Safety & compliance
Packaging Translation Services
Techniwords delivers packaging translation services for products sold across the United States, Canada, and Mexico. We produce label text that satisfies FTC, Health Canada, and NOM requirements, then prove it fits your artwork before anything goes to print.
English, Canadian French, and Mexican Spanish handled together, with each market's mandatory statements checked against its own rulebook before your printer sees the files.
Label space is fixed and French runs long. We write to character budgets per panel and flag any statement that cannot legally be abbreviated, instead of shrinking type below readable sizes.
Final review happens on your dieline PDF, not in a text file, so we catch a French accent dropped by the font or a claim that migrated to the wrong panel.
The Smallest Technical Document Is the Most Regulated One
A label may hold sixty words, yet more law applies per square inch of packaging than to any other document a manufacturer produces. Net quantity declarations, ingredient lists, hazard statements, country-of-origin marks, and usage instructions each answer to a different rule, and the rules change at every border. That is the core of what makes packaging translation services different from ordinary technical translation: the text is short, the constraints are legal, and the cost of reprinting a label run is measured in scrapped inventory, not in edited paragraphs.
Techniwords has spent fifteen years translating packaging for consumer goods, industrial chemicals, food products, and hardware sold across North America. The work involves as much verification as translation. Every project starts with a question our project managers ask before quoting: which markets, which product category, and which agency's rules govern each panel of the artwork? The answers decide vocabulary, format, and sometimes type size before a single word is translated.
What US Law Puts on the Package
For products sold in the United States, the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act, implemented through FTC regulations at 16 CFR Part 500, dictates how the principal display panel declares identity and net quantity, down to dual declarations in both US customary and metric units. Food, drugs, and cosmetics fall under FDA labeling rules at 21 CFR Part 101 and related parts, which fix the wording, format, and placement of nutrition and ingredient information. Imported goods translated into English must land inside these formats, which is a common trap: a literal translation of a French ingredient list will not satisfy 21 CFR 101.4 naming conventions, no matter how accurate the French was.
When we translate foreign packaging for the US market, we map each statement to its American regulatory slot rather than converting sentences one for one. And when the product also ships with hazard communication documents, the label vocabulary must match them exactly; our team coordinates label wording with safety data sheet translation for the same product, because an inspector who finds "irritant" on the SDS and a different term on the drum label will keep digging.
Selling North: Canada Requires French, Not Eventually, Now
Canada is where many US manufacturers first discover mandatory bilingualism. The Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act and its regulations require most mandatory label information in English and French, with equal prominence. Quebec goes further: since the reform known as Bill 96 strengthened the Charter of the French Language, French on products sold in Quebec must be at least as prominent as any other language, and inscriptions embossed or printed on the product itself are drawn into scope. Enforcement by the OQLF is complaint-driven and real.
The French itself matters as much as its presence. Canadian French has its own consumer vocabulary, established by usage and by the terminology bank of the Quebec government. A label written in European French reads foreign on a Montreal shelf, and some terms differ outright. Our French technical translation team assigns Canadian packaging to translators working in Canadian French specifically, and we validate terminology against the Grand dictionnaire terminologique when a term has an established Quebec usage.
Under USMCA, one package often serves three countries. Many of our clients print a single trilingual label for the whole North American market. Done well, it cuts inventory complexity dramatically. Done badly, it triples the number of regulators who can find a fault on the same piece of film.
Selling South: Mexican NOMs and the Spanish Your Label Needs
Mexico regulates labeling through Normas Oficiales Mexicanas. NOM-050-SCFI-2004 sets the general commercial information requirements for products sold to Mexican consumers: Spanish-language labeling, net content per NOM-030, importer details, and country of origin. Prepackaged food and non-alcoholic beverages answer to NOM-051, which since its 2020 amendment imposes the black octagonal front-of-pack warning seals that any US food exporter now has to plan artwork around. Compliance is checked at the border and in the market by PROFECO, and a shipment can sit in customs over a missing importer line.
As with Canadian French, the Spanish must be the right Spanish. Mexican consumer and regulatory vocabulary differs from what a translator trained on European texts would produce, and NOM terminology has fixed renderings that are not open to stylistic choice. We staff these projects through our Spanish teams working in Mexican usage, and for regulated product categories we cross-check the final text against the current version of the applicable NOM, which are freely published in the Diario Oficial de la Federación.
Space Is a Translation Constraint, Not a Layout Problem
On a label, translation length is not an aesthetic issue. Minimum type sizes are prescribed by regulation in all three markets, scaled to package size, so text that grows 20 percent cannot simply be set smaller. Something has to give, and deciding what gives is part of the translation work.
Our approach is to treat every panel as a character budget. Before translating, we measure the available space per language on your dieline and classify each statement:
- Fixed by law. Mandatory statements with prescribed wording cannot be shortened. If they do not fit, the artwork must change, and we tell you that early, while the dieline can still move.
- Compressible. Marketing copy and usage tips can be tightened. A skilled translator can usually save 15 to 25 percent against a literal rendering without losing meaning.
- Replaceable by symbols. Standardized pictograms can substitute for text in some contexts, from care symbols to recycling marks, freeing space for the statements that must remain words.
This is also where packaging connects to the rest of the product's paper trail. Compressed label wording still has to agree with the fuller versions in your catalogs and inserts; we keep them aligned through shared termbases, the same way our product catalog translation work feeds the label vocabulary rather than competing with it.
Regulated Sectors Raise the Stakes Again
Beyond general consumer rules, sector regulations add their own layers. Chemical packaging carries GHS-aligned hazard labeling under OSHA rules in the US and NOM-018-STPS in Mexico, with signal words and hazard statements whose translations are codified, not creative. Food contact materials, pesticides under EPA label review, and medical device packaging under FDA and international symbol standards each bring prescribed vocabularies. For chemical products in particular, our chemical industry translation specialists handle the packaging alongside the hazard documentation so the two never diverge.
A recent project illustrates the pattern. A lubricants manufacturer expanding from Texas into Mexico and Canada needed 14 container labels reworked from English-only into trilingual artwork. The hazard statements came from the GHS-codified sets, the net contents needed dual declaration for the US and metric-only for Mexico, and the French had to clear Quebec prominence rules. The hardest part was physical: the trilingual version had to live on the same 4 in by 6 in label, which meant renegotiating every non-mandatory sentence down to its shortest correct form. All 14 labels cleared their importer's compliance review on first submission.
When packaging claims feed into formal filings, such as registration dossiers or import permits, we coordinate the label text with the team handling your regulatory submission documents so the same product does not describe itself two different ways to the same authority.
Symbols and Pictograms: When a Picture Replaces Sixty Words
Standardized symbols are the packaging translator's best ally, because a recognized pictogram communicates in every language at once and consumes no per-language space. But "recognized" is the operative word, and symbol systems are as jurisdiction-bound as text. The GHS pictograms for chemical hazards are genuinely international. Textile care symbols differ between the ASTM D5489 system familiar to US consumers and the ISO 3758 system used elsewhere, which is why some garments carry both. Recycling and material identification marks follow their own national schemes, and Mexico's NOM-051 warning seals are text-bearing symbols that exist only in Spanish.
Our role is to police the boundary between symbol and text. When a client's US artwork relies on a symbol that has no legal standing or consumer recognition in the target market, we flag it and propose either the local equivalent or a short text statement. The reverse also happens: text that a US label spells out can sometimes be replaced by a pictogram accepted in the destination market, buying back the space that French or Spanish expansion consumed elsewhere on the panel.
Two practical rules from fifteen years of this work. First, never translate the text inside a standardized symbol: a NOM-051 seal or a certification mark is a fixed graphic, reproduced as issued, and redrawing it with translated text can void its validity. Second, always check whether a symbol's accompanying mandatory caption is prescribed. Some marks legally require adjacent wording in the local language, and that caption is regulated text with fixed phrasing, not a caption we are free to compose.
Proofing on the Dieline: The Step That Catches What Word Files Hide
Packaging translation is not finished when the text is approved. It is finished when the printed artwork is right. Between the translated text file and the final film, errors creep in through channels no linguistic review of a Word document can catch: a font substitution that drops French accents, a text box that swallowed the last line of the Spanish ingredient list, a hazard statement pasted onto the wrong panel by a designer who does not read the language.
Every packaging project we deliver therefore includes an in-context proof. Your studio places the translated text on the dieline, and the original translator reviews the artwork PDF panel by panel, checking accents, hyphenation, truncations, and placement. We annotate directly on the PDF and iterate with your designers until the artwork is signed off in each language. Our process follows ISO 17100, with an independent reviser before delivery and, for packaging, this additional artwork pass after it; as members of ATA and GALA we apply the profession's standard of a second set of qualified eyes at every stage. It is the least glamorous step we sell and the one that has saved the most print runs. Warning-specific labeling, where signal words and formats are standardized separately, is covered in depth by our safety label translators on a dedicated page, and the rest of our document coverage is listed here.
| Market | Core packaging rules | Language requirement |
|---|---|---|
| United States | FPLA / 16 CFR 500; FDA 21 CFR 101 for food, drugs, cosmetics | English; dual US customary and metric net quantity |
| Canada | Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act; Quebec Charter of the French Language (Bill 96) | English and French, equal prominence; French at least equal in Quebec |
| Mexico | NOM-050-SCFI-2004; NOM-051 for food and beverages; NOM-030 net content | Spanish for all mandatory information |
Packaging Translation: Questions We Hear Weekly
Our label barely fits the English text. How can it fit French and Spanish too?
By deciding early what must stay, what can compress, and what can become a symbol. Mandatory statements with prescribed wording keep their full length, and if they overflow we tell you before artwork is locked, so the dieline or panel allocation can change. Marketing copy is translated to a character budget, typically saving 15 to 25 percent against a literal version. Standardized pictograms replace text where regulations allow it. The one thing we refuse to do is shrink type below the legal minimum sizes.
Is Canadian French really different from the French used in France?
For packaging, yes, and Quebec regulators and consumers both notice. Vocabulary differs for everyday product terms, established Quebec usages are documented in the government terminology bank, and some European phrasings read as foreign or even change meaning. Since Bill 96 reinforced the Charter of the French Language, French text must also be at least as prominent as English on products sold in Quebec. We assign Canadian packaging to translators who work in Canadian French daily, rather than adapting European French after the fact.
What are Mexican NOMs and which ones apply to my product?
Normas Oficiales Mexicanas are mandatory technical regulations. For labeling, NOM-050-SCFI-2004 covers general commercial information on consumer products: Spanish text, net content, importer data, and origin. Food and non-alcoholic drinks fall under NOM-051, including the front-of-pack warning seals added in 2020. Sector NOMs add requirements for chemicals, textiles, electronics, and other categories. During quoting we identify the NOMs applicable to your product category and check the translated label against the current published text of each one.
Can you meet a two-week artwork deadline?
Usually, because label word counts are small and the schedule is dominated by review loops, not translation time. A typical multi-SKU label set translates in two to four business days. What we need from you to hold a two-week window: the dieline files at project start, a named contact who can answer regulatory questions within a day, and consolidated feedback rather than serial single comments. We flag anything that risks the printer's deadline in the first 48 hours, not at the end.
Do you provide regulatory validation, or only translation?
We translate to the applicable rules and verify the translated text against them: prescribed statements, mandatory content, prominence, and codified hazard wording. That catches the large majority of compliance failures that originate in translation. We are not a law firm, and final regulatory sign-off for your product category belongs with your compliance counsel or consultant. Many clients have us work directly with that reviewer; we implement their comments on the artwork and document every decision, which shortens the approval cycle considerably.
Will very small type sizes make the translation unreadable?
Regulations set floors precisely to prevent that: US, Canadian, and Mexican rules each prescribe minimum type heights scaled to package size, and we treat those floors as hard constraints. When translated text approaches them, we shorten the translation, restructure the panel with your designer, or move content to an accompanying leaflet where the rules permit it. During the artwork proof we review the PDF at print size, not zoomed in, specifically to judge whether accented characters and condensed fonts stay legible where the regulation says they must.