Most ecommerce and D2C leaders don’t set out to communicate badly. They localize to
prioritize reach, growth, and conversion. They translate their website, product listings, ads, and emails from English to Hindi, feel confident they’ve “covered the market,” and move on.
And then, nothing much happens.
Traffic comes in, but bounce rates stay high. Campaign CTRs underperform. Customers hesitate, abandon carts, or ask basic questions that the page supposedly already answers.
The problem isn’t language.
It’s how language is being treated.
Word-for-word translation feels safe. It’s fast, measurable, and looks accurate on paper. But in marketing communication, especially in ecommerce, it often does more harm than good.
The Hidden Assumption Behind Word-for-Word Translation
Literal translation assumes that meaning travels intact from one language to another. In reality, meaning is cultural, contextual, and emotional.
English marketing copy is built around:
- Direct calls to action
- Benefit-first framing
- Individual decision-making
- Globalized metaphors (“value,” “performance,” “upgrade”)
Hindi and other Indian languages often respond better to:
- Reassurance before persuasion
- Relationship and trust signals
- Familiar phrases over abstract claims
- Cultural rhythm rather than grammatical precision
When brands ignore this, the result isn’t offensive or wrong. It’s worse: it’s forgettable.
As one often-cited insight from Harvard Business Review puts it, consumers don’t just process information, they interpret it through lived experience. Literal translation preserves words, not interpretation.
Why This Hits Ecommerce and D2C Especially Hard?
In physical retail, a store assistant can bridge language gaps with tone, gestures, and reassurance. Online, language is the experience.
Here’s where word-for-word translation quietly fails ecommerce brands:
1. Product Pages Lose Their Persuasive Edge
Most English product pages are built around features. They list benefits confidently and assume the reader will connect the dots. In English, these feel familiar. In Hindi, literal translations can sound vague or exaggerated, like marketing talk with no real-world anchor.
Indian shoppers usually respond better to reassurance than hype. They want to know if something works for their daily use (“roz ke istemal ke liye”) or whether it’s suitable for Indian weather (“garmi aur humidity ke liye upyukt”).
The product hasn’t changed. The emotional response has. And that difference often decides whether a shopper scrolls on or stays.
2. CTAs Don’t Always Invite Action
Calls to action such as “Buy Now” or “Add to Cart” work in English because they’re culturally accepted.They are straightforward, transactional, and expected.
If you don’t frame it carefully, that same directness can come out as rude in Hindi. A direct instruction can seem cold or hasty, especially to people who are buying for the first time.
Small shifts in wording, adding a note of reassurance or familiarity, can make a big difference to click-through rates.
This is one reason many D2C brands see healthy traffic on regional landing pages, but weaker conversions. The intent is there. The language just isn’t inviting enough to act.
3. Brand Voice Slowly Slips Away
Many D2C brands spend years shaping their voice: friendly, modern, maybe a little playful. Literal translation tends to flatten all of that.
Humor doesn’t land. Warmth disappears. The brand suddenly sounds stiff, almost like a government notice instead of a consumer brand.
Customers may not consciously notice what’s wrong, but they feel it. And when language feels slightly “off,” credibility erodes in small, invisible ways.
Over time, that loss of personality can cost more than any pricing or performance issue ever will.
English to Hindi Translation: Where Most Brands Go Wrong
The problem isn’t moving from English to Hindi. It’s carrying English thinking straight into Hindi words.
Marketing copy is never neutral. Beneath the surface, it carries assumptions about lifestyle, signals of aspiration, and emotional cues around status, quality, and belonging. These ideas are shaped by culture long before they’re shaped by language.
When those assumptions don’t line up with how people actually live and decide, translation stops helping. It starts creating friction.
That’s why many fast-growing ecommerce brands are moving away from plain translation. They’re choosing transcreation instead—rewriting messages so the intent lands naturally, even if the words change completely.
Because in marketing, being understood matters more than being literal.
What Works Better Than Word-for-Word Translation
Successful regional marketing focuses on message equivalence, not sentence equivalence.
That means asking:
- What is this message trying to make the customer feel?
- What doubt is it trying to remove?
- What action should feel natural after reading it?
Only then does language come into play.
Some Indian D2C brands now involve native-language marketers, not just translators, in campaign creation. Others use language platforms like Devnagri to ensure translations reflect cultural nuance, not just dictionary accuracy.
The difference shows up quickly in engagement metrics.
The Bigger Picture
India’s ecommerce growth won’t be unlocked by more languages alone. It will be unlocked by better communication.
Word-for-word translation checks a box. Culturally fluent marketing builds trust, recall, and conversion.
In a market where millions are shopping online in their preferred language for the first time, how you speak matters as much as what you sell. Because customers don’t buy words, they buy understanding.