Software & IT
Software Translation Services
We translate UI strings, developer documentation, help centers, and training content for software companies, with a specialty in industrial and B2B platforms. Our linguists work inside your release cycle, protect your placeholders, and keep interface and documentation vocabulary identical.
The same linguists translate your interface strings and the help articles that reference them, so a menu never carries two different names.
Standing weekly batches through Git or your TMS connector, with 24-hour turnaround on string drops under 2,000 words.
Placeholders, ICU plural syntax, and markup are locked before translation and verified after it. Nothing you ship gets broken by a linguist.
Software translation services for teams that ship every two weeks
Most translation agencies were built around the rhythm of print. A manual arrives, a PDF comes back six weeks later, everyone moves on. Software does not work that way, and neither do we. Our software translation services are organized around sprints, release branches, and string files, because that is how our clients actually produce content. Over 15 years we have translated interfaces and documentation for CMMS platforms, MES suites, fleet telematics dashboards, laboratory software, and dozens of B2B tools whose users are engineers, technicians, and plant managers rather than consumers.
That last point shapes everything. A consumer app can tolerate a slightly loose translation of a marketing tagline. A maintenance planner in Stuttgart reading a work-order screen cannot. When the German UI says "Störungsmeldung" and the help article says "Fehlerbericht" for the same object, your support queue fills up and your churn number moves in the wrong direction. We prevent that by treating the interface, the documentation, the onboarding emails, and the training content as one connected corpus with one termbase, managed by one team based in Texas and serving software companies across the United States.
The commercial stakes are easy to state. English-only products lose evaluations they never hear about. Procurement teams in Japan, Germany, and Latin America shortlist tools their end users can read, and reviewers on regional software marketplaces mark localization gaps explicitly. Translation is one of the few growth investments where the deliverable is permanent: a translated knowledge base keeps answering questions in Japanese at 3 a.m. without adding headcount.
UI localization and documentation translation are two different jobs
Companies often discover this the hard way. Localizing an interface means working with fragments: a 22-character button label, a tooltip with no visible context, an error message that interpolates three variables. The linguist needs screenshots or a staging login, length constraints, and a feel for how terse the target language should be. German runs roughly 30% longer than English, which is why untested layouts break in Munich first. Japanese is shorter on screen but demands decisions about politeness register that English never forces.
Documentation is the opposite discipline: long-form technical prose where structure, cross-references, and procedure accuracy matter more than character counts. Our software documentation translation work covers admin guides, release notes, knowledge bases, and in-app walkthroughs, and it follows the terminology decisions made at the UI layer rather than contradicting them. The same applies when we take on translating user manuals for hardware that ships with your software, a common pairing among our industrial clients.
Very few vendors do both jobs well, because they require different people. We staff each account with a small fixed pod: a lead linguist per language who owns the termbase, a second linguist who performs independent revision on every deliverable, and a localization engineer who handles files, tags, and QA automation. That structure follows ISO 17100, which formally requires revision by a second qualified translator, and it is the reason our UI and our docs never drift apart.
Placeholders, variables, and the strings that break builds
The fastest way to lose an engineering team's trust is to return a strings file that fails CI. So we treat string integrity as an engineering problem, not a proofreading problem. Before translation, our tooling locks every placeholder: printf tokens like %s and %1$d, interpolations like {username} and {{count}}, HTML and BBCode tags, and full ICU MessageFormat expressions with nested plural and select branches. Linguists physically cannot delete or reorder them by accident.
After translation, an automated pass compares source and target placeholder inventories string by string and blocks delivery on any mismatch. We also expand plural rules per language, because CLDR defines one plural category for Japanese, two for English and German, three for Polish, and up to six for Arabic. A file that only carries "one" and "other" forms will render wrong numbers somewhere, and we catch that before you do.
One locked token can save a release. On a recent 40,000-string project for a maintenance platform entering Japan, our placeholder checks flagged 61 strings where the English source itself had inconsistent variables between singular and plural forms. The client fixed the source bugs before launch, in every language including English.
The same discipline extends to developer-facing content. Code samples, endpoint names, JSON keys, and CLI commands must survive translation untouched while the explanatory prose around them changes language. That is the core skill behind our API documentation translation services, where a single altered parameter name would send a developer down a dead end.
Docs-as-code and continuous releases without string freezes
If your documentation lives in Markdown or AsciiDoc in a Git repository, ours can too. We pull from a branch, translate, and open a pull request; your reviewers see diffs, not email attachments. Front matter, admonition blocks, MDX components, and internal link paths pass through untouched. For UI strings we connect to the tools teams already use, or simply exchange files in whatever format your i18n framework emits.
- String formats: JSON, YAML, XLIFF 1.2/2.0, gettext .po/.pot, iOS .strings and .stringsdict, Android XML, .resx, .properties, ARB
- Docs formats: Markdown, MDX, AsciiDoc, reStructuredText, DITA, HTML, structured FrameMaker
- Workflows: Git branches and pull requests, TMS connectors, scheduled exports, or plain file handoffs
Continuous localization means you never need a string freeze. Translation memory carries every approved segment forward, so a release that changes 3% of the interface generates a bill for 3% of the interface. Small batches move on a standing schedule: most clients send strings on Monday and merge translations by Wednesday. When a hotfix adds four strings on a Friday, those four strings come back the same day, in every language, matching the termbase.
What we translate for software and IT companies
A software product is surrounded by an ecosystem of content, and buyers touch far more of it than the interface. This table shows where each layer typically lives and what makes it tricky to translate.
| Content layer | Typical formats | What makes it hard |
|---|---|---|
| UI strings | JSON, XLIFF, .resx, ARB | Length limits, missing context, plural logic |
| Help center and admin guides | Markdown, HTML, CMS export | Terminology sync with UI, screenshots, versioning |
| Developer docs and API references | Markdown, OpenAPI, MDX | Code must stay frozen while prose changes |
| Onboarding and training | SCORM, video scripts, slides | Tone, pacing, on-screen text matching the UI |
| Sales engineering content | PDF, InDesign, Word | Positioning language plus technical accuracy |
Beyond the product itself, we handle the content that drives evaluations and renewals. Our team translates onboarding academies and certification courses, work described on our training material translation page, and the technical marketing assets that open enterprise deals. For the latter, learn more here about how we adapt white papers and benchmark reports for non-US audiences without flattening the technical argument.
The languages that move developer and buyer adoption
You do not need 30 languages. Most B2B software companies capture the bulk of available international revenue with four to six, chosen by market rather than by population. Japan is the classic case: a large, high-spending enterprise IT market where English-only tools stall in procurement and where documentation quality is read as a proxy for vendor seriousness. Our Japanese technical translation team includes linguists who have localized MES and CAD-adjacent tools and who know when katakana loanwords beat native coinages for software vocabulary.
Korean follows a similar logic, amplified by the density of manufacturing and electronics customers who expect vendor documentation in Korean even when their engineers read English. German opens the DACH industrial market, the natural first expansion for the factory-facing SaaS we specialize in; our German team handles the compound nouns and formal register that machine-builder customers expect. Spanish serves two purposes at once: Latin American expansion and the large Spanish-speaking operator workforce inside US plants and warehouses that uses your software on the shop floor every shift.
Industrial SaaS is our home turf
Generalist localization vendors are comfortable with consumer apps. Our niche is the software that runs physical operations: CMMS and EAM platforms, MES and quality systems, SCADA front ends and HMI packages, EHS and compliance tools, WMS and telematics products. This content mixes software vocabulary with the vocabulary of maintenance, production, and safety, and a linguist who knows React but has never read a work order will translate "lockout point" or "mean time between failures" wrong in ways your customers notice instantly.
A typical engagement from last year: a Texas-based CMMS vendor expanding into Japan and Germany needed 40,000 UI strings, a 600-article help center, and a certified-user course translated in one quarter. We ran UI first to fix the termbase, docs in parallel waves behind it, and training last so every on-screen reference matched the shipped interface. The client's Japanese reseller reported zero terminology corrections in review, which the reseller's project lead said had never happened before. Work like this sits alongside the other sectors we serve, and you can see how the pieces connect across every industry we cover, from robotics to logistics.
Pre-release confidentiality and versioned documentation
Translating software means seeing it early. String files reveal unannounced features months before launch, roadmap language leaks through release notes drafts, and API references expose architecture your competitors would love to study. We handle this content under signed NDAs with every linguist on the account, role-based access that limits each contributor to the files they need, and no use of public machine translation engines on client material. Files move over encrypted channels and staging credentials are stored separately from project content. Several of our software clients run under embargo schedules where translated release notes must exist before an announcement but cannot circulate; we deliver into a locked branch and hand your team the merge.
Versioning is the other quiet problem in software translation. Your product supports customers on 5.x while you document 6.0, and a translated help center has to serve both without mixing them. We maintain parallel translation memories per major version when interfaces diverge, tag every segment with the release it belongs to, and reconcile the branches when versions merge. Release notes get their own workflow: short, dense, deadline-driven texts where a mistranslated "deprecated" versus "removed" generates real support pain. Because the same pod translates your notes sprint after sprint, the phrasing users see in September matches what they saw in March, and your changelog reads like one author wrote it in every language.
Legacy content fits the same model. When a client arrives with an existing translated corpus of uneven quality, we audit it, score it against the new termbase, and recycle what survives review instead of billing to retranslate everything. On a recent knowledge-base migration, 44% of the legacy German segments passed revision unchanged, which cut the project budget nearly in half.
How our process plugs into yours
Every account starts with a terminology sprint: we extract candidate terms from your UI and docs, propose translations, and get sign-off from your regional stakeholders before volume translation begins. This one-week step eliminates most of the review friction that makes localization projects late. From there, work follows our ISO 17100-compliant process: translation by a certified specialist in the subject matter, independent revision by a second linguist, automated QA on placeholders, numbers, and terminology, then delivery through your chosen channel.
As a member of the American Translators Association and GALA, we maintain vetted teams per language pair and per domain, and we keep the same named linguists on your account so the voice of release 4.2 matches release 3.1. Translation memory and termbase remain your property, exportable at any time in standard formats. Pricing is per source word with TM discounts applied automatically, so continuous localization gets cheaper as your product matures, not more expensive.
Software translation: frequently asked questions
Can you translate our UI strings and our documentation together?
Yes, and we recommend it. When one team handles both, the button labels in your interface match the labels quoted in your help center, onboarding emails, and training videos. We build a single termbase per client covering UI vocabulary, feature names, and the industrial terminology your users expect. Splitting UI and docs between two vendors is the most common cause of support tickets that begin with "I cannot find the menu this article mentions."
How do you handle continuous releases and weekly sprints?
We work in small standing batches instead of quoting each drop as a new project. Most SaaS clients send strings through a Git branch or TMS connector, and we return translations within 24 hours for batches under 2,000 words. Translation memory carries over everything already approved, so you only pay for new and edited strings. No string freeze is required; translations are versioned against your release tags so hotfixes and feature branches stay in sync.
What happens to variables and placeholders during translation?
They stay intact. Our tooling locks placeholders such as %s, {count}, and full ICU MessageFormat expressions before translation, so linguists cannot edit or delete them. After translation, an automated pass compares source and target placeholder inventories string by string and blocks delivery on any mismatch. We also expand plural rules per language, since Japanese uses one plural category where Polish uses three, and untested plural logic is a frequent source of shipped bugs.
Do you specialize in industrial and B2B software?
Yes. Most of our software work is for platforms that run physical operations: CMMS, EAM, MES, quality management, EHS, WMS, SCADA front ends, and telematics. These products mix software strings with maintenance, production, and safety vocabulary, and we staff them with linguists who know both. A translator who has never read a work order will get "lockout point" or "asset criticality" wrong in ways plant-floor users notice immediately.
How much content can you turn around per sprint?
A single specialized linguist produces about 2,000–2,500 finished words per day, including independent revision. For a four-language program, our standard pods absorb 8,000–10,000 new source words per week without rush fees, and we scale pods for launches. String-only drops move faster: a 500-string batch typically returns in 24 hours across all languages. We agree on a standing capacity per sprint at kickoff so your release calendar never waits on us.
Which file formats and workflows do you support?
String formats include JSON, YAML, XLIFF 1.2 and 2.0, gettext .po, iOS .strings and .stringsdict, Android XML, .resx, .properties, and ARB. Documentation formats include Markdown, MDX, AsciiDoc, reStructuredText, DITA, and HTML. We work through Git branches and pull requests, TMS connectors, or plain file exchange, whichever your team prefers. Code blocks, front matter, and internal link paths pass through untouched.
Ship your next release in four languages
Send us a strings file, a repo link, or a help-center export and we will return an itemized quote with a per-sprint capacity plan. Your termbase, your TM, your release calendar; our linguists and our QA automation.
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