Help Center Translation for Small Teams: The 2026 Practical Guide

You're a small SaaS team. Maybe 3-5 people. Support tickets are coming in from Spain, Brazil, Germany. Your help center is English-only. You know you should translate it, but who has time for that?

This guide is for you: the founder wearing six hats, the support lead who also does marketing, the solo operator building something real. We'll show you how small teams actually handle multilingual support without dedicated localization staff or enterprise budgets.

Why Small Teams Struggle with Translation

Let's be honest about the challenges:

No dedicated resources. Enterprise companies have localization managers. You have a Notion doc and good intentions.

Budget constraints. Professional translation services quote $0.15-0.25/word. Your 50 help articles × 500 words × 3 languages = $11,250. That's not happening.

Maintenance fear. Translating once is hard enough. Keeping translations in sync when your product changes every week? Terrifying.

Quality uncertainty. You don't speak German. How do you know if the translation is good?

These are real problems. But they're solvable with the right approach.

The Small Team Translation Framework

Forget enterprise playbooks. Here's what actually works at small scale:

1. Start with One Language

Not three. Not five. One.

Pick your highest-potential language based on:

• Existing traffic: Check Google Analytics for non-English visitors
• Customer requests: Which language do you get asked about most?
• Market opportunity: Where are you trying to grow?

For most small SaaS companies, the top candidates are:

• Spanish: 500M+ speakers, strong in Americas
• German: Europe's largest B2B market, high willingness to pay
• French: Required for Quebec (legal), strong in EU and Africa
• Portuguese: Brazil is huge, often overlooked

2. Translate the Critical 20%

You don't need to translate everything. The Pareto principle applies:

Translate first:

• Getting started guide (reduces onboarding support)
• Pricing/billing FAQ (pre-purchase conversion)
• Top 10 most-viewed articles (covers 80% of traffic)
• Account/password reset help (high-frustration topics)

Translate later:

• Advanced features documentation
• Edge case troubleshooting
• Historical changelog

Maybe never translate:

• API documentation (developers usually read English)
• Admin/internal guides
• Content with <100 monthly views

3. Use AI Translation (Strategically)

Modern AI translation is good enough for support content. Not perfect, but good enough.

Use Case	AI Alone	AI + Human Review
Help articles	✅	Better for top 5
FAQ answers	✅
Error messages		✅
Legal content		❌ (Professional only)
Marketing copy		✅

Quality reality check: DeepL and Google Neural produce translations that native speakers rate 4-4.5/5 for support content. That's better than your competitor's untranslated English.

4. Build a Maintenance Workflow

The translation isn't done when you publish. Your product changes. Your help center changes. Here's how small teams keep up:

Weekly (15 minutes):

• Check which English articles changed
• Flag high-priority changes for re-translation
• Update 2-3 articles

Monthly (1 hour):

• Review analytics for translated content
• Check for new high-traffic articles to add
• Update terminology if product changed

Quarterly (2 hours):

• Full content audit
• Remove outdated articles
• Consider adding new language

With the right tools, this is 2-3 hours/month total. Without them, it's 10+ hours of copy-paste hell.

Tool Options for Small Teams

Budget Tier ($0-30/month)

DIY with Google Translate:

• Free
• Copy article → paste in Google Translate → paste back
• No integration, no memory, formatting breaks
• Maintenance is entirely manual
• Best for: Testing demand before committing

DeepL Free:

• Free tier: 500,000 characters/month
• Better quality than Google
• Still manual copy-paste
• No Intercom integration
• Best for: Higher quality one-off translations

Value Tier ($30-100/month)

TranslateDesk (pay-as-you-go, 5 free to start):

• Direct Intercom integration
• AI translation (DeepL)
• One-click sync and publish
• Automatic change detection
• Translation memory
• Best for: Intercom users who want it to just work (see how it compares to Intercom's native options)

Weglot ($29+/month):

• Website translation (not help center specific)
• Auto-detects new content
• Good for marketing sites
• Best for: Translating your whole site, not just help center

Growth Tier ($100-300/month)

Lokalise ($140/month):

• Full TMS features
• Team collaboration
• Multiple integrations
• Over-powered for small teams
• Best for: Teams planning to scale localization

Crowdin ($40/month base):

• Developer-focused
• GitHub integration
• Community translation features
• Best for: Open source or technical products

The 2-Week Launch Plan

Here's how to go from zero to live in 14 days:

Week 1: Foundation

Day 1-2: Research

• Check analytics for top language opportunity
• List your 15 most-viewed help articles
• Decide on tool (we recommend TranslateDesk for Intercom)

Day 3-4: Setup

• Create language version in Intercom (Settings → Messenger → Languages)
• Connect translation tool
• Import first batch of articles

Day 5-7: Initial Translation

• Translate 15 core articles
• Quick review for obvious errors
• Don't aim for perfect. Aim for helpful

Week 2: Launch & Learn

Day 8-9: Soft Launch

• Publish translated help center
• Don't announce yet. Let it exist quietly
• Monitor for any broken links or formatting issues

Day 10-11: Feedback Collection

• Share with 2-3 customers who speak the language
• Ask: "Does this make sense? Anything confusing?"
• Fix top issues

Day 12-14: Announce & Monitor

• Update your website to show language support
• Add language selector to help center
• Watch analytics for the first week

Common Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them)

Mistake 1: Translating Everything at Once

The trap: "We'll translate all 87 articles before launching."

Reality: You'll burn out, launch nothing, and the articles will be outdated by the time you finish.

Fix: Launch with 15 articles. Add 5 per week. You'll have full coverage in a month, and you'll learn what actually matters.

Mistake 2: Ignoring Maintenance

The trap: "We translated it once. Done!"

Reality: You update English articles weekly. Translated versions drift. Customers get wrong information.

Fix: Build maintenance into your sprint. 15 minutes per week prevents a full re-translation later.

Mistake 3: Over-Investing in Quality

The trap: "Every word must be reviewed by a native speaker."

Reality: Your competitor has no translation at all. An 90% quality translation beats 0% every time.

Fix: Reserve human review for legal/compliance content and your top 5 articles. AI handles the rest.

Mistake 4: No Analytics

The trap: "We translated to Spanish. Is anyone using it?"

Reality: If you can't measure it, you can't improve it.

Fix: Set up tracking before you launch. Know which translated articles get views. Cut what doesn't perform.

Mistake 5: Trying to Do It Manually

The trap: "I'll just copy-paste into Google Translate. How hard can it be?"

Reality: It takes 15-20 minutes per article manually. 50 articles × 3 languages = 50 hours. Then it breaks when you update anything.

Fix: Use a tool with integration. The time saved pays for itself in week one.

ROI Reality Check

Let's do the math for a small team:

Scenario: 5-person SaaS, $99/month product, 15% of traffic from Spanish speakers

Without translation:

• Spanish visitors see English help center
• Conversion rate 30% lower than English
• ~$2,000/month in lost revenue

With TranslateDesk (from ~$79 for 100 translations):

• 15 core articles translated in first week
• Spanish conversion normalizes
• ROI: positive from first translation batch

Even at 10% of these estimates, translation pays for itself immediately.

When to Graduate to Enterprise Tools

Small team tools work until they don't. Consider upgrading when:

• You're managing 5+ languages
• You need legal/regulatory review workflows
• Multiple people need to approve translations
• You're translating non-help content (product UI, marketing)
• You're spending 10+ hours/month on maintenance

Until then? Keep it simple. Small team problems need small team solutions.

Start Today

Don't let "we should translate our help center" sit on your roadmap for another quarter.

1. Open your analytics
2. Find your top non-English language
3. List your 10 most-viewed articles
4. Pick a tool and start

Two weeks from now, you'll have customers reading help content in their language. That's support that scales without hiring.

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Building on Intercom? TranslateDesk handles help center translation automatically. One-click sync, AI-powered translation, and no copy-paste required. See how it works.