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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Written Translation Director

💰 $ - $

LocalizationTranslationContentLanguage ServicesManagement

🎯 Role Definition

The Written Translation Director is a senior localization leader responsible for defining and executing the organization's written translation strategy across multiple content types and languages. You will lead internal translators and external vendors, build and optimize workflows using TMS/CAT tools and MT engines, establish terminology and quality standards, manage budgets and SLAs, and partner with product, marketing, legal, and engineering to ensure consistent, culturally appropriate, and SEO-optimized multilingual content at scale.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Senior Localization Manager or Localization Program Manager
  • Lead Translator / Senior Translator with management experience
  • Global Content Manager or Internationalization (i18n) Engineer

Advancement To:

  • Head of Localization / Global Head of Localization
  • Director of Global Content & Localization
  • VP/Head of Global Communications or Chief Content Officer

Lateral Moves:

  • Product Localization Manager
  • Content Strategy Director (Global)
  • Global Vendor / Procurement Lead (Language Services)

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Create and implement a comprehensive written translation strategy that aligns with corporate goals, ensuring consistent brand voice, tone, and terminology across all markets and customer touchpoints.
  • Lead, hire, mentor, and manage a cross-functional team of in-house translators, localization project managers, and localization engineers to deliver high-quality translations on time and within budget.
  • Own translation governance: develop and maintain style guides, glossaries, language-specific notes, and approval workflows that scale across content types (marketing, legal, product, support, UX).
  • Select, implement and optimize Translation Management Systems (TMS), CAT tools, and machine translation (MT) pipelines, including integrations with CMS, product platforms, and CI/CD processes.
  • Define and enforce robust quality assurance processes (QA, QA automation, LQA, MTPE) and measurable KPIs such as quality scorecards, cycle time, and first-pass yield to continuously drive improvement.
  • Manage vendor relationships and procurement: evaluate language service providers, negotiate SLAs, pricing, and contracts, and oversee vendor performance and compliance.
  • Design and operate terminology management and translation memory (TM) strategies to maximize reuse, minimize cost, and improve translation consistency and speed.
  • Build and manage the localization budget, forecasting translation spend, identifying cost-saving opportunities (TM leverage, MT), and reporting ROI to senior leadership.
  • Establish and run translation workflows for high-volume and continuous delivery content streams, ensuring seamless handoffs between content creators, localization teams, and engineering.
  • Partner with product, engineering and localization engineering teams to ensure product internationalization (i18n) readiness, addressing character encoding, UI expansion, and pseudo-localization testing.
  • Lead cross-functional localization launches for product releases and marketing campaigns, coordinating timelines, resource allocation, and go-to-market localization readiness.
  • Implement SEO localization practices: coordinate multilingual keyword research, localized metadata, and content optimization to preserve organic visibility in target markets.
  • Create and maintain security, privacy, and legal controls for handling sensitive content in translation workflows, including NDAs, data localization, and vendor access policies.
  • Drive automation and process improvements by leveraging APIs, webhooks and scripting to reduce manual tasks, streamline handoffs, and shorten cycle times.
  • Define and report on localization metrics and dashboards (cost per word, time-to-market, quality trends, TM leverage) to stakeholders and use data to inform strategic decisions.
  • Oversee complex linguistic reviews and escalation paths for high-risk content (legal disclaimers, financial disclosures, regulated content) to mitigate compliance and reputational risk.
  • Design and manage training programs for internal stakeholders and vendors on brand voice, tone, tools, and localization best practices to raise capability across the organization.
  • Conduct regular vendor audits and performance reviews, including sample-based linguistic QA, process adherence checks, and corrective action plans where needed.
  • Champion multilingual accessibility and inclusive language practices to ensure translations meet accessibility guidelines (e.g., WCAG) and cultural sensitivities.
  • Lead RFPs and supplier selection for language services and localization technologies, assess ROI and total cost of ownership, and make recommendations to procurement and executive teams.
  • Serve as the primary escalation point for cross-regional translation issues and complex linguistic disputes, facilitating executive-level decisions when necessary.
  • Develop contingency and capacity plans to address surges in translation demand (campaigns, product launches) while maintaining quality and timelines.

Secondary Functions

  • Maintain up-to-date knowledge of MT advancements (neural MT, domain adaptation) and evaluate pilot programs to increase throughput and lower costs.
  • Support ad-hoc linguistic and localization consultancy across business units, including brand campaigns, legal translations, and customer support initiatives.
  • Collaborate with analytics teams to run A/B tests and performance studies on localized content to validate language variants and optimize conversions.
  • Contribute to the organization's multilingual content strategy and roadmap by recommending new languages, prioritization frameworks, and go-to-market sequencing.
  • Coordinate with engineering to optimize translation handoff automation (e.g., CMS/TMS connectors, API-driven workflows) and to troubleshoot integration issues.
  • Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies when translation deliverables are part of product or marketing sprints, ensuring alignment on priorities and dependencies.
  • Manage internal stakeholder expectations through clear SLAs, translation lead times, and communication frameworks, including executive reporting and stakeholder training.
  • Maintain industry relationships, attend localization conferences, and bring best practices to the team to continuously evolve processes and tooling.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Deep expertise with Translation Management Systems (TMS) such as Smartcat, Memsource (Crowdin/Plunet/SDL/Wordbee/Lokalise equivalents), including API integrations and workflow configuration.
  • Proficiency in CAT tools and translation memory management (Trados, MemoQ, Wordfast, or equivalent) and strategies for TM segmentation and upkeep.
  • Practical experience implementing and optimizing Machine Translation and MT post-editing (MTPE) workflows with engines like DeepL, Google, AWS Translate, or custom NMT solutions.
  • Strong vendor management and procurement skills for language services, including RFP design, contract negotiation, SLA definition, and vendor scorecards.
  • Familiarity with localization engineering concepts: i18n best practices, pseudo-localization, string extraction, encoding issues, and CI/CD localization pipelines.
  • Ability to design and operate linguistic QA (LQA) processes, automated QA tooling, QA checks (QA Distiller, Xbench, custom QA scripts), and quality metrics.
  • Experience with terminology management systems and building/maintaining glossaries and style guides for multi-market consistency.
  • Knowledge of CMS platforms and content workflows (WordPress, Contentful, Drupal) and experience integrating them with translation workflows.
  • Data literacy: ability to define localization KPIs, analyze cost-per-word, TM leverage, throughput, and present data-driven recommendations to leadership.
  • Familiarity with SEO localization practices, multilingual keyword research tools, and optimizing translated content for search and conversion.
  • Technical scripting or automation skills (Python, JavaScript, or shell) to build or maintain integration scripts and automate repetitive tasks.
  • Security and compliance knowledge relevant to handling PII and confidential content in translation processes.

Soft Skills

  • Strategic leadership with demonstrated ability to set vision, inspire cross-functional teams, and drive measurable outcomes in a global environment.
  • Strong stakeholder management and communication skills; adept at translating technical localization concepts for non-technical audiences and executives.
  • Excellent negotiation and vendor relationship skills with a focus on continuous improvement and partnership.
  • Problem-solving and critical thinking skills to manage high-risk content, urgent launches, and conflicting priorities.
  • High cultural intelligence and sensitivity to nuances across languages, regions, and customer segments.
  • Project and program management discipline with experience scheduling, resourcing, risk mitigation, and capacity planning.
  • Coaching and talent development skills to build linguistic and technical capabilities across in-house teams and vendors.
  • Resilience under pressure, with a proven track record of meeting tight deadlines while maintaining quality.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Translation, Applied Linguistics, Languages, Localization, Communications, Computer Science, or a related field.

Preferred Education:

  • Master's degree in Translation Studies, Applied Linguistics, Localization Management, Business Administration (MBA), or similar advanced degree.
  • Certifications in localization, project management (PMP/PRINCE2/Agile), or vendor/tool-specific certifications (Memsource, Smartcat, SDL/Trados).

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Translation and Interpreting
  • Applied Linguistics / Sociolinguistics
  • Computer Science / Software Engineering (localization engineering)
  • Business Administration / Project Management
  • Communications / Marketing

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 7–12 years in translation/localization or language services, with at least 3–5 years in a management or director-level position.

Preferred: 10+ years leading global localization programs, proven track record managing TMS implementations, multi-vendor ecosystems, and cross-functional launches across product, marketing, and legal content.

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