Technical & manufacturing

The terrain

Technical documentation localization is not linguistic work. It is engineering work that requires linguists.

A maintenance procedure is a sequence of steps that someone will execute on physical equipment. If a step is ambiguous in English, it is dangerous in German. If a safety warning uses a non-standard phrasing in French, it may not satisfy the CE marking requirement that the phrasing is derived from. If a part name is translated inconsistently across a 400-page manual, a technician cross-referencing a spare part order and the maintenance procedure is looking at two different names for the same component.

The documentation is also old. Most industrial manufacturers have documentation spanning decades, multiple product generations, and multiple translation vendors. The legacy TM is inconsistent. The terminology has drifted. A new translation that draws on legacy content inherits those inconsistencies and propagates them into the next product generation unless someone audits first.

Safety-critical content has regulatory constraints that translation cannot ignore. Warning labels in EU markets are governed by specific directives (Machinery Directive, Low Voltage Directive, REACH) that specify the vocabulary, format, and content of safety information. The phrasing is not a style choice.

What we have learned

TM leverage in technical documentation is exceptional: often 60–70% on a revised manual, because procedures are highly repetitive at the section level. “Ensure the machine is powered off before proceeding” appears 40 times. So does “torque to [value] Nm”. The returns on a well-maintained, domain-specific TM in this sector are among the highest of any content type.

The terminology density is also exceptional. A single manual for a mid-complexity machine may have 2,000 distinct technical terms: part names, process names, measurement units, regulatory terms. Managing that terminology requires a product-specific termbase that is built in collaboration with the client’s engineering team, not derived from general technical dictionaries.

Regulatory vocabulary is not negotiable but it is also not obvious. The approved German equivalent for an EU Machinery Directive safety notice is specified in the German implementation of the directive, not in a general German technical dictionary. Using a synonym that means the same thing is a compliance failure. This requires translators who work in regulatory contexts, not just technical contexts.

Two-linguist workflows are standard for safety-critical content: primary translation plus a full revision by a second linguist with the same subject matter qualifications. ISO 17100 specifies this. It is not optional for documents with legal standing.

A typical engagement

We begin with a documentation audit and a terminology extraction pass. For clients with legacy documentation, this surfaces the inconsistencies before they enter the new project. For new product documentation, it establishes the authoritative termbase before translation begins.

Translation follows the ISO 17100 workflow: primary translation, full revision by a second linguist, client review for engineering terminology, and a final QA pass against a structured checklist derived from the applicable regulatory requirements.

We maintain the termbase on an ongoing basis as the product evolves. When engineering renames a component or introduces a new process, the termbase updates before the documentation project begins, not during it.