If your manufacturing business translates product manuals, safety instructions, or technical specs into multiple languages, you're likely already relying on machine translation (MT) in some form — even if it's just a translator on your team pasting text into Google Translate to speed things up.
Is your company capitalizing on the benefits of machine translation engines the right way?
Overview
- Why machine translation matters for manufacturing translation
- What are the types of machine translation systems?
- What are the best machine translation software for manufacturing SMEs?
Why Machine Translation Matters for Manufacturing Translation
Manufacturing translation isn't like translating marketing copy. A mistranslated safety instruction or a wrong torque spec isn't just embarrassing — it's a liability. That's exactly where MT software needs to be evaluated differently for your industry: not just "is it fast and cheap," but "does it handle repeated technical terminology consistently, and is it accurate enough for content where mistakes carry real consequences?"
MT software isn't meant to replace your translators, but to make their jobs easier and your terminology more consistent across every language you publish in.
Machine translation engines are integrated into powerful programs known as computer-assisted translation (CAT). Manufacturing companies use them to manage and streamline extensive documentation localization. Learn more here.
When used correctly, you can reap the benefits of machine translation engines, especially when it comes to speed and productivity.
Want to instantly understand how machine translation works in Redokun? Here's a 1-min video to help you with this:
Here's how:
1. Automation
MT engines can process and translate large amounts of technical documentation almost instantly. A technical writer with a 40-page manual to translate into six languages will tell you: speed matters.
2. Pre-translation for technical consistency
Many manufacturing teams use machine translation as pre-translation — a foundation their in-house team or reviewers can build on, especially when paired with a translation memory that keeps your product terminology locked in across every document.
3. Reliability for repeated terminology
For the kind of repeated technical phrasing common in manuals and spec sheets, MT combined with a glossary is a reliable, low-risk way to keep translations consistent — as long as someone reviews safety-critical content before it ships.
4. Cost-effective at scale
Machine translation typically costs a small fraction of manual, sentence-by-sentence translation — which matters when you're translating documentation across many product lines and markets.
Types of Machine Translation Systems
Each machine translation system has its own approach to understanding and reproducing language. For manufacturing SMEs, the type of system behind your MT engine affects how well it handles technical terminology and industry-specific language.
There are three types worth knowing about:
1. Statistical MT draws from large caches of previously-approved translations for a specific language pair (the bilingual corpora), using probability to predict the best match.
2. Neural MT organizes linguistic data into layered networks that resemble how we process language — generally faster and more nuanced than statistical MT, and the standard behind most modern MT engines today.
3. AI chatbot / LLM-based translation (ChatGPT, DeepL's newer AI-assisted features) is the newest category. These tools are particularly good at adjusting tone and phrasing on request — useful for customer-facing technical content — but they don't preserve document formatting, and long technical manuals can exceed their context window, creating consistency risk across a large document.
What's the right fit for your manufacturing business? It depends on:
• Your documentation type: Neural MT or a dedicated CAT tool is generally safer for safety-critical or highly technical content than an AI chatbot alone.
• Your language pairs: Some engines handle certain European language pairs better than others — worth testing with your actual terminology before committing.
• Your volume: If you're translating documentation across many product lines and markets, consistency (via translation memory and glossary) matters more than raw speed.
Thirsty for some stats? Check out these reports by inten.to on the performance of MT engines in different domains or take a look at the longest translation statistics list.
Best Machine Translation Software for Manufacturing SMEs
| Engine | Best for | Technical terminology handling | Preserves formatting |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Translate | Wide language coverage, lower-risk content | Fair — improves with neural MT | No (web/plain text) |
| DeepL | European language pairs, natural phrasing | Strong | Depends on tool used |
| Microsoft Translator | Teams working inside Word/Excel/PPT | Fair | Yes, within Office apps |
| AI chatbots (ChatGPT, DeepL AI) | Customer-facing tone/context adjustments | Weak on long technical docs | No |
A word of caution: machine translation has improved significantly, but it's not a substitute for human review — especially for manufacturing documentation. Safety instructions, compliance content, and technical specs should always be checked by a qualified translator before publication. Think of MT as a fast first draft, not the final word.
1. Google Translate
Google Translate is free, supports over 100 languages, and its neural translation system has improved significantly in recent years. For manufacturing SMEs with a wide range of language pairs and lower-risk content (internal reference documents, quick drafts), it's a reasonable starting point.
For privacy reasons, avoid uploading proprietary technical documents directly to Google Translate. Instead, access Google Translate through a secure CAT tool.
2. DeepL
DeepL covers a smaller set of languages than Google Translate, but its deep-learning approach tends to produce more natural, contextually accurate translations — particularly across major European language pairs, which matters if your manufacturing business is translating within the EU.
DeepL translations are available on Redokun, a CAT tool built for document translation. Find out more.
3. Microsoft Translator
Microsoft Translator supports over 70 languages and integrates directly into Microsoft's other products — useful if your technical documentation already lives in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. You can learn how to translate Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint slides directly within the software.
While the service is free for general use, you need a subscription plan for business integrations.
4. AI chatbots (ChatGPT, DeepL AI)
For customer-facing content where tone matters — product descriptions, marketing collateral accompanying technical documentation — an AI chatbot can produce more natural-sounding translations than traditional MT. It's not the right tool for safety-critical technical documentation on its own, since it doesn't preserve formatting and can lose consistency across long documents. Here's our guide on when AI translation makes sense.
Redokun: Have a Sneak Peek
Want to see Redokun in action? Have a sneak peek at how Redokun works without any commitment:
Summary
Machine translation should be a supplement to your team, not a replacement — especially for manufacturing documentation where accuracy and consistency matter more than raw speed. Paired with computer-assisted translation software and a solid glossary and translation memory, your team can produce accurate multilingual documentation without starting from scratch on every project. As your product lines and target markets grow, see our guide on scaling your technical manual translation for the next step.
In fact, you can try this today with a free trial of Redokun. Upload your file, invite a team member, and the web editor will suggest machine translations from Google Translate and DeepL, which your colleague can review and edit as needed.
You can also pre-translate the whole document first and then invite someone to edit. And that's it! The translation is complete in seconds.
With Redokun you could translate all of the Microsoft documents (Excel, Word, and PowerPoint), subtitles, XML documents, html files and here is how to translate pdf documents too; all while utilizing the power of translation memories.
We hope this article gave you insight into the best way to implement machine translation software in your manufacturing translation workflow.
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FAQs
Which machine translation software is best for manufacturing companies?
It depends on your documentation type and language pairs. For technical manuals and safety-critical content, neural MT engines like DeepL or Google Translate — combined with a translation memory and glossary — are generally more reliable than AI chatbots alone. For customer-facing content where tone matters more than strict terminology consistency, an AI chatbot can be a good complement.
Is machine translation accurate enough for safety-critical technical documentation?
Not on its own. MT is a strong starting point for pre-translation, but safety-critical content — installation instructions, safety warnings, compliance documentation — should always be reviewed by a qualified translator or subject-matter expert before publication.
What are the four types of machine translation?
The four types of machine translation are:
- Rule-based machine translation
- Statistical machine translation
- Neural machine translation
- Hybrid machine translation, with AI chatbot/LLM-based translation increasingly treated as a distinct category due to its different strengths and limitations.
