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Need to save time and money on translation projects for your organization? As veterans in the language translation industry, we understand the challenges organizations face when trying to save time and money on translation without sacrificing quality.
Whether you’re overseeing global marketing campaigns or translating internal documents, the process can be costly and time-consuming if not approached strategically.
Over the years, we’ve helped countless enterprises streamline their translation workflows, cutting costs by over 50% while maintaining top-tier quality. Unfortunately, simply relying on bilingual staff for translation isn’t enough to keep up with demand or scale efficiently.
The solution
Instead of using a “spreadsheets and email” strategy, leverage modern translation technologies and best practices. Translate using these 12 tips to dramatically reduce both time and expenses on translations.
These methods aren’t just theoretical; they’ve been tried, tested, and proven in real-world applications. From optimizing your use of translation memory to automating workflows, these strategies can help your organization increase productivity, reduce costs, and ensure the consistency of your multilingual content.
Ready to unlock significant translation cost savings and efficiency gains? Explore these 12 tips to see how you can transform your translation process today.
At the end, we’ll recommend a smart alternative to save you time and money on translation: Pairaphrase translation software.
12 ways to save time and money on translation
Here are 12 proven ways to save time and money on translation:
1. Use premium translation management software to save time
If the most successful organizations around the globe didn’t use premium translation management software, their global operations wouldn’t be as streamlined as they are.
Machine translation and Translation Memory are proven technologies that will help you produce quality translations, quickly, and at a low cost.
Premium translation management software will put professional translation tools into the hands of your users, making your translation process easier, safer and more efficient.
Several of the tips below will speak to the exact reasons translation management software helps you to save time and money on enterprise translation projects.
2. Edit your machine translations
Today’s enterprise translation management software is driven by powerful artificial intelligence that can dramatically improve the quality of your translations.
The best translation software allows you to edit translations. Editing your translations creates a continuous cycle of machine translation improvements. You’ll have better and easier to use translation editing tools to work with too.
Dynamic spell-checking, AI-powered translation (including dynamic machine learning and translation memory) and Slack-like instant messaging make editing and collaboration easy.
3. Create translation memories to significantly save time on translations
Another way you can save time on translations and ultimately reduce translation costs is by using a translation management system to populate translation memories.
As long as you keep using machine translation without translation memory technology, you’re going to keep getting the same first-draft quality translations.
Some companies will use machine translation and then pay a professional translator to manually edit the same first draft translations that machine translation gives them, over and over again. Within a document repeatedly, and across documents over time.
This is extremely inefficient.
Typically, these are words, phrases, concepts and segments of text that machine translation can’t fully understand, but that appear repeatedly in various company documents.
How Translation Memory saves translation time and money
When you use translation memory, a user only needs to edit a word or phrase once, and never again. It is auto-filled by the software in the future. This saves time for the user, which means cost savings for your company.
The more people who edit translations in your organization, the faster your translation memory grows. Keep this in mind when you read tip #9 below.
4. Use automatic file formatting
If you want to know how to save time and money on translation, automatic file formatting is also going to be an important factor.
It’s common to upload a file to translation software and receive an output file that doesn’t match the original in formatting. File layout and formatting consistency is of significant importance to many enterprises, so companies typically spend too much time and more effort creating presentable files in various languages.
With the right translation management software (we’ll recommend one below), you can save hours and hours of work that you would normally spend reformatting a file. Font properties, images, spacing and breaks all remain intact with automatic file formatting.
5. Upload and edit files in batches
Tip #5 for how to save time and money on translation is to upload multiple files at once for translation through translation management software that uses AI-powered translation.
Dynamic Machine Learning is AI technology that finds and replaces repetitive text in a single document or across a group of files. Batching files and Dynamic Machine Learning not only reduce the time it takes to produce translations. They work together to bring near-instantaneous translation quality improvement across a whole batch of files.
This is particularly helpful when you’re uploading a batch of related files. For example, if you have a Word document, an Excel spreadsheet, and a PowerPoint that are all related to the same multilingual marketing campaign, you’ll save a lot of time by uploading them as a batch.
Uploading a batch of files will bring big productivity gains.
6. Replace your email and spreadsheet management strategy
Want to save time on translation while preserving your financial resources? Keep in mind that producing and managing translations via email and spreadsheets only works if you have just a couple of translation requests a year. Replacing this tedious method will help your team save time on translation by making the process a lot more efficient.
However, if you’re like most companies and seeing an increase in demand for translations, you’re reading this because you know your organization has outgrown an email and spreadsheet strategy.
How to streamline translation with real-time collaboration and instant access
Enterprise translation management software will make managing translations a breeze across your organization. You’ll be able to collaborate on translations in real-time and access translations at any time from any device.
This means you can change a translation in a moment’s notice and download fully formatted MS-Word, PowerPoint, Excel and InDesign files (and 20 more file types) quickly and easily.
Replacing your email and spreadsheet strategy will make your organization more secure while making translation management a breeze.
7. Be careful with scanned documents
Scanned documents can come with a host of problems if you’re trying to translate them using translation software. It’s important to understand this up front if you’re translating a document that has been scanned into a computer.
You need to follow certain scanned document translation guidelines so you don’t spend hours fiddling with your document during the translation process to get quality translations. These will help you save money and time when you translate a scanned document.
8. Use a robust translation API
If your company connects its applications to each other in order to improve processes, you’ll want to use translation software that gives you access to a robust translation API.
Having raw translations delivered to your other apps certainly isn’t going to save you time. In contrast, a robust translation API will deliver dynamic high-quality translations in real-time across your applications and organization.
There are plenty of translation API’s out there, but if you opt for a premium one, you’re going to be able to reap the benefits of powerful translation management software. This will save you time and money for all the reasons we listed above.
9. Onboard colleagues successfully
To save time and money on translation, you will want to onboard colleagues successfully.
What does this look like? It means all your users will learn how to use all the translation management features so that you’re getting the most out of its productivity-enhancing technologies.
How effective onboarding will save money on translations
The best enterprise translation management software will make onboarding easy. A successful software onboarding process will help users quickly understand how the software works and how to get optimum translations in the easiest method possible.
As your team becomes more efficient with the software, translation tasks will be completed faster, reducing the time spent on each project and ultimately saving you significant money on translation costs.
Remember, the more people successfully onboarded, the more each user’s productivity will improve. Need a refresher on the reasoning for this? See tip #3!
10. Prioritize security
Another top way to save money on translation is to prioritize security. Choosing secure translation solutions not only protects your data but also helps you reduce translation costs associated with potential breaches and disruptions.
You’ve surely seen headlines about companies suffering significant monetary damages and losing customer trust due to security breaches. One of the easiest ways to enhance your security is by choosing solutions that will protect your company’s data.
Since you’ll be uploading files that potentially contain sensitive business information and customer data, you need to make sure the translation software you use has the best security standards in place.
11. Integrate Google Drive for seamless file management
Optimize your workflow and cut costs by finding a translation software with Google Drive integration. This integration will streamline file management and boost efficiency.
Premium translation software will offer a direct connection to Google Drive, allowing you to seamlessly translate Google Docs, Slides, Sheets and PDFs without additional steps involving uploading and downloading. This ensures your files remain organized and easily accessible.
Seamless integrations like this will significantly reduce time spent on administrative tasks, improve collaboration, and help team members work on documents simultaneously.
12. Leverage OpenAI integration for enhanced translation quality
The final way to save money and time on translation is to take advantage of large language models (LLMs) such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT. A translation software with OpenAI integration brings advanced AI capabilities that significantly improve translation quality and efficiency right to your team.
OpenAI’s large language models provide alternative translations, reducing the need for extensive post-editing. For example, OpenAI’s natural language processing capabilities help identify alternative language structures and idiomatic expressions, ensuring translations are culturally appropriate.
This seamless integration allows you to generate higher-quality translations quickly, without having to leave the translation platform, which will reduce unnecessary steps for your team.
Understanding translation costs: what are you really paying for?
When managing translation projects, understanding what you’re truly paying for is key to reducing costs. Factors like word count, language pair complexity, and document formatting all add up. But here’s the thing: many companies overspend on translation simply because they don’t plan ahead.
So, what can your team do to cut down translation expenses without sacrificing quality? In this section, we’ll discuss practical ways to reduce costs, streamline the process, and get the most value for your investment.
Below are some tips to reduce translation costs by making smart decisions from the start.
Plan ahead to reduce translation costs
Want to know the secret to saving money on translations? It all comes down to preparation. The more organized your content is, the less time (and money) you’ll spend on the translation itself.
Before starting translations, remove redundant text, ensure clarity, and set specific translation guidelines. By doing this, your team will spend less time making revisions, which means faster delivery and lower costs.
Develop a lean translation process to save money
A lot of companies inadvertently drive up the cost of their translations by not creating or following a standard translation process. Work with your team and your suppliers to develop a repeatable and lean translation process.
Today’s translation technologies can save you a lot of money. Use Computer-Assisted Translation (CAT) tools that harness the power of AI technologies such as machine translation, translation memory and dynamic machine learning. This way, you’ll decrease translation costs and produce more translations faster.
According to a survey conducted by ProZ, CAT tool users estimate their translation productivity has been boosted by at least 30% due to the use of these tools.
Investing in quality translations to save in the long run
Let’s face it: going for the cheapest translation option often means more editing, more delays, and ultimately, more expenses. On the other hand, investing in high-quality translation services up front can save you a significant amount in the long run.
Why? Because quality translations require fewer revisions, and fewer revisions mean lower costs over time. The importance of high-quality translations is increasing more and more, particularly in regulated industries where accuracy is paramount such as healthcare, as seen in this study.
Optimizing repetitive content with Translation Memory and Glossaries
Yes, we’re mentioning translation memory to reduce your translation costs again. It’s that helpful! Especially if your company produces repetitive content like legal documents or marketing materials, translation memory is your best friend.
This not only speeds up the process but also cuts down on costs—especially for organizations that handle large volumes of similar content. Remember to look for this when you’re finding the next translation solution.
If you can’t use translation memory, opt for a glossary.
Create a term base glossary to reduce translation cost and time
Creating a glossary helps you avoid costly double entendres, colloquialisms and industry jargon.
As human beings, it’s natural to want to write interesting content with clever language. However, it’s a lot more expensive to translate (in this case it’s actually referred to as “transcreate”) headlines and taglines with double meanings. The same applies to instances in which your reader needs to read between the lines to truly understand the text.
Meanwhile, expecting your translator to know the “ins and outs” of your industry like you do will lead to poor translations that will need to be corrected. This can potentially cost you considerable time and money.
Creating a glossary of terms in your common target languages will help you produce more accurate translations in less time and decrease translation costs.
Work with the right type of translator for your needs.
This tip for translation cost reduction will help you immensely.
This is because working with freelance translators for larger, more complex needs can end up costing you more. But if you have small needs, working with translation companies can actually add to your bill.
So make sure you determine the type of translator you need by project.
For example, if you only have a couple of documents or files to translate into a single language, say Spanish for instance, then working with a freelance translator might be the best choice for you.
How to find freelance translators for small projects
You can find them easily on LinkedIn and other job portals. They eliminate the “middleman” and allow you to build a relationship with the actual person who translates your text. Learn more about hiring a freelance translator.
Hiring a translation company
If you have larger and more complex needs, then you probably want to opt for human translation services provided by a translation company. They’ll have translators for every language and specialization, and you’ll only have one person to work with who will manage a team of translators on your behalf.
These companies can usually scale easily to manage your growing translation needs. They’ll typically have a suite of technologies to help you reduce translation costs at scale.
Common mistakes that lead to higher translation costs (and how to avoid them)
It’s easy to make mistakes that inflate translation costs—like failing to provide clear guidelines or using inconsistent terminology. These issues often result in multiple revisions and extended deadlines (say goodbye to fast translations), both of which drive up costs.
But by avoiding these common mistakes and communicating effectively with your translation provider, you can reduce costs and ensure a smoother process.
How to choose the right translation software to save money
Choosing the right translation software can be the difference between staying on budget or overspending. With so many options out there—ranging from free tools to premium solutions—it’s crucial to understand what each offers in terms of time and cost savings.
Whether you need basic machine translation or advanced features like translation memory and automatic formatting, choosing the right tool will make a world of difference.
Recommended translation software to save time & money
Want to get started with the best translation software? Try Pairaphrase. It’s the AI-powered translation management system for teams who value smarter, faster and safer translation.
Pairaphrase supports more than 140+ languages and 20,000+ language pairs. Drastically reduce time spent translating Spanish, French, German, Arabic, Hindi, Chinese, Japanese and more. Not to mention, Pairaphrase performs file translation for 24 file types.
