PassPer / Resources / Multilingual passports
Product capability

Your passport reads in the language of the market you sell into.

A Digital Product Passport is scanned by consumers in Lisbon, customs officers in Rotterdam and recyclers in Gothenburg — often on the same product. English-only passports assume every one of them reads English. PassPer renders the full field structure in eight EU languages, chosen automatically from the scanning device, with the declared values left untouched.

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In one line: the passport detects the scanner’s language and renders every field label in it — across eight EU languages — while your declared values stay exactly as you filed them.

Why one language is a problem

The passport is not a document you send to a customer. It is a public surface, reached from a QR code on the product, by whoever happens to be holding it — a shopper, a customs officer at the border, a repair technician, a recycler at end of life. Those people are distributed across the whole single market, and EU product-information rules generally expect information intended for consumers and authorities to be available in the language of the member state where the product is placed on the market.

An English-only passport quietly assumes all of them read English. For a company selling into six markets, that is an awkward position to defend — and an easy question to be asked in a procurement review.

How PassPer handles it

Every field label, section heading and interface string is translated into eight EU languages: English, German, Dutch, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Swedish. When someone scans the code, the passport reads the language preference their device already sends and renders in that language — no setting, no account, no app.

What we translate — and what we deliberately do not

There is an important line here, and getting it wrong would be worse than doing nothing. PassPer translates the structural layer: the labels that name each data point, the section headings, the units and the interface. That layer is fixed regulatory vocabulary, translated once against the official published terminology of the Batteries Regulation and ESPR.

PassPer does not machine-translate your declared values. A mistranslated substance declaration, safety instruction or care label is a compliance problem, and it would be your name on it. Where a value needs to exist in several languages, you supply it — the platform carries it, it does not invent it.

What this changes commercially

For a single-market seller, this is a nicety. For anyone selling across the EU — which is most importers and most brands of any scale — it removes a question that otherwise has no good answer. “Can it show in Polish?” is the kind of thing that ends an evaluation quietly.

It also costs you nothing extra: multilingual rendering is part of the platform, not a localisation project priced per language. If you want to see it, scan a demo passport with your phone set to any of the eight languages and watch the labels change.

Frequently asked questions

Does a Digital Product Passport have to be in the local language?
EU product-information rules generally require information intended for consumers and authorities to be available in the language of the member state where the product is placed on the market. A passport that only renders in English is therefore a weak position for anyone selling across several markets, even where enforcement practice is still developing.
Which languages does PassPer render?
English plus German, Dutch, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Swedish. The passport detects the language of the device scanning it and renders in that language automatically, with a switcher for anyone who needs a different one — a customs officer on a German laptop can read the Italian rendering.
Are my product values translated too?
No, and deliberately so. PassPer translates the structural layer — field labels, section headings, units and interface text. The declared values stay exactly as you supplied them. Machine-translating a substance declaration or a safety instruction would create a compliance risk we are not prepared to hand you.
What happens if a language is missing?
The passport falls back to English, then to any language that is populated, and never renders blank. A missing translation degrades the reading experience; it never breaks the mandated data.

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