A product reaches its user not only in a box but with the documents that come with it. How to install it, how to operate a machine safely, when maintenance is due: all of this is written in the user manual and the technical documentation. Translating these documents directly affects both user safety and whether the product can legally be sold. Below you will find what technical documentation covers, the current rules in Türkiye and the European Union, and what matters most in translation.
Technical documentation is the full set of documents that accompany a product through its life cycle, for users, installers and service teams. The documents most frequently translated include user and operating manuals, installation and assembly instructions, maintenance and repair manuals, safety information, product labels and packaging texts, data sheets, spare parts catalogs and training materials.
Each document has a different reader. A user manual often speaks to a consumer with no technical background, while a maintenance manual addresses a trained technician. A good translation keeps the terminology intact while adjusting the language to the reader's level.
Instructions for medical devices are subject to separate and stricter rules; for those documents, see our Medical Device Translation page.
In Türkiye, goods offered to consumers must be sold with a Turkish-language manual. This requirement is set out in the Regulation on Introduction and User Manuals, which is based on Consumer Protection Law No. 6502. The regulation also requires the manual to be written in clear, plain and understandable language. In other words, it is not enough for a manual to be in Turkish; it has to be Turkish the user can actually understand.
The manual may be provided on paper or on a durable medium such as e-mail, the internet or a memory card. When it is provided digitally, it must also appear on the manufacturer's or importer's website, and a paper copy must be supplied free of charge if the consumer requests one. The regulation also requires the written, spoken and visual content of a product's user interface to be in Turkish. Responsibility for preparing the Turkish manual lies with the manufacturer and the importer, so an error in the translated manual of an imported product is the importer's direct responsibility.
A new era is beginning for machinery in the European Union. Machinery Regulation (EU) 2023/1230 replaces Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC and applies from January 20, 2027. Because it is a regulation rather than a directive, it will apply directly in every member state without national transposition.
The regulation requires instructions for use, safety information and the EU declaration of conformity to be provided in the language set by the country where the product is sold. Its most significant change is that instructions for use may now be supplied digitally, under clear conditions: the product must indicate how to access the instructions, they must be printable and downloadable, they must remain accessible online for at least ten years after the product is placed on the market, and a paper copy must be provided free of charge within one month if the user requests it at the time of purchase. For products intended for non-professional users, essential safety information must still be supplied on paper.
The impact on translation is significant. A manual is no longer a booklet printed once and placed in the box; it is version-controlled, multilingual digital content that has to be kept current for years. Every change to the source text has to be reflected fully in every language version. For manufacturers exporting machinery to the EU market, this date is directly binding.
The shortest sentences in a manual are often the most important. Signal words used in safety warnings, such as DANGER, WARNING and CAUTION, express different levels of risk, and the translation must preserve this hierarchy exactly. If a “warning” becomes a “caution” in translation, the risk is perceived as lower than it really is.
Warnings also need to be short, written in the imperative and open to only one interpretation. When an ambiguity in the source carries over into the translation, the chance of the user doing something wrong increases. For this reason, safety sections receive a separate, careful check during editing.
IEC/IEEE 82079-1, the international standard for preparing information for use, calls for information to be structured around the intended user and to be complete and understandable. Translation is part of that structure: heading hierarchy, step numbers, cross-references and references to figures all have to remain consistent and functional in the target language. If a step number or a reference to a figure shifts in translation, the manual becomes unusable even if the language itself is correct.
Manuals are full of images, tables and diagrams. Text inside images, table headings and labels are also content that needs translating, and they are often the parts that get missed.
Text length also varies by language; in languages such as German, text can expand considerably and break the page layout. Delivering the translation in the source format with the layout intact allows the manual to go straight to print or publication. For details, see: Desktop Publishing.
The problems most often seen in manual translation are: giving the same part different names in different documents; breaking the hierarchy of signal words; failing to adapt units of measurement and the decimal separator to the target country (Turkish uses a decimal comma); missing the text inside images; and forgetting to update older language versions when the source manual changes. Each of these can lead to user error or non-compliance.
For one of the giants of the furniture hardware industry, we localized all content, from user manuals to the website, in nine languages; you can find the details of this project on our Technical Translation page.
With more than thirty years of experience, Mirora runs technical translation projects with subject-matter expert translators, independent editors and industry-standard CAT tools, under an ISO 9001-certified quality system and an ISO 17100-aligned workflow.
Yes. Goods offered to consumers must be sold with a Turkish manual under the Regulation on Introduction and User Manuals, which is based on Law No. 6502. Responsibility for preparing the manual lies with the manufacturer and the importer.
In Türkiye, a manual may be provided on a durable medium; in that case it must also appear on the manufacturer's or importer's website, and a paper copy must be supplied free of charge on request. In the EU, digital instructions for machinery become explicitly possible from January 20, 2027, but a paper copy must be provided free of charge within one month if the user requests it.
The regulation requires instructions and safety information to be provided in the language of the country of sale and requires digital instructions to remain accessible for at least ten years. This means translations have to be managed with version control and kept current and consistent in every language.
Signal words such as DANGER, WARNING and CAUTION indicate different levels of risk, and this hierarchy must be preserved exactly. Warnings should be short, clear and open to only one interpretation.
No. Thanks to translation memory, only new or changed sections are translated; unchanged content comes from the previously approved translation. This reduces both time and cost.
Medical device instructions are subject to separate and stricter rules in Europe, such as the MDR and IVDR. For those documents, see our Medical Device Translation page.
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