Translation Outsourcing or In-House Translation: How Manufacturers Should Decide
Should a manufacturer translate technical documentation in-house or outsource it? In-house translation works when volume is low, there is one target language and trained linguists have time for it. Once you need several languages, regulated instructions, revision by a second linguist or layout in every language, translation outsourcing to a managed partner such as DEMA Solutions is usually safer and cheaper overall. Some teams consider buying a translation management system instead, an option we compare with a managed workflow in a separate guide.
Who this guide is for
This guide is for the people who carry the consequences of the decision. You may be a technical documentation manager whose team writes the manuals and also ends up translating them. You may be a technical writer who is asked to “just check the German” before a shipment. Or you may sit in operations, procurement or quality at a manufacturer of machinery, HVAC systems, lifting equipment, packaging lines, automation or medical devices, and you are asking whether the current arrangement still makes sense. Device makers face extra quality-system steps, which we cover in our guide to medical device documentation translation.
In most mid-size companies, translation was never designed. It grew. An engineer who spoke good English translated the first manual, a colleague in the French subsidiary took care of the French, and a bilingual assistant handled the rest when there was time. That arrangement can work for years, until the product range grows, a new market opens or a regulation changes the rules. The sections below compare the two models honestly: where in-house translation is the right answer, where it breaks, and what a sensible middle ground looks like.
What "in-house" really means in a manufacturing company
When manufacturers talk about in-house translation, they rarely mean a translation department. They usually mean one of four set-ups. The first is engineers or technical writers translating their own documents, often into English, sometimes into a second language they learned at school or on the job. The second is bilingual staff in sales, customer service or administration who translate when asked. The third is a single in-house translator, sometimes a trained professional, who covers one or two language pairs for the whole company. The fourth is the subsidiary or distributor model, where the sales office in each country is expected to translate or at least correct the manuals for its market.
Each of these has real strengths. The people involved know the product, they are close to the engineers, and there is no purchase order to raise. Each also has the same weakness: translation is not their main job, or there is only one of them. That single fact explains most of what follows.
When in-house translation is the right choice
It would be wrong to claim that every manufacturer should outsource translation. In some situations the internal model is the better one, and an honest supplier will tell you so. In-house translation tends to work well when:
- Volume is low and steady, a few documents a year rather than a stream of releases and updates.
- There is one target language, so terminology, style and review stay in one pair of hands.
- The person translating has real linguistic training, not only good conversational skills, and translates into their native language.
- They have protected time for it, rather than squeezing translation between engineering tasks.
- The content is internal or low risk, such as internal procedures or training notes, not safety instructions for a regulated product.
If all five conditions are true, keeping translation internal can be a sound decision. The difficulty is that most growing manufacturers meet one or two of them, not all five, and the gaps show up in cost, consistency and compliance long before anyone measures them.
The real cost of internal time
“It costs nothing, we do it ourselves” is the most common reason for keeping translation internal, and the least accurate. Internal translation is paid for, just not on a translation invoice. It is paid for in engineering hours, in delayed projects and in the work that does not get done while a technical writer spends two weeks on a French manual.
A fair comparison starts with the hours. Count the time actually spent translating, checking, correcting layout and answering questions from subsidiaries, and value it at the real cost of the people doing it. Engineers and technical writers are among the most expensive and least replaceable staff in a manufacturing company. Then add the hidden items: rework when a distributor rejects a translation, support calls caused by unclear instructions, and the opportunity cost of a launch that waits for documentation.
There is also a productivity gap. A professional translation workflow reuses every sentence already approved, applies an agreed glossary automatically and lays the text back into the original files. A colleague translating in a copy of the Word file starts largely from zero each time, even when most of the manual is unchanged. Over several releases and languages, that difference is often larger than the cost of an external supplier.
Consistency and terminology: where informal translation drifts
Technical documentation lives on consistent terminology. The same component must carry the same name in the operating manual, the maintenance manual, the spare parts catalogue, the HMI and the label on the machine. When translation is spread across engineers, assistants and subsidiaries, each person brings their own vocabulary. Within a few years the same pressure relief valve can have three names in one language, and nobody can say which one is approved.
The cause is not carelessness. It is the absence of shared assets. Without a maintained glossary and a translation memory that everyone works from, consistency depends on individual memory, and individual memory leaves when people change jobs. Our guide to keeping technical terminology consistent across translators and suppliers explains how a glossary is built and kept alive. Whether you translate internally or externally, that discipline is what separates a documentation set your technicians trust from one they learn to second-guess.
Capacity peaks: product launches, trade fairs and audits
Translation demand in manufacturing is rarely flat. It arrives in peaks: a new machine before a trade fair, a range update before the summer, a certification audit, a large order from a new market that needs the full documentation set in a language nobody in the company speaks. An internal model is sized for the average, so it struggles exactly when the stakes are highest.
When a peak hits, internal translators either work late, delay other tasks or cut corners, and the first thing to go is usually the check by a second person. An external partner absorbs peaks by spreading the work across qualified linguists in each language while a project manager keeps terminology, deadlines and files under control. For companies with frequent releases, the way requests, files and deadlines flow matters as much as the translation itself, and our article on managing an efficient translation workflow describes what that looks like in practice.
ISO 17100 and the second pair of eyes
The international standard for translation services, ISO 17100, sets out what a professional translation process requires. Two of its principles matter most in this comparison. Translators must have documented qualifications and translate in their field, and every translation must be revised by a second qualified linguist who is not the translator. Revision is not a quick read: the reviser compares the translation against the source for accuracy, terminology, completeness and suitability for its purpose.
Most internal set-ups cannot meet that standard, not because people lack skill but because there is nobody to be the second linguist. A lone in-house translator revises their own work, and an engineer translating into English is rarely reviewed by a native speaker with translation training. That is where omissions, mistranslated warnings and false friends survive into print. If you want to understand how revision and quality checks fit together, our overview of translation quality assurance walks through each step.
Regulated content: Machinery Regulation, MDR and liability
For manufacturers of regulated equipment, the translated instructions are part of the product’s compliance, not an afterthought. The Machinery Regulation (EU) 2023/1230, which applies from 20 January 2027, requires instructions in a language easily understood by users, as determined by the Member State where the machine is made available, and it allows digital instructions under defined conditions, with a paper version available free of charge on request. Our article on translation and documentation under the Machinery Regulation covers the detail. Medical device manufacturers face their own rules on labels, instructions for use and languages, summarised in our guide to EU MDR labeling requirements.
The responsibility for those instructions stays with the manufacturer, whoever translates them. Outsourcing does not transfer liability, and in-house translation does not reduce it. What changes is the evidence you can show. With a certified external process you have a documented chain: qualified translators, revision by a second linguist, agreed terminology and traceable versions. With an informal internal process, the evidence is often an email thread and the name of a colleague who has since left. When a market surveillance authority, a notified body or a customer’s lawyer asks how a safety warning was translated and checked, that difference matters.
Layout and DTP: the work nobody budgets for
Translating the text is only part of a technical manual. The translated text has to go back into InDesign, FrameMaker, Word or an XML publishing chain, and it rarely fits first time. German and French often run longer than Italian or English, tables overflow, callouts drift away from the parts they label, and right-to-left or Asian languages need different fonts and rules. Someone has to rebuild every page, check cross-references and produce print-ready and online files.
In an internal model, that work falls on the technical writers or a graphic designer who did not plan for it, often in a hurry before release. Professional layout in every language is a skill of its own, which is why it pays to treat it as part of the project rather than a surprise at the end. Our article on how multilingual desktop publishing improves document translations explains what that work involves and why it belongs in the plan from the start.
Who owns the translation memory and glossary in each model
This question is often overlooked, and it shapes your options for years. In an informal internal model, the translation memory and glossary often do not exist at all. The knowledge sits in old files, in spreadsheets on personal drives and in the heads of the people who translated. If the lone in-house translator leaves, much of that knowledge leaves too.
With an external supplier, the answer depends on the contract. Some suppliers keep the memory in their own systems and treat it as theirs, which makes changing supplier painful. A sound arrangement is the opposite: the memory and the glossary are built during your projects, paid for by you and delivered to you in portable formats, TMX for the memory and TBX for the terminology, so that any qualified supplier or internal colleague can use them. Our article on why your translation memory is a strategic asset explains why ownership matters as your languages and products grow. Whatever model you choose, make sure the answer to “who owns our memory?” is “we do”.
The hybrid model: translation outsourcing with internal expertise
For most mid-size manufacturers, the best answer is neither pure in-house nor pure outsourcing, but a division of labour. The external partner does what it is built for: qualified translators in each language, revision by a second linguist, terminology management, file handling, layout and project management. Your internal people do what only they can do: they approve key terms, answer technical questions and review the translation for subject-matter accuracy before release.
Done this way, translation outsourcing does not take product knowledge away from the company. It puts that knowledge where it has the most effect. A subsidiary engineer who spends an hour approving a glossary of fifty key terms prevents more errors than one who spends a week translating a manual. A reviewer who checks content for technical accuracy, instead of correcting commas, adds real value and is less likely to make preferential changes that break consistency. The hybrid model also keeps the door open for internal translation where it genuinely works, such as short internal documents or a language in which you have a trained colleague.
Three common objections, answered
“Our staff speak the language.” Speaking a language and translating technical documentation are different skills. A fluent colleague can read a manual and understand it, but translating it for a user who must operate a machine safely requires precise terminology, consistent phrasing, knowledge of the legal requirements and, ideally, translation into one’s native language. Bilingual staff are invaluable as subject-matter reviewers. As the only translator and the only reviewer of safety-relevant instructions, they carry a risk the company may not have consciously accepted.
“Outsourcing loses product knowledge.” It does if the supplier works in isolation. It does not if the arrangement is set up properly. Product knowledge transfers through the glossary, reference material, answered queries and the translation memory, all of which grow with each project. When your internal experts approve terminology and review the content, their knowledge is captured once and applied to every language, instead of living in one person’s head. A good partner asks more questions at the start, not fewer, so that the knowledge is written down.
“It is cheaper internally.” It looks cheaper because the cost is spread across salaries and delays rather than appearing on one invoice. Once you count the real hours, the rework, the layout and the missing second check, the comparison often changes, especially with several languages and frequent updates. The fairest way to find out is to run a real document through both models and compare the total effort and the result, not the rate per word.
How to move from in-house to outsourced translation without disruption
Changing a process that has worked for years is understandably unsettling, and the move does not have to happen in one step. A sensible transition usually follows a short sequence:
- Collect what exists: previous translations, terminology lists, style preferences and the source files of current manuals.
- Turn it into assets: align earlier translations into a translation memory and extract a first glossary for your experts to approve.
- Start with one document or language, ideally a real upcoming release, and keep internal review in place.
- Agree roles: who sends requests, who approves terms, who reviews each language and how long they have.
- Extend step by step to more languages and document types once the first projects run smoothly.
The same principles apply when you move from one external supplier to another, and our guide to changing translation supplier without losing your memory or your terminology covers the handover in detail. If you are comparing partners for the first time, our checklist for choosing a technical translation company lists the questions worth asking before you sign.
How DEMA Solutions works with manufacturers that translated internally
Many of our clients come to us after years of translating internally, so we start from what you already have rather than from zero. We align your earlier translations into a translation memory, extract the key terms for your experts to approve, and agree with you who reviews each language internally. Our technical translation services follow an ISO 17100 certified process, with a second qualified linguist revising every translation, and our in-house DTP team returns each manual in its original format, laid out and checked. Our teams in Italy, Serbia and Spain work with linguists who specialise in technical content.
You have one commercial contact, your sales manager, who works closely with a dedicated project manager on your account. Requests can keep arriving by email, as they do today, or through a dedicated SharePoint space or our client portal, where a request form, a notes field for specific requirements and an urgent flag sit next to the status and updated timelines of every project. Clients who send requests by email receive a project confirmation with the agreed delivery date once the work is assigned. One client who sends InDesign manuals almost daily moved from email attachments to the portal and now uploads files, follows progress and collects delivered translations in one place. If you want to try the process first, you can submit test requests without commissioning a translation, and we offer training by video call or in person. Your translation memory and glossary remain yours throughout, delivered in TMX and TBX.
Where TUBE fits
For manufacturers whose documentation changes with every product release, TUBE is the solution that keeps each update efficient. Your glossary and translation memory control machine translation, every approved translation goes into a memory you own and can export, and leverage reporting shows how much of each update comes from reuse.
Frequently asked questions
In-house translation can work for low volumes, one target language and staff with real linguistic training and time. With several languages, regulated instructions, frequent updates or layout work, outsourcing to a qualified supplier is usually safer and more efficient, ideally with internal experts approving terminology and reviewing content.
Not always. Internal translation is paid for in staff hours, delays, rework and layout work, which rarely appear in one budget line. A fair comparison counts all of these and compares the total effort per document, not just the visible invoice.
Among other things, translators with documented qualifications working in their field, and revision of every translation by a second qualified linguist who is not the translator. Many internal set-ups cannot provide that second linguist.
No. The manufacturer remains responsible for the instructions supplied with its products, whoever translates them. A documented, certified process helps you show how translations were produced and checked.
The company whose content they contain. Make sure memories and glossaries are delivered in portable formats such as TMX and TBX, so you can use them with any supplier or internally.
Yes, and it is usually recommended. Internal experts are best placed to approve key terms and check technical accuracy, while the external supplier handles translation, revision, terminology management and layout.
Start by collecting existing translations and terminology, turn them into a memory and glossary, test the process on one real document or language with internal review in place, and extend step by step once roles and timelines are clear.
Compare both models on a real document
If you are weighing translation outsourcing against your current internal process, the clearest answer comes from a real example. Send us a document you would normally translate internally, together with any earlier translations, and we will show you what can be reused, how we would handle review and layout, and what the process would look like for your team.
How can we help?
Tell us what you need and we’ll get back to you with the solutions.