What Is the real cost of in-house translation?

This is often how it starts.

One employee speaks good English. Another has some knowledge of German or Spanish. The translation software fills in the gaps.

On paper, it seems straightforward.

Then the questions start to appear.

• Which translation engine should we use?
• Can we trust the output?
• Is our company terminology being applied consistently?
• Who validates the final version?
• Who keeps track of revisions and updates?
• And perhaps most importantly: who actually has time to manage all of this?

Because translating a document is one thing. Managing a company’s multilingual assets over the long term is something entirely different.

Who is really checking the result?

This is probably the most important question.

We regularly see automatically translated texts that look perfectly acceptable at first glance. Then, on review, we find a false friend, a mistranslation, or an awkward phrase that completely changes the intended meaning.

The problem is simple: if no one in the company truly masters the target language, how can you know whether the translation is good?

A text that looks correct is not necessarily a text that communicates correctly. In a marketing, commercial, or technical context, that distinction makes all the difference.

The time spent never appears in the budget

When a company decides to manage its translations internally, it often believes it is saving money.

Yet the biggest cost is often invisible.
It is the time spent searching for old documents, checking wording, comparing versions, proofreading content, or trying to find a translation that was approved several months earlier.

These tasks are rarely measured. And yet they take up the time of employees whose job is generally not translation.

We regularly come across staff members who manage translations “on top of” their sales, marketing, technical, or administrative responsibilities.

The question is worth asking: is this really the best use of their time?

The versioning nightmare

If there is one issue that comes up again and again, it is version control.

A brochure is updated.
The website evolves.
A technical document is modified.

A few months later, no one knows exactly which French version was used to produce which English, German, or Spanish version.

Files multiply. File names become increasingly creative:

• Final_version.docx
• Final_version_v2.docx
• Final_version_v2_corrected.docx
• Final_version_v2_corrected_FINAL.docx

We are not far from reality!

And when several languages are involved, the situation quickly becomes very complex.
Professional language management tools exist precisely to prevent this kind of drift.

The employee has left… and so has the project memory

This is a situation we encounter regularly. The person who managed the translations leaves the company. A few months later, a brochure needs to be updated or a new catalogue has to be translated.

That is when people discover that some files cannot be found, that terminology choices were never documented, or that no one knows exactly which translations had already been approved.

The know-how built up over the years can sometimes disappear with the departure of a single employee.

By contrast, when a project is managed professionally, translation memories, glossaries, and project histories remain available and continue to create value over time.

The copy-and-paste myth

We completely understand the logic. Why pay to retranslate a text that already exists somewhere?

So we regularly see companies recover passages from old documents, copy and paste them, and gradually piece together a new version.

The problem is that this method quickly becomes time-consuming.

First, you have to find the right document.
Then check that the content is still valid.
Then make sure it fits the current context.
Then verify that it is consistent with the rest of the document.

Meanwhile, computer-assisted translation tools can automatically identify previously translated passages, detect changes, and highlight the new content that needs to be translated.

It is faster, more reliable, and often much more cost-effective.

Let’s talk about terminology

This is probably the most underestimated topic.

How many times have we received an Excel glossary carefully prepared by a team several years ago… only to find that it has gradually been forgotten?

The file still exists. Somewhere.
No one really knows whether it is up to date.
No one is sure whether the latest terminology choices have been included.

And yet this terminology forms part of the company’s identity. The words you choose to present your products, services, or expertise directly contribute to your brand image.

Consistent terminology strengthens your credibility.
Inconsistent terminology blurs your message.

Preserving this linguistic asset requires the right method and the right tools.

We do not believe that companies should give up on machine translation. Quite the opposite. These tools are now part of the landscape and make it possible to work much faster.

However, we do believe there is a frequent confusion between translating a text and managing a company’s multilingual communication over the long term.

Choosing the right tools, maintaining consistent terminology, keeping a record of previous versions, leveraging previously translated content, avoiding mistranslations, and guaranteeing the final quality: all of this requires time, method, and the right tools.

That is precisely our job!

When we take over projects that have been managed internally for several years, we often see the same difficulties: scattered files, forgotten glossaries, conflicting versions, translations that cannot be reused, or knowledge that was lost when an employee left the company.

The most surprising thing is that these problems rarely appear in the budget. Yet they represent a real cost for the company

So the real question may not be: “How much does a translation agency cost?”

It may be: “How much is it actually costing me not to use one?”