AI WORLD HQTranslate a product description into Spanish and French with Cohere
Paste your English product copy and get clean Spanish and French versions you can drop straight into your online store.
In short: Use Cohere's free Playground to turn one English product description into Spanish and French in a single prompt. You'll need a Cohere account (free to start), and the result is a strong first draft — you should still read it through before publishing.
By the end of this guide, you'll have two ready-to-use product descriptions — one in Spanish, one in French — sitting in your store or in a backup doc. This walkthrough is for small business owners and marketers who want a fast, good-enough first draft without hiring a translator for every product.
💡 Tip: tap a step’s number when you finish it — a green tick appears and your browser remembers how far you got.
- A free Cohere account. Sign-up takes about 2 minutes at the official Cohere site.
- Your English product description. Copy it from your store or product sheet and have it ready to paste.
- Roughly 10 minutes. Most of that is reading and double-checking the AI's answer.
- A free plan is enough for this task. Cohere may limit how many messages you can send per minute, but a single product description easily fits inside the free tier.
A quick note on what Cohere cannot do for this task: it won't catch every specialist word (a fabric name, a regulatory phrase, a brand-specific term) and it isn't a substitute for a sworn legal translation. Treat its output as a polished first draft, not a final one.
Create your free Cohere account
Open your browser and go to Cohere's homepage. Click the button in the top-right corner — it's usually labeled "Sign up", "Get started", or "Try for free". You'll land on a sign-up page. You can register with your email and a password, or click the Google or GitHub button to skip the form. After signing up, Cohere may send a confirmation email; open it and click the verification link inside before you continue.
If the button wording looks different ("Get API key" or "Start building"), click that instead — it leads to the same dashboard. Cohere updates its labels often.
You'll know it worked when you see a screen that greets you by name, or a dashboard page that lists "Playground" as one of the options.
Open the Playground
Once you're signed in, look at the left-hand navigation menu and click the item labeled "Playground" (it may also be called "Try it now" or sit under a "Tools" header). A new screen opens with two big text boxes side by side: a prompt box on the left where you type your request, and a response box on the right where the AI's answer will appear. At the top of the panel there's a dropdown menu for choosing which AI model to use — leave it on the default for now.
If you don't see a left-hand menu, look in the top-left corner for a "hamburger" button — three horizontal lines — and click it. On a smaller screen or a narrow window, the menu hides behind that icon.
You'll know it worked when you see two empty boxes labeled something like "Prompt" (left) and "Response" or "Output" (right), with a "Generate" button near the bottom of the prompt box.
Paste your English copy and write a clear instruction
Click inside the prompt box on the left. Press Ctrl+V (Windows) or Cmd+V (Mac) to paste your English product description directly into the box — don't retype it, that introduces typos. Now add a short instruction above or below the pasted text, telling the AI exactly what you want: which languages, what tone, and how to label the answer.
If your description has unusual characters (curly quotes, em dashes), don't worry — they paste fine. If the box only shows part of your text, that's normal; the AI can still read the whole input.
You'll know it worked when the pasted English text shows up inside the prompt box, with the same line breaks as in your original.
Generate both translations
Click the button at the bottom of the prompt box — look for "Generate", or a play-arrow icon (▶). The right-hand box will start filling with the AI's answer. Most product descriptions finish in under 30 seconds; longer ones may take up to a minute. When it's done, you'll see two clearly separated blocks: one Spanish version, one French version, each labeled.
If nothing appears after a minute, click the button once more — the first click sometimes doesn't register. If you only get one language, the prompt may have been cut off; see Step 5.
You'll know it worked when you can read two separate paragraphs, one Spanish and one French, each with its own label.
Ask for a redo if anything feels off
If a translation sounds too stiff, too long, or just doesn't read like something your customers would say, you don't have to start over. In the same playground panel, click at the end of the previous answer (or in a new prompt box that appears below it) and type what you'd like changed. The model treats the new message as a follow-up, so it knows what you're reacting to.
If the playground doesn't keep a chat history, paste the previous answer back into the prompt box and ask for the rewrite from scratch — slower, but it still works.
You'll know it worked when the new reply shows the changed version, and any language you asked to keep untouched is still there in the right language.
Copy each version into your store
Highlight the Spanish text in the response box, copy it (Ctrl+C or Cmd+C), and paste it into your store's Spanish-language product page or into a translations spreadsheet. Then go back and do the same with the French text. Save the originals somewhere you'll find again — a Google Doc, a Notion page, or a spreadsheet with one row per product and one column per language.
If your store only has a single language field, save the translations in a notes app or a Google Doc titled with the product name, so you can find them later.
You'll know it worked when both Spanish and French versions sit in your store (or in your backup doc), readable, with no garbled characters, no English words left over, and a clear label on each.
- Pasting the description alone. If you only paste the description with no instruction, you may get stiff, word-for-word translations. Always tell the AI the tone (friendly, professional, playful) and who's reading (shoppers, parents, professionals).
- Trusting the output blindly. Cohere is strong at everyday language but can mistranslate specialist words (a specific fabric, a regulatory term, a brand name). Read both versions out loud — anything you wouldn't say yourself is worth fixing.
- Forgetting to save your English source. If you close the playground and come back later, the original prompt may be gone. Keep your best English wording in a doc alongside the translations, so future edits have a single source of truth.
- Mixing up the labels. The AI sometimes merges Spanish and French into one block, or swaps the order. Always scan for the "Spanish:" and "French:" headers before you copy — that's how you know which version is which.
Open Cohere's Playground, paste this exact prompt, and replace the bracketed text with your own description: "Translate the following product description into natural Spanish and natural French. Label each version clearly. Here is the description: [paste your English product copy here]." Hit Generate, read the result out loud, and save the two versions somewhere you'll find them again.
❓ Quick questions
How long does this take?
About 6 minutes — the guide has 6 steps, and you can tick each one off as you go.
Which tool do I need?
This guide uses Cohere Cohere — but the approach works very similarly in other AI assistants.
Do I need to prepare anything?
- A free Cohere account. Sign-up takes about 2 minutes at the official Cohere site.
- Your English product description. Copy it from your store or product sheet and have it ready to paste.
- Roughly 10 minutes. Most of that is reading and double-checking the AI's answer.
- A free plan is enough for this task. Cohere may limit how many messages you can send per minute, but a single product description easily fits inside the free tier.
A quick note on what Cohere cannot do for this task: it won't catch every specialist word (a fabric name, a regulatory phrase, a brand-specific term) and it isn't a substitute for a sworn legal translation. Treat its output as a polished first draft, not a final one.
What mistakes should I avoid?
- Pasting the description alone. If you only paste the description with no instruction, you may get stiff, word-for-word translations. Always tell the AI the tone (friendly, professional, playful) and who's reading (shoppers, parents, professionals).
- Trusting the output blindly. Cohere is strong at everyday language but can mistranslate specialist words (a specific fabric, a regulatory term, a brand name). Read both versions out loud — anything you wouldn't say yourself is worth fixing.
- Forgetting to save your English source. If you close the playground and come back later, the original prompt may be gone. Keep your best English wording in a doc alongside the translations, so future edits have a single source of truth.
- Mixing up the labels. The AI sometimes merges Spanish and French into one block, or swaps the order. Always scan for the "Spanish:" and "French:" headers before you copy — that's how you know which version is which.
Keep reading
✦ Original step-by-step guide by AI World HQ's AI editorial team. Written in plain language, reviewed for accuracy.
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