Clarins Global Retail Training team improved digital learning content with Smartcat Language AI translations

Clarins, the leading skincare and cosmetics company, places a strong emphasis on their frontliners’ training and development to ensure they are well-equipped with the knowledge and skills needed to excel in their roles. The Global Retail Training team at Clarins plays a pivotal role in this mission, overseeing the creation and localization of various learning materials for employees, salespeople, distributors, and partners worldwide. 

The Global Training team at Clarins, headquartered in Paris, France, is composed of 20 dedicated learning professionals, including five experts focused on digital learning. Additionally, Clarins has a network of learning staff stationed in global markets, responsible for reviewing translations to ensure quality and consistency. The team's primary responsibility is to create, localize, and distribute various learning and development content, such as:

• Information about new and existing products

• Brand story documentation and training materials

• Customer experience trainings

• Management guidelines for Store and Counter Managers

To cater to the diverse needs of their global employees, the team requires:

• PowerPoint presentation file translation

• XLIFF files to translate Articulate courses

• Course content for their mobile learning platform, Teach on Mars

• Subtitles for videos

Clarins' Global Training team realized that they needed a dedicated tool to improve the management of their content translation and localization.

Time consuming editing of translations
They wanted to achieve a more streamlined translation process as well as reduce time-consuming translation work for local employees who took on this task above and beyond their normal duties. 

Decentralization, issues with company-wide consistency, and siloed processes

They also wanted a more effective way to centralize their management of content in all languages and store these in a private central record to improve product naming and description consistency used across global teams.

Numerous file types to translate for many different use cases
Furthermore, they needed a translation tool that could support all of their required file formats, easily translate those in a few steps, and store them in one place. 

Clarins started using Smartcat in April 2023 and added their training staff to a common, collaborative workspace on the platform. There, they were able to fully centralize translation project management and benefit from the wide range of features provided, such as:

Adaptive AI learns from Clarins brand voice and terminology as well as every update made by every member of your team, to help them not have to make the same edits more than once. 

The team could take advantage of collaborative workflows within a common workspace and translation editor as a means to work on the content in sync and get live updates on progress. Smartcat is built for simplicity so that anyone is able to use it, even if they’re not a localization professional.

By centralizing all translations within the Smartcat platform, Clarins created a single repository of global learning content in all languages. This centralization makes it easier for experts in local markets to review and verify content for accuracy, while also ensuring consistency across languages.

• AI linguistic assets, including translation memories and glossaries

• a central repository for their multilingual content 

Clarins established a translation workflow that has now been working for their global team:

1. The team uploads learning content files onto the Smartcat platform or the custom API integration continuously pulls them in.
   
   

2. They use Smartcat AI to translate the content in seconds. The AI utilizes Clarins' translation memories, glossaries, and existing content to ensure high-quality translations that align with the brand's voice, style, and terminology.
   
   

3. Learning teams in local markets review and verify translations within the user-friendly Smartcat Editor, making necessary edits 

4. Local teams can download the translated content in the required file format to be used in their training.

To efficiently manage translation and localization efforts, Clarins also implemented a custom integration with the Smartcat API, which allows them to seamlessly transfer product content from Clarins' internal product library into the Smartcat platform for translation. Once translated, the content is synchronized back into the product library. 

This product library serves as a critical resource, ensuring that all global salespeople have access to up-to-date product information in their local language, enabling them to effectively communicate with customers.

Clarins entrusts the Smartcat platform to translate the learning content into a total of 12 languages, encompassing both European and Asian languages. The integration with Smartcat simplifies and automates the translation process, making it more efficient for Clarins to achieve its global training and development objectives. The product library translates more languages in addition to the 12 mentioned above. 

Smartcat streamlines the translation of training documents for Clarins' local employees worldwide. Smartcat AI allows them to get translations in seconds and review these for accuracy in Smartcat Editor.

Smartcat AI, which includes translation memory, learns from Clarin's content as well as edits made by local experts via adaptive learning loops. As a result, AI translation accuracy increases over time and Clarins can maintain content consistency across all languages and channels.

The Smartcat platform simplifies project management for Clarins, particularly in terms of coordinating information sharing among global teams. This streamlined workflow allows for more efficient collaboration and reduces the risk of miscommunication.

Clarins' collaboration with Smartcat not only simplifies the translation and localization of training content but also yields substantial benefits in terms of quality, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness. By harnessing the power of Smartcat's platform and AI capabilities, Clarins successfully addresses the challenges of managing global training and development materials, thereby ensuring that their global workforce is equipped with the knowledge and resources needed for success.