Comparison

Translate Desk vs Manual Translation

See how your Intercom help center workflow changes when you use TranslateDesk instead of translating every article by hand.

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5 free translations. No credit card required.

Side-by-side comparison

How the two approaches stack up for translating Intercom help centers.

What you compare	TranslateDesk	Manual translation
Time to translate 50 articles	Under 5 minutes (fully automated)	40+ hours (translation + formatting)
Formatting preserved	Automatic (images, links, code blocks)	Requires manual reformatting
Staying in sync when articles change	Monitoring that highlights missing and outdated translations	Spreadsheets and manual tracking
Consistency across articles	Same terminology throughout	Varies by translator
Cost per article	Typically cents per article	$0.15-$0.25/word ($50+ per article)
Intercom integration	One-click publish	Copy-paste into each article

The hidden costs of manual translation

Sync Drift

When you update an English article, your translations instantly become outdated. Tracking which specific sentences changed across 50+ articles requires complex spreadsheets and constant vigilance.

Formatting Nightmares

Translators often break internal links, image alt tags, or Intercom code blocks. You end up spending hours fixing broken HTML and layout issues instead of helping customers.

When manual translation is the right choice

TranslateDesk is built for help centers that change often and need to stay in sync across languages. Manual translation still makes sense when you want a different kind of process:

Brand campaigns where you want copy written directly in each language

Legal or compliance documents requiring certified translation

Content where you prefer a native writer to craft every line

Small, static content sets where time isn't a factor

Why teams choose TranslateDesk for help centers

Help center content is technical, frequently updated, and needs to stay in sync across languages. TranslateDesk keeps every language version aligned without extra work for your team.

Translate your entire help center in minutes, not weeks

Preserves all Intercom formatting automatically

One-click publish directly to Intercom

Monitoring that shows which articles are missing or outdated in each language

Re-translate when you update articles, without tracking changes in spreadsheets

Review and edit before publishing

No technical setup or API keys required

Get started for free

5 min

to translate 50+ articles

100%

formatting preserved