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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Written Translation Manager

💰 $ - $

LocalizationTranslationManagementContent

🎯 Role Definition

The Written Translation Manager is responsible for planning, executing, and optimizing the written translation and localization function across digital products, marketing, legal, and support content. This role defines translation strategy, selects and manages vendors and toolchains (TMS, CAT, MT), enforces linguistic quality through style guides and LQA frameworks, measures program performance with KPIs, and partners with product, engineering, marketing, and legal stakeholders to ensure accurate, culturally appropriate content for target markets.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Senior Translator / Localization Specialist
  • Localization Project Manager / Manager, Translation Operations
  • Content Manager with multilingual experience

Advancement To:

  • Head of Localization / Global Content Localization Lead
  • Director of Global Content or Localization
  • VP of Product/Content Operations (with broader remit)

Lateral Moves:

  • Content Strategy Manager
  • Product Manager (internationalization/localization focus)

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Develop and own the global written translation strategy, including vendor selection, onshore/offshore resourcing, MT+PE (machine translation plus post-editing) policies, and end-to-end workflows to meet business, legal, and time-to-market requirements.
  • Lead and manage a cross-functional team of translators, editors, project managers, and freelancers, including hiring, performance reviews, coaching, workload balancing, and professional development.
  • Design, implement, and maintain translation workflows in the Translation Management System (TMS), ensuring seamless handoffs between CMS, TMS, CAT tools, and engineering pipelines (APIs, CI/CD localization hooks).
  • Oversee translation memory (TM) and glossary strategy—curate, update, and enforce segment-level approvals to maximize leverage, reduce costs, and ensure consistency across product and marketing content.
  • Define and implement a Linguistic Quality Assurance (LQA) program with clear checklists, QA tooling, sampling methodology, issue triage, and remediation closed-loop processes.
  • Establish and enforce style guides, tone-of-voice documents, and brand terminology for each market; partner with brand, marketing, and legal to align on messaging and compliance requirements.
  • Own vendor management: solicit RFPs, evaluate localization vendors and language service providers (LSPs), negotiate rates, service-level agreements (SLAs), and KPI-based contracts to optimize quality, capacity, and cost.
  • Implement and govern machine translation (MT) strategy, selecting engines (e.g., DeepL, Google, custom engines), implementing customization (adaptive MT), defining post-editing levels, and measuring quality-impact and cost savings.
  • Manage localization budgets, forecasts, and spend controls; provide monthly/quarterly reporting on translation volume, cost per word, TM leverage, MT utilization, and ROI to stakeholders and finance.
  • Coordinate localization of time-sensitive materials (product launches, marketing campaigns, legal notices) under tight deadlines while maintaining quality and brand voice.
  • Partner closely with Product, Engineering, and DevOps teams to scope internationalization (i18n) issues, prioritize localization-friendly features, and remove technical blockers that impede translation pipelines.
  • Drive continuous improvement programs: analyze throughput, cycle time, rework, and quality trends and implement process, tooling, or staffing changes to improve metrics.
  • Lead cross-functional localization governance forums and stakeholder reviews to prioritize content, agree on target markets, and set expectations for translation timelines and responsibilities.
  • Create and manage reporting dashboards and executive summaries covering SLA performance, LQA scores, language health, TM/terminology coverage, and cost-efficiency to inform strategic decisions.
  • Serve as primary escalation point for linguistic or delivery disputes, coordinating root-cause analysis, corrective action plans, and communication with affected business units and vendors.
  • Define segmentation and routing rules for content types (legal, marketing, UI, help center) with different quality and compliance workflows, including specialized review cycles for regulated content.
  • Oversee secure handling of confidential and regulated content across translation partners and internal team members, including NDAs, data transfer agreements, and secure TMS/CMS integrations.
  • Develop onboarding and training programs for translators and reviewers, including tool training (CAT/TMS), style and brand workshops, and language-specific best practices.
  • Maintain and expand language coverage plans based on market priorities, cost-benefit analysis, and product roadmaps; manage phased rollouts and continuous content backlogs.
  • Implement terminology management practices, including centralized glossaries, term approval workflows, and integration with TMs and CAT tools to improve translation consistency and reduce review cycles.
  • Define and track key performance indicators (KPIs) for translation quality and delivery (e.g., time-to-market, on-time delivery, LQA scores, vendor quality index), and take action on underperforming languages or vendors.
  • Drive SEO localization practices for written content, ensuring translated pages are optimized for local search intent, keywords, metadata, hreflang, and URL strategies in coordination with SEO and content teams.
  • Support localization for paid marketing campaigns and ad copy by ensuring cultural adaptation, legal compliance, and quick turnaround execution to maximize campaign performance.
  • Lead periodic vendor and tool audits to ensure technical compatibility, security compliance, and cost-effectiveness; retire or consolidate vendors and tools as necessary to simplify operations.

Secondary Functions

  • Act as a liaison between localization and analytics teams to define data requirements and provide translation-related metrics and insights for product and growth initiatives.
  • Support ad-hoc localization requests and emergency translations for customer support, legal, or PR, coordinating rapid review and sign-off with stakeholders.
  • Contribute to the organization’s localization roadmap by assessing new tools (e.g., neural MT, adaptive translation engines), pilots, and integration opportunities with CMS, e-commerce platforms, and content pipelines.
  • Collaborate with engineering and product teams to define localization requirements for new features, participate in sprint planning, and ensure translations are included in release criteria.
  • Participate in cross-functional governance for content lifecycle management, ensuring translations are archived, retired, or refreshed according to content strategy and regulatory needs.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Deep practical experience with Translation Management Systems (TMS) such as Smartling, Lokalise, Transifex, Phrase, or Memsource; able to design and manage automated localization workflows.
  • Extensive use and configuration knowledge of CAT tools and TM maintenance (SDL Trados, MemoQ, Wordfast, or cloud-based CAT integrations).
  • Proven MT strategy and implementation experience (DeepL, Google Translate, AWS/Custom engines), including post-editing workflows, quality metrics, and cost optimization.
  • Terminology management skills using tools like MultiTerm, TMS glossaries, or bespoke terminology platforms; ability to enforce term bases and approvals.
  • Familiarity with Linguistic QA tools (Xbench, QA Distiller, Verifika) and automated QA checks (tag handling, placeholders, HTML validation).
  • Experience integrating localization into CMS, Git, or CI/CD pipelines, plus experience with localization APIs and webhooks for automated content transfer and builds.
  • Proficient in vendor selection, contract negotiation, SLA/KPI definition, and vendor performance management.
  • Strong analytics and reporting skills; comfortable building dashboards (Looker, Tableau, Power BI) to visualize translation volume, TM leverage, cost, and quality.
  • Knowledge of internationalization (i18n) best practices, character encoding, date/number formats, RTL/LTR language handling, and locale-aware UI constraints.
  • SEO localization expertise: keyword research in target languages, hreflang, localized metadata, and coordination with technical SEO.
  • Budgeting and financial acumen for forecasting translation spend and measuring localization ROI.

Soft Skills

  • Strong leadership and people management: hiring, mentoring, performance reviews, and cross-cultural team building.
  • Exceptional stakeholder management and communication skills: able to translate technical localization concepts into business impact for product, marketing, legal, and executive audiences.
  • Strategic thinker with operational rigor: can set long-term localization strategy and drive day-to-day execution improvements.
  • Problem-solving and conflict resolution skills for vendor disputes, quality escalations, and fast turnaround situations.
  • Attention to linguistic detail and brand voice while balancing speed-to-market and cost considerations.
  • Time management and prioritization in a fast-paced environment with competing deadlines and global launch schedules.
  • Continuous learning mindset and curiosity about new localization technologies and language trends.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor’s degree in Translation, Linguistics, Modern Languages, Localization Management, Communication, or a related field; or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Education:

  • Master’s degree in Translation Studies, Applied Linguistics, Localization Management, or an MBA for candidates focused on strategic operations.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Translation and Interpretation
  • Linguistics
  • Modern Languages and Literature
  • Localization / Globalization Studies
  • Computer Science or Information Systems (for TMS/integration-focused roles)

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 5–8 years in translation/localization roles with progressive responsibility; at least 2–3 years managing teams or vendor relationships.

Preferred:

  • 7+ years of localization/translation experience with demonstrated ownership of translation programs, TM/terminology governance, and TMS implementation.
  • Proven track record in both marketing and product localization plus experience in high-growth or SaaS environments.
  • Prior experience running MT+PE programs, negotiating with LSPs, and delivering measurable cost and quality improvements.
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