The problem most manufacturing marketers know too well
You've just finalized this year's product catalog. 40 pages. Translated into four languages. Months of back-and-forth with translators, reviewers, and your design team.
Six months later, the catalog needs updating. New pricing. A revised product description. A couple of new items.
So what happens? The translator starts over. Or your team digs through old spreadsheets and email threads trying to find last year's approved translations. Or worse — no one can find them, and the same content gets translated again from scratch, slightly differently this time, creating inconsistencies across markets.
Sound familiar?
This is exactly the problem Translation Memory solves.
So, what is Translation Memory?
Translation Memory (TM) is a database that stores every sentence your team has ever translated and approved automatically, in the background, as you work.
Every time you translate a new document, the system looks at your new content and compares it to everything in your database. When it finds a match — a sentence that's identical or very similar to something you've translated before — it surfaces that previous translation as a suggestion.
You review it, accept it (or tweak it if something changed), and move on.
That's it. No manual searching. No copy-pasting from old files. No starting from scratch.
The "so what": For manufacturing companies that regularly update technical documents, product catalogs, and marketing materials, this means that every project you complete today makes your next one faster and cheaper. Your Translation Memory grows with every project, and so does its value.
How it works in practice
Imagine you publish a product data sheet for a piece of industrial equipment. You've confirmed the German translation of every segment — technical specs, safety warnings, product descriptions, your company tagline.
Six months later, you release an updated version of the data sheet. The specs changed on two pages, but 80% of the content is the same as before.
When you upload the new document to Redokun, Translation Memory automatically identifies the unchanged segments and pre-fills them with your previously approved translations. Your translators only need to focus on what's actually new.
The result: Instead of translating 40 pages, your team reviews 8. The rest is already done.
But Translation Memory doesn't just work within a single document. It works across your entire document library. Say your product description appears in a brochure, a technical data sheet, and a sales presentation. Once you've approved the translation in one document, Redokun will recognize that same sentence in every other document you upload in the future and suggest the same approved translation automatically. Your brochure, your data sheet, and your sales deck will all say exactly the same thing — in every language — without anyone having to coordinate it manually.
There are two types of matches Translation Memory can find:
- 100% matches — the segment in your new document is word-for-word identical to one you've translated before. These can usually be accepted as-is.
- Fuzzy matches — the segment is similar, but not identical. Maybe a number changed, ora word was added. The system flags it so a translator can quickly review and adjust rather than write it from scratch.
Why this matters especially for manufacturing marketers
Manufacturing companies produce a particular type of content that Translation Memory is built for: documents that are detailed, technical, consistent in tone — and updated regularly.
Think about the content your team manages:
- Product catalogs updated annually or per season
- Technical data sheets revised with each product generation
- User manuals and safety guides that carry over large sections from version to version
- Sales brochures with recurring product descriptions, company boilerplate, and certifications
- Training materials that are refreshed but rarely rebuilt from scratch
All of this content has something in common: a large portion of it stays the same from one version to the next. That's exactly where Translation Memory delivers the most value.
The "so what": The more documents your team translates, the richer your database becomes. A manufacturing company that's been translating catalogs for five years is sitting on an incredibly valuable asset, if they've been usingTranslation Memory. Every confirmed segment is money in the bank for future projects.
The consistency benefit — often overlooked
Speed and cost savings are the obvious wins. But there's another benefit that matters just as much for manufacturing companies: consistency.
Your products need to be described the same way across every language, every document, every market. A motor that's called a "brushless DC drive" in your German catalog shouldn't become a "DC brushless motor" in your Italian one — especially when that terminology flows into technical documentation, safety certifications, and distributor communications.
Translation Memory guarantees that once you've approved a translation, it's used exactly the same way every time that segment appears — regardless of which translator is working on the document.
The "so what": This matters for brand perception, but it also matters for compliance. In regulated industries, inconsistent terminology in technical documents can create real problems. Translation Memory is your safeguard.
A common misconception: "Our documents aren't repetitive enough"
Some teams assume Translation Memory won't help them because their content changes too much between versions.
The reality is that most manufacturing documents have far more repetition than people realize, especially across a document library. Product category descriptions, company introductions, safety disclaimers, certification statements, warranty clauses — these appear across dozens of documents and rarely change significantly.
Even fuzzy matches (sentences that are similar but not identical) save significant time, because a translator editing an existing approved translation is much faster than writing a new one from scratch.
The "so what": Even if only 30–40% of your content matches previous translations, that's still 30–40% less work on every project going forward.
Translation Memory vs. AI translation: what's the difference?
It's worth clarifying this, because the two are often confused.
AI translation (like ChatGPT, DeepL or Google Translate) is a computer generating a translation from scratch based on patterns learned from millions of texts. It's fast, but it doesn't know your products, your brand voice, or how you've chosen to translate your specific terminology.
Translation Memory is different. It's built entirely from translations that your own team has reviewed and approved in the past. It's your knowledge base, your choices and decisions, your brand standards (in other words, your company's translation assets) saved and reused in Redokun.
The best approach is to use both: Translation Memory first, to pre-populate all segments that have previously been translated, and AI translation to generate draft translations for whatever is new. Redokun's Pre-translate feature does exactly this by combining your Translation Memory database with AI suggestions in one step, so your translators arrive at a document that's already as complete as possible.
But the most powerful combination is using Translation Memory, Glossary and AI translation together. Your Glossary defines how key terms — product names, technical concepts, certifications — must always be translated. When AI generates a draft for a new segment, it respects those Glossary terms automatically. So even brand-new content arrives pre-translated with your approved terminology already in place. That's consistency at every level: sentence-level from Translation Memory, terminology-level from Glossary, and coverage for everything new from AI.
How Translation Memory works in Redokun
In Redokun's Web Editor, Translation Memory works automatically. There's nothing to configure or set up manually.
Every time a translator confirms a translated segment, it's added to the database. The next time a matching or similar segment appears — in any document, in any project — the suggestion surfaces directly below the translation input field.
You can also use the Pre-translate feature to automatically fill in all 100% matching segments across an entire document before your translators even open it. That means your team arrives at a document that's already partially translated, and they only need to handle the new content.
Translation Memory works across all file types Redokun supports, including InDesign documents, Word files, PowerPoint presentations, and Excel spreadsheets.
The bottom line
Translation Memory isn't a nice-to-have feature. For manufacturing companies that regularly update and re-translate documents across multiple markets and languages, it's one of the highest-leverage investments you can make in your translation workflow.
The value compounds over time. Every project you complete today adds to a database that makes every future project faster, cheaper, and more consistent.
And the best part is that it works automatically in the background. Your team doesn't need to do anything differently. They just need to keep translating.
Ready to see how Translation Memory works in Redokun? Start yourfree 14-day trial — no credit card required.
