about €500,000 a year to turn seller descriptions into English. Products took several hours to go online, and 3,000 to 4,000 descriptions were uploaded every day.
Approach
The marketplace switched in December 2017 to Google's Cloud Translation API to translate descriptions from six languages into English. The move from the previous provider took two days. Items go live right after the authenticity experts vet them.
Results
Takeaway
Machine translation covered a high-volume, routine text task at a fraction of the agency price. The company reported no negative effect on its conversion rates.
Categories
- Industry
- Retail and e-commerce
- Business function
- Production and quality
- Innovation type
- Process innovation
- AI technology
- Predictive analytics and ML
- Adoption
- Off-the-shelf tool or platform
- Evidence
- Vendor case study
Sources
Source summaries
Google Cloud's customer story describes how Vestiaire Collective moved product description translation from a translation company to Cloud Translation API. It reports an 82% saving on translation, uploads that went from hours to minutes, and a cost drop from €500,000 a year. The page carries no date; the Internet Archive first saved it on April 16, 2019.
Full details are in the original sources.
