Brooklyn, NY · Translation & localization
Packaging, help-center content and onboarding emails, carried from English into Spanish, Portuguese and French and read by a native speaker before anything is released.


ENHand wash only
ESLavar a mano
PTLavar à mão
FRLavage à la main
Plate I — Copy in three languages, set to the panel
Four practices govern every engagement, whether it is a single carton or a full help center.
Before the first sentence is translated, we fix the term base: product names, ingredients, materials, and the words that are never translated.
A translator drafts. A separate native-speaker reviewer reads the result against the source, in context, and signs it off.
Mexican or Castilian Spanish. Brazilian or European Portuguese. French for France or Québec. The market is settled before the words.
Packaging copy is fitted to panel and character limits, and returned as a proof PDF your designer can place directly.
Bobbin & Thread is a translation and localization studio in Brooklyn, NY, engaged only by consumer product brands. We take the words a customer meets in the first week of ownership, on the carton, in the welcome email, in the help center, and carry them from English into Spanish, Portuguese and French.
The name is the method. A bobbin holds the thread that keeps a seam consistent from one end of the garment to the other; a glossary does the same for a product line. Each project is scoped in writing, quoted at a fixed price, and delivered in the file formats your team already uses.
Four milestones, left to right, in the order brands usually need them. Each is a fixed project fee. Rates below cover the typical scope; larger catalogs are quoted after we see the source files.
Projects are invoiced by ACH, check or card. A written quote with scope and fee is issued before any work begins.
The material we work with, photographed in motion: cartons, screens, thread and the city outside the window.





The plates are long exposures: movement reduced to a single line of light. We hold copy to the same standard. The reader should notice the meaning, never the mechanism.
A label is read once, in a hurry, by someone holding the product. It has to be right the first time.
House standard · Bobbin & Thread, Brooklyn
Procurement, legal and design teams tend to ask the same six things. The answers are on record here.
As a fixed project fee, quoted in writing after we have seen your source files. The package rates above describe typical scopes; larger SKU counts or article libraries are quoted by volume and agreed before work starts.
Every file is drafted by one linguist and then read against the source by a second, native-speaker reviewer working in the target market’s variant. The reviewer’s corrections are folded into your glossary.
Spanish for Mexico, the U.S. Latino market or Spain; Portuguese for Brazil (default) or Portugal; French for France (default) or Québec. We confirm the variant with you in the scoping note.
We translate it faithfully and flag anything that looks market-specific. Legal sign-off for each country remains with your regulatory counsel; we supply a clean bilingual file for them to review.
Word and Google Docs, spreadsheets, CSV, JSON and XLIFF exports from your help desk or email platform, and dieline PDFs with a live text layer for packaging.
A packaging pass of up to six SKUs typically returns in 5 business days; a help-center library in two to three weeks. Rush handling in 3 business days is available at +35% of the project fee.
| Monday – Friday | 9:30am – 5:30pm |
| Saturday – Sunday | Closed |
Visits are by appointment; telephone (609) 462-4024 or write info@bobbintranslation.com.
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