How a dedicated TM and safety-critical terminology protocol kept DE>FR machine documentation consistent over a full year of recurring deliveries.
The client
A manufacturer of industrial filling and packaging systems serving the beverage sector across European markets. The company’s French-language technical documentation covers three parallel content types: machine control interface text, operating manuals (Betriebsanleitungen), and operator training documents, all managed through a documentation CMS and operated by French-speaking production teams running high-throughput equipment.
The challenge
Industrial machinery documentation has a consistency problem that standard localization workflows rarely address directly. The HMI interface text, operating manual, and training documentation for the same machine are authored by different internal teams, in different file formats, on different schedules. That will cause an operator who reads one French label in the manual but encounters a different rendering on the control panel to hesitate, and in a high-throughput production environment, that hesitation has a measurable cost.
The project ran on a schedule of monthly batches being delivered over a full year, covering all three document types in each batch. The terminology used in every batch had to be precisely aligned with all previous batches, with content formatted for direct import into the manufacturer’s documentation CMS. Tag sequence integrity was a hard requirement, as the presence of any tag errors on delivery would break the CMS import cycle.
An additional terminology transition ran in parallel. The manufacturer had revised its internal standards, requiring the controlled replacement of legacy designations across all content. Existing TM entries couldn’t simply be reused, and source-text errors in safety-critical segments needed to be flagged for correction rather than carried forward into French.
The solution
We used a dedicated TM for the full scope of the project, maintained across all of the twelve monthly batches. A parallel domain-specific termbase captured French equivalents for machine visualization terms, control parameters, safety nomenclature, and operator alert messages, ensuring consistent output, regardless of which document type appeared in any given batch.
Safety-critical segments were handled under a defined protocol. Where source-text errors appeared in emergency stop or protective device labeling, the segment was flagged for manufacturer correction rather than simply translated as written.
MASTER/SLAVE terminology was replaced with approved Controller/Device equivalents throughout, with all replacements logged at the segment level. Tag integrity was verified on every delivery to support error-free CMS round trips.
The results
- A dedicated TM and domain-specific termbase maintained across all twelve batches, covering HMI visualization terms, control parameters, safety nomenclature, and operator alerts, with zero terminology drift between deliveries.
- Safety-critical terminology managed under a defined correction protocol; MASTER/SLAVE to Controller/Device migration completed across all content without TM contamination.
- Tag integrity preserved for every delivery, enabling error-free round-trip import into the manufacturer’s documentation CMS with no reformatting necessary on receipt.
