Common Mistakes When Translating Labels Into French

I've reviewed enough Canadian cosmetic labels to have a short list of the same mistakes, over and over, whenever a maker runs their English label through a translator and calls it done. Bilingual labeling in Canada isn't a straight translation job, it's a split job: some parts translate, some parts must not.

The rule in one sentence

Labels sold in Canada must be bilingual, English and French. That's the requirement. What trips people up is that "bilingual" doesn't mean "translate every word on the package," because INCI names are a standardized international naming system and they don't get translated at all.

What must NOT be translated

INCI names stay exactly as written, in both language versions of your ingredient list. Aqua stays Aqua, it doesn't become "Eau" just because that's the French word for water. Glycerin stays Glycerin. Sodium Chloride stays Sodium Chloride. This is true across essentially every market that uses the INCI system, not just Canada, because the entire point of INCI is that it's the same string of characters no matter what language surrounds it. A reviewer, retailer, or another maker anywhere in the world should be able to read your ingredient list and recognize every entry without needing translation.

The mistake I see constantly: someone runs the whole ingredient list through a translation tool along with the marketing copy, and Aqua becomes Eau, Parfum stays oddly untouched (because it happens to look French already, which is a separate irony), and now the ingredient list doesn't match the INCI standard at all. That's a real problem, not a cosmetic one, because it breaks the traceability that INCI naming exists to provide.

What MUST be properly translated

Everything that isn't an INCI name needs genuine, accurate French, not a literal word-for-word pass:

• Product name and marketing claims ("moisturizing," "gentle cleanser," "for sensitive skin")
• Usage directions
• Warnings and cautions
• Net quantity declarations (format matters here too, Canada has specific conventions)
• Company name and contact information formatting
• "Made in" or origin statements

This is where a bad machine translation actually causes damage, because these are the parts a consumer relies on for safe use. A warning that reads correctly in English but awkwardly or incorrectly in French because of a rushed translation tool pass isn't just embarrassing, it can be a genuine communication failure to a customer who reads the French side.

Quebec's language rules add another layer

Quebec has its own language requirements on top of the federal bilingual rule, and businesses selling into Quebec specifically should look closely at how French text needs to be presented relative to English, sizing, prominence, and placement can matter. This is genuinely provincial and worth checking directly with current Quebec language authority guidance if Quebec is a meaningful part of your market, because the specifics can shift and a blog post is the wrong place to lock in exact numbers.

A short list of translation traps

Trap	Why it happens	Fix
Translating INCI names	Translator doesn't recognize them as a standardized system	Lock INCI names as "do not translate" before running anything through a translator
Literal, robotic marketing copy	Word-for-word machine translation	Have a fluent speaker review claims and directions, not just approve raw output
Missing accents or special characters	Font or file encoding issues	Proof the final printed file, not just the digital draft
Inconsistent net quantity formatting	Different conventions assumed between languages	Check current formatting guidance for both language versions
Fragrance allergen names mistranslated	Allergens like Linalool or Coumarin are also INCI-style terms	Treat allergen names the same as INCI, unchanged

That last row deserves its own mention. As Canada's fragrance allergen disclosure rules phase in, List 1 becomes mandatory on the CNF and label on April 12, 2026, and List 2 becomes mandatory August 1, 2026, allergens like Limonene, Linalool, Citronellol, Geraniol, Eugenol, and Coumarin will show up on more labels. These are INCI-style entries too. They don't get a French version any more than Aqua does.

The practical workflow that avoids all of this

Separate your label into two buckets before translating anything: the INCI ingredient list, which stays locked and identical in both languages, and everything else, which gets a genuine, careful French translation, ideally reviewed by a fluent speaker rather than accepted straight from a machine tool.

Filing your CNF through the Cosmetic Notification System is a separate step from the label itself, but the two should always agree, the ingredients you declared on the CNF need to match what's printed on the package in both languages. Cosmetic Comply keeps that ingredient list consistent through the notification step, so it's at least one less place for a mismatch to creep in between what's filed and what's printed. The label translation itself is still a job for a careful human, not something to automate blindly.

If you take one thing from this, let it be that "bilingual" is not "translated." Half your label doesn't move. Get that half right and the rest is normal translation work.