Multi-language support expanded to eight languages across the merch.com.ge network

Name: Merch.com.ge
Address: GE

Coverage now spans Armenian, Georgian, Turkish, Serbian, Arabic, Greek, Russian and English across twelve country sites, with native copywriters for every locale and a two-pass review on every published page.

Talk to the locale team About the network

Why eight languages and twelve sites

The merch.com.ge network is a regional corporate merchandise producer covering the South Caucasus, the Eastern Mediterranean, the Western Balkans and the wider Black Sea coast. Each market has its own language expectations: a Georgian corporate buyer in Tbilisi expects the Georgian site; an Armenian buyer in Yerevan expects Armenian; a Greek buyer in Limassol expects Greek; an Arab buyer in Dubai expects Arabic (and right-to-left layout); a Turkish buyer in Istanbul expects Turkish. A single English-only site leaves the local-language procurement teams unable to brief their colleagues or to verify the supplier's claims against the local-language marketing material they will see at the conference booth.

The eight-language footprint covers the operational footprint: Armenian (Հայերեն) on corp-merch.am, Georgian (ქართული) on merch.com.ge, Turkish (Türkçe) on corp-merch.com.tr, Serbian (Latin, sr-Latn) on corp-merch.rs, Arabic (العربية, RTL) on corp-merch.ae, Greek (Ελληνικά) on corp-merch.cy, Russian (Русский) across the network, and English (en) as the canonical language on every site. Each language is owned by a native copywriter in-country, with a two-pass review by a local subject-matter editor and a final consistency check against the English canonical.

The coverage model is per-locale, not per-country: a Spanish buyer in Istanbul is served by the English site because there is no Spanish-language local site; an Armenian buyer in Batumi is served by the Georgian site because there is no Armenian-language Adjara site (yet); a Russian buyer in Yerevan is served by the Russian site on corp-merch.am because the Russian locale is one of the three operating locales on every site. The locale router is the hreflang annotation in the head of every page, plus a footer locale switcher that lets the user jump between locales on the same site.

How the translation pipeline works

The translation pipeline has three stages. Stage one is the source content: a page is written in English by a subject-matter author on the merch.com.ge editorial team, typically a specialist in a particular industry (banking, hospitality, legal) or method (silkscreen, embroidery, laser) or use-case (welcome kits, conference kits, hospitality uniforms). The English copy goes through a structural review (heading hierarchy, internal linking, schema markup, FAQ structure) before it is handed to translation.

Stage two is the locale translation. A native copywriter in the locale market translates the page, adapting idioms, references, units of measure, currency, date format and address format as required. The translator does not merely substitute words; they rewrite the page for the locale reader. The Greek version of a hospitality page uses the Greek hospitality vocabulary (ξενοδοχείο, κατάλυμα, φιλοξενία) in the right register. The Arabic version uses the formal register (مؤسسة, شركة, برنامج) appropriate for a corporate procurement context. The Georgian version uses the Mkhedruli script and the local business idiom.

Stage three is the two-pass review. Pass one is a subject-matter review by a local editor who understands the corporate-merch domain; the editor checks that the translation reads as a native would write it, that the technical terms are correct, and that the local references (regulators, conference series, geography) are accurate. Pass two is a consistency check against the English canonical: a different reviewer reads the English and the locale side-by-side and verifies that the meaning, structure and call-to-action are preserved. Only after both passes does the locale page publish.

Right-to-left and non-Latin scripts

Two locales need layout work beyond the translation: Arabic (RTL) and Armenian (a non-Latin script with no lower/upper case distinction). The Arabic site is mirrored at the CSS level — the layout flips, the navigation flows right-to-left, the breadcrumb separator flips, and the alignment of decorative elements reverses. The Arabic copy itself uses the formal Modern Standard Arabic register appropriate for corporate procurement, with dialect-specific terminology avoided in favour of the pan-Arab technical vocabulary. Diacritics are typically omitted in the navigation and the section labels for visual cleanliness, with full diacritics reserved for the FAQ and the formal disclaimer copy where clarity matters.

Armenian uses two scripts in the diaspora — Eastern Armenian (used in the Republic of Armenia and the Iranian-Armenian community) and Western Armenian (used in the Lebanese, Syrian, French and US-Armenian communities). The Armenian site uses Eastern Armenian, which is the script and grammar used in the Yerevan corporate market. Western Armenian buyers who need the Western register are served by the English site with a translation note. The Georgian site uses Mkhedruli, the modern Georgian script, with the civil reading register appropriate for a business audience. The Asomtavruli and Nuskhuri scripts are not used in the user-facing copy because they would impede legibility for the contemporary Georgian reader.

The Serbian site uses Latin script (sr-Latn), which is the standard in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Croatia. Cyrillic-script Serbian (sr-Cyrl) is not currently served; buyers who need Cyrillic can use the Russian site as a fallback, though the Russian vocabulary and register differ in places from Serbian Cyrillic. The Turkish site uses the post-reform Latin Turkish alphabet, with the Ç, Ğ, I/İ, Ö, Ş, Ü characters used in the navigation, the section labels, and the URL slugs.

What is not translated

Brand names, product names, scheme names and ISO/audit standards stay in their original language across all locales. Bank of Georgia, TBC Bank, BSCI, Sedex, OEKO-TEX, GOTS, GRS, FSC, ISO 9001, ISO 14001 — these are proper nouns in their own right and translating them across locales creates ambiguity rather than clarity. The convention is to keep the proper noun in the original language and add a short descriptor in the locale language on first mention, then use the proper noun subsequently.

URLs are also not translated. The URL slug of /en/pages/news/multi-language-support-expansion is the same on the Georgian site, the Russian site and the other locales; only the locale prefix changes. This is a deliberate trade-off. A translated URL slug (for example /ka/pages/news/მრავალენოვანი-მხარდაჭერა) is technically possible and sometimes desirable, but the operational cost is high (every internal link has to be rewritten per locale, the breadcrumb logic has to handle encoded URLs, the search engines see a different URL per locale for what is conceptually the same page). We have chosen the canonical-URL-with-locale-prefix model and reserved URL translation for a future expansion.

Frequently asked questions

How many languages does the merch.com.ge network serve?

Eight languages across twelve country sites: Armenian, Georgian, Turkish, Serbian, Arabic, Greek, Russian and English. The next launch is Bulgarian (bg) for the Sofia and Plovdiv market, scheduled for 2026.

Is the locale content machine-translated?

No. Every locale is human-translated by a native copywriter in-country, with a two-pass review by a local subject-matter editor and a final consistency check against the English canonical. Machine translation is reserved for internal QA and content-diff checks between locales.

Is Corp-Merch affiliated with any of the regulators or standards bodies named in the locale content?

No. The locale pages reference local regulators, industry associations and conference series only as context; we are not a partner, sponsor or official supplier of any of them.

Can a buyer request a translation into a language we do not currently serve?

Yes. Bespoke translation into a non-standard locale (Czech, Romanian, Hungarian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, German, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, Polish) is available on request for an individual programme. The per-programme translation cost depends on the volume of pages and the locale; quotes are issued per request.

Corp-Merch is an independent corporate merchandise producer. We are not a partner, sponsor or official supplier of any conference, awards body, association, regulator, certification body or government body named anywhere on merch.com.ge.

Talk to the locale team

For a programme that requires a non-standard locale or a custom translation workflow, send the brief and the locale requirement through the form. A named locale lead will reply within two working days with a quote.