Overview

Amazon.ca has begun automatically converting English text that appears on product images into French for shoppers who select French as their browsing language. The rollout, effective immediately, aims to give francophone buyers a fully localized visual experience and could boost conversion rates for sellers on the Canadian marketplace without requiring any extra effort from them.

Key Points

• Automatic language swap — Any textual element embedded in a product photo will be rendered in French whenever a customer’s Amazon.ca interface is set to French, e.g., “Water‑Resistant” becomes “Résistant à l’eau.”
• English listings stay unchanged — Buyers who browse in English continue to see the original English overlay exactly as the seller uploaded it, preserving the existing experience for the majority of Canadian shoppers.
• No new image uploads required — Amazon’s system handles translation and image rendering on the fly, so sellers do not need to create separate French‑language graphics or replace existing files.
• Limited to the Canadian marketplace — The feature is active only on Amazon.ca, reflecting Canada’s official bilingual policy and not affecting listings on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, or other global sites.
• Translation quality ties to source clarity — Simple, concise callouts such as “100 % Cotton” translate cleanly, while longer sentences or idiomatic phrases like “Fits like a glove” may produce awkward French equivalents.
• Potential layout adjustments — Because French text often occupies more characters, an overlay that fits neatly in English (e.g., “30 ml”) might overflow in French (“30 ml – 30 millilitres”), prompting sellers to review image spacing.

How Automatic French Overlays Work

1. Language detection — When a shopper logs into Amazon.ca and selects French as the display language, the platform flags the session for bilingual rendering. For example, a Quebec‑based buyer viewing a “Bluetooth Speaker” listing will trigger the French overlay pipeline.
2. Text extraction from the image — Amazon’s image‑processing engine scans the uploaded picture, identifies any embedded text strings, and isolates them for translation. If the original image contains the phrase “Long Battery Life,” the engine captures that exact string.