You are a marketer in a small-to-medium manufacturing company, and global growth is your mission.
To support your sales teams, you’ve started translating your technical manuals. Or perhaps you work in an industry where regulations require translated documents to sell or export your products.
Either way, you are already familiar with the complexities of translating these highly technical, design-heavy documents without compromising accuracy. You’ve likely implemented some best practices, such as:
• Planning documents for translation
• Ensuring documents are formatted for efficient translation
• Collaborating with subject matter experts for review
However, as your translation efforts expand to accommodate more languages, you may encounter a bottleneck: how can you create a scalable translation process?
Many companies begin with a manual approach, only to realize that handling increasing translation volumes while maintaining accuracy, consistency, and cost efficiency is incredibly challenging. Common concerns include:
• How do I go from translating one brochure per quarter to one per month?
• How do I add more target languages without overloading my team?
• How do I ensure consistency across all translated documents?
• How can I make all this happen without exhausting my budget?
If these are your questions, this guide will help you implement best practices to scale your translation operations efficiently.
What Does a Scalable Translation Process Look Like?
Before diving into solutions, it’s useful to step back and define what a scalable translation operation should achieve.
A scalable translation process allows you to:
• Handle a high volume of translation projects, languages, and team members, including project managers and translators
• Apply quality assurance measures across all languages, ensuring translation accuracy and consistent terminology across various types of documentation
• Manage translation assets effectively, including terminology glossaries and previously translated documents using translation memory
• Involve the right team members at the right time, reducing bottlenecks and inefficiencies
However, many companies struggle to achieve this level of scalability when relying on manual processes alone. Without a structured system, manufacturers often face:
• Human errors from copying and pasting between documents
• Delays caused by dependencies on individuals or external agencies
• Inconsistent terminology across different manuals
To build an efficient, scalable translation process while minimizing manual tasks, many companies turn to a Translation Management System (TMS).
How a TMS Helps Scale Your Translations
A TMS is a purpose-built tool that helps companies streamline and scale their translation efforts. It offers specific features that allow teams to:
• Automatically extract text to reduce project setup time
• Generate draft translations instantly using machine translation or AI translation
• Reuse previous translations with translation memory, maintaining consistency and reducing costs
• Standardize terminology with built-in glossary management
• Simplify the revision process with automatic file formatting and revision-focused functionality
• Improve collaboration between marketers, translators, and reviewers
• Speed up turnaround times without sacrificing quality
That said, not all TMS solutions are created equal. First, you must understand your business needs and evaluate the right tool.
For example:
• If your team is spread across multiple locations, a cloud-based solution may be more beneficial than installed software.
• If you work with external, full-time translators, they may already be familiar with a TMS and require minimal onboarding. However, if you rely on internal team members, look for tools that are easy to use for first-time TMS users.
• If you translate into many languages, ensure the tool can scale easily and quickly to meet your needs.
• If you frequently update documents, such as user guides, technical manuals, or brochures, choose a tool with revision management features.
The right tool should seamlessly integrate into your workflow, simplify collaboration, and provide measurable benefits.
(Read our article on how to choose the right TMS for your business here.)
How Redokun Simplifies Technical Manual Translation
Many manufacturing companies struggle with the complexities of manual translation workflows—relying on spreadsheets, copy-pasting content, and managing multiple revisions across different teams. These challenges often lead to inefficiencies, delays, and increased costs.
The founders of Redokun experienced these same challenges firsthand. Before starting the company, they worked for a marketing agency that helped manufacturing companies translate their technical manuals created in InDesign files. They witnessed the difficulties manufacturers faced—managing large-scale translations while maintaining accuracy, keeping formatting intact, and ensuring consistency across multiple languages. They saw how traditional translation processes caused bottlenecks, wasted time, and increased costs. Determined to solve these problems, they built Redokun—a translation management system designed to streamline the process, improve collaboration, and maintain translation quality at scale.
Why Redokun is a Preferred Solution for Manufacturing Companies
• Supports Multiple File Formats for automatic text extraction and formatting – Whether your manuals are in InDesign, Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, Redokun lets you translate them while preserving the original formatting. Simply upload your document, let Redokun extract the text, and once the translation is complete, download the translated file fully formatted with the design and layout intact. No more copy-pasting or tedious reformatting.
• Ensures Terminology Consistency – Redokun’s built-in glossaries help translators maintain accuracy and adhere to industry standards. Even when using AI-powered machine translation, Redokun applies your glossaries to ensure key terms are translated correctly. Translators also receive prompts to use the right terminology, keeping translations consistent across all languages.
• Streamlines Collaboration—Your internal team, translators, and reviewers can collaborate in real-time, reducing back-and-forth emails and speeding up the translation process.
• Reduces Costs with Translation Memory – Every translated sentence is stored and reused when similar content appears in future projects. This prevents duplicate translations, reducing costs and maintaining consistency across documents.
• Helps You Own and Manage Your Translation Assets – Managing translations in multiple languages can be overwhelming. Whether you outsource fully or partially, Redokun ensures you retain full ownership of your translation memory and glossaries. This means that even if you switch vendors or expand your internal translation efforts, your assets remain consistent and accessible.
By integrating Redokun into your workflow, you can eliminate manual inefficiencies and reduce translation costs while maintaining high quality.
Case Study: How Carlisle Fluid Technologies Scaled Their Translation Efforts
Carlisle Fluid Technologies, a global leader in finishing and fluid handling solutions, faced major challenges with its manual translation process.
The Problem:
• Slow translation turnaround times delayed product launches
• Terminology inconsistencies across languages led to confusion
• High costs due to redundant translations of similar content
The Solution:
Carlisle adopted Redokun, a TMS that helped them:
• Leverage translation memory to reuse previous translations
• Maintain consistent terminology across documents
• Improve collaboration between translators and internal teams
The Results:
• 50 percent reduction in translation time
• $200,000 in cost savings within the first year
• Enhanced consistency across multiple languages
As a result, Carlisle Fluid Technologies streamlined its technical documentation process while maintaining high translation standards.
(Read their full story here.)
The Bottom Line
Scaling technical manual translation requires more than just increasing output—it’s about creating a structured, technology-driven process that ensures quality, consistency, and efficiency.
By implementing best practices and leveraging a TMS like Redokun, you can:
• Expand into new markets faster
• Reduce translation costs
• Ensure accuracy and compliance across all languages
• Own and manage your translation assets with ease
Marketers who successfully build a sustainable and scalable translation process can also support business growth more effectively. By ensuring accurate, high-quality translations at scale, they can:
• Meet regulatory requirements more efficiently
• Improve customer engagement and satisfaction
• Reduce miscommunication, and
• Help the company grow its sales in global markets.
If your company is looking for a smarter way to scale translations, now is the time to explore solutions that simplify the process and drive efficiency at scale.
Happy translating!
Cheers,
Hisako
