As globalization continues, many companies handle large volumes of translation every day to communicate with overseas offices and conduct business with international partners. The number of documents requiring translation, including management reports, sales materials, contracts, technical documents, and emails, continues to grow each year, consuming significant time and human resources.
At one major company with numerous overseas locations, team members in each department had to translate documents alongside their regular responsibilities, creating a substantial burden. Translating materials into English could take several days, making it difficult for them to devote enough time to their core responsibilities.
Three common challenges in translation workflows
Many companies face the following translation challenges:
- Translation takes too much time
- Quality varies depending on who translates the content
- Team members cannot focus on their core responsibilities
Technical documents and internal materials containing specialized terminology can often take anywhere from several hours to several days to translate. The time spent on translation can leave team members with less time for their core responsibilities.
How a major company reduced translation effort with AI translation
Yaraku Translate is an AI-powered translation workspace that uses generative AI and machine translation engines.
Traditional translation workflows involved several steps:
- Understanding the source text
- Translating the content
- Refining the wording
- Standardizing terminology
- Reviewing and revising the translation
All of these steps had to be completed.
With Yaraku Translate, team members review and revise machine-generated translations, reducing the burden of creating translations from scratch.
One example that illustrates the scale of the potential workload reduction comes from a major company with numerous overseas locations. A company representative estimated that the volume of materials processed using AI translation each month would require approximately 1,000 person-months of work if translated manually. Even after excluding documents that the company began translating only after implementation, it estimates that AI translation frees up approximately 600–700 person-months of translation effort each month.
Reference: Keyman’s Net, “資料翻訳に泣いた帝人が1000人月の作業を削減した仕掛けとは” (How Teijin reduced 1,000 person-months of document translation work), published 2022/07/22.
Improve translation quality with terminology and previous translations
When translating corporate documents, it is important not only to use machine translation but also to apply terminology and wording established within the organization.
Corporate documents often include terms and expressions such as:
- Internal terminology
- Product names
- Technical terminology
- Industry-specific language
These terms and expressions must be used accurately and consistently.
Yaraku Translate provides Phrases for saving past translations and a Glossary for storing translations of specialized terms and proper nouns. Saved translations and terminology can then be applied to and reused in future translations.
This delivers several benefits:
- Consistent translation quality
- Consistent terminology
- Reduced revision effort
- Shared translation knowledge
This makes each of these benefits possible.
By standardizing wording that previously varied from one team member to another, companies can gain even more value from AI translation.
From translating to driving global business
The real value of adopting AI translation is not to eliminate translation itself.
It is about redirecting the time previously spent on translation toward the work that matters most.
For example, teams can spend more time on:
- Preparing for meetings with international customers
- Market research
- Product planning
- Developing global strategies
These are just some of the higher-value activities they can focus on.
Because translation is a means of advancing global business rather than an end in itself, streamlining translation workflows can directly strengthen a company’s competitiveness.
Summary
For companies expanding globally, reducing the burden of translation is an important priority. The case presented here demonstrates the potential of AI translation to substantially reduce the time spent on translation work.
By combining machine translation with human review and revision, along with Phrases and Glossary, Yaraku Translate helps companies streamline translation workflows while maintaining control over quality.
Move from being overwhelmed by translation to focusing on the work that matters most. Yaraku Translate is a powerful solution that supports global business communication.