Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Written Translation Technician

🎯 Role Definition

The Written Translation Technician is a language specialist who prepares, translates, post-edits, and quality-assures written content using CAT/TMS tools, translation memories and machine translation engines. This role combines linguistic expertise with technical skills (XLIFF, XML, CMS) to produce culturally accurate, brand-compliant translations for marketing, technical documentation, legal, and product content. The Technician ensures consistent terminology, maintains translation memories, supports localization engineering tasks, and delivers on time to meet business and client SLAs.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Junior Translator / Bilingual Copywriter
Localization Assistant / Language Technician
Language Services Coordinator or Vendor Manager

Advancement To:

Senior Translator / Senior Localization Specialist
Localization Engineer or Terminology Manager
Localization Project Manager / Language Lead

Lateral Moves:

QA Linguist / Localization QA Specialist
Machine Translation Post-Editor
Content Specialist / Multilingual Editor

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Prepare and format source files (Word, InDesign, XML, XLIFF, HTML) for translation using CAT tools and localization workflows, ensuring all translatable segments are exported/imported correctly to avoid content loss.
Translate a wide range of written materials (technical manuals, product descriptions, marketing copy, legal documents, UI strings) with high fidelity to source intent, brand voice, and target-culture nuances.
Post-edit machine translation output (MTPE) to company quality standards, correcting terminology, style, and grammatical errors while optimizing for fluency and naturalness.
Maintain and update translation memories (TMs) and termbases to maximize reuse, consistency and efficiency across projects, including creating and reviewing fuzzy-match leverage decisions.
Implement terminology management best practices: create, review and enforce controlled vocabularies and multilingual glossaries in the TMS to ensure consistent use of product and industry terms.
Perform linguistic quality assurance (LQA) and functional QA of translated assets using automated QA checks and manual review for accuracy, punctuation, formatting, and context.
Localize UI/UX strings and ensure character limits, placeholders, variables, and pseudolocalization considerations are respected to prevent runtime issues in applications.
Work with localization engineers to validate XLIFF/PO/XMB files, fix segmentation problems, and resolve encoding or Unicode issues affecting translated output.
Conduct in-context reviews and linguistic sign-offs with product owners, subject-matter experts, or external reviewers to confirm terminology and tone are appropriate for the target audience.
Create concise linguistic reports after QA cycles documenting recurring errors, TM improvements, and recommendations to reduce future rework and improve SLA adherence.
Prepare bilingual review packages and support client/vendor reviews, incorporating feedback, reconciling reviewer comments, and updating TMs/termbases accordingly.
Validate translation formatting in target deliverables (layout checks, line breaks, hyphenation, rich text fields) to ensure final output mirrors source presentation and meets brand standards.
Manage and tag sensitive or regulated content, applying industry-specific compliance and confidentiality practices when translating legal, medical or financial materials.
Coordinate with project managers and external vendors to provide clear handoff packages (context notes, reference materials, source segmentation) and ensure on-time delivery.
Analyze source content complexity and recommend MT, human translation or hybrid workflows depending on content type, volume and required quality level.
Troubleshoot tool-related issues (TMS/CAT crashes, tag mismatches, TM corruption) and liaise with IT or tool vendors to implement fixes and maintain translation pipeline stability.
Review and provide feedback on vendor invoices and time estimates based on word counts, TM leverage and project-specific complexity to support accurate budgeting.
Train and mentor junior linguists and vendors on company style guides, CAT tool best practices, and terminology guidelines to uplift overall team quality.
Implement and maintain quality scoring metrics (QA pass rates, error categories, QC turnaround) and contribute to continuous improvement initiatives to increase throughput and reduce defects.
Support continuous localization efforts such as incremental updates, top-of-page inserts, or segmented pushes, ensuring rapid and accurate updates for releases.
Archive and version-control translated assets and TMs according to company retention policy, enabling traceability and reuse for future projects.
Participate in vendor selection and evaluation, including linguistic test assignments, to build reliable rosters of translators and MT post-editors by language pair and domain expertise.

Secondary Functions

Assist product and engineering teams with localization testing and reproduction of language-related bugs in web and mobile environments.
Create and update internal style guides, quick-reference glossaries and client-facing translation briefs to streamline linguistic decisions.
Support ad-hoc multilingual content requests from marketing, legal, and support teams, providing quick turnaround translations or adaptation when required.
Contribute to localization automation projects, helping define rule-based scripts or helpers to pre-process/clean source content for better MT output and CAT segmentation.
Monitor industry trends in MT, NMT, TMS and CAT tools and recommend pilot projects to evaluate productivity and quality gains.
Coordinate small-scale vendor audits and vendor performance metrics, sharing improvement plans and corrective actions with procurement and PMs.
Participate in sprint planning, retrospective sessions and cross-functional meetings to align localization priorities with product release cycles.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Proficiency with CAT tools and TMS platforms (SDL Trados Studio, memoQ, Smartcat, Wordfast, Memsource/Plunet or similar) including TM management and batch processing.
Hands-on experience with XLIFF, PO, TMX, XML, HTML and common file formats used in localization pipelines.
Experience configuring and leveraging machine translation engines (e.g., custom NMT engines, MT API integrations) and conducting MT post-edit workflows.
Strong terminology management skills; ability to create, maintain and reconcile multilingual termbases and glossaries in standard formats.
Linguistic Quality Assurance (LQA) proficiency using automated QA tools (QA Distiller, Xbench, Verifika) and manual linguistic review methodologies.
Familiarity with localization engineering tasks: placeholder handling, tag protection, pseudolocalization, encoding (UTF-8) and segmentation issues.
Understanding of version control basics and CMS integration for pushing/pulling localized content (e.g., WordPress, Drupal, content APIs).
Ability to prepare bilingual/multilingual review packages and reconcile reviewer comments across multiple languages.
Basic scripting or automation skills (Excel advanced functions, regex, Python or macros) to preprocess source files, clean files and speed up repetitive tasks.
Experience with project tracking, estimating translation volume and TM leverage, and providing input to project managers about delivery timelines and resourcing.

Soft Skills

Exceptional attention to detail with a strong commitment to linguistic accuracy and stylistic consistency.
Excellent time management and ability to prioritize competing localization requests under strict SLAs.
Strong interpersonal and vendor management skills; ability to provide constructive feedback to freelancers and agencies.
Cultural sensitivity and target-audience awareness to adapt tone and messaging appropriately.
Problem-solving mindset and ability to troubleshoot issues across tools, formats and workflows.
Clear written and verbal communication skills for working with product teams, reviewers and stakeholders.
Team player who can collaborate across engineering, product, and content teams to deliver localized releases.
Adaptability and continuous learning orientation to stay current with localization technologies and best practices.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor’s degree in Translation, Linguistics, Modern Languages, Applied Linguistics, or related field; or equivalent professional translation experience.

Preferred Education:

Master’s in Translation Studies, Localization Management, Computational Linguistics, or relevant certification (e.g., ATA certification, localization-specific training).

Relevant Fields of Study:

Translation and Interpreting
Applied Linguistics
Computer Science / Computational Linguistics
Communication, Technical Writing, or Language Studies

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 2–5 years of professional translation/localization experience with demonstrable proficiency using CAT tools and TMS platforms.

Preferred:

3+ years in a corporate localization team or language service provider environment.
Experience with MT post-editing, terminology management, and localization engineering support.
Proven track record managing multiple language pairs and domain-specific content (technical, legal, marketing, software).