Most European teams run internally on English. The Slack workspace is English, the handbook is English, and the new hire in Lisbon or Gdańsk reads English all day without complaining. So it feels reasonable to keep the SOPs in English too.
For a lot of documentation that is fine. For the subset that tells someone what they must do, it is not always your choice.
This is a practical guide to running process documentation in more than one language across Europe: what the law actually asks for, where machine translation quietly fails, and how to keep five language versions from drifting apart. Full disclosure: we build Loopyback, an EU-hosted documentation tool that translates guides into 10+ languages, so we have a stake in the answer. The vendor questions further down are ones you should put to us as well.
The legal floor is national, not European
There is no EU-wide rule saying internal documentation must be in a local language. The obligations are national, and they bite on one specific category: documents that impose obligations on an employee, or that the employee needs in order to do the job.
France. Article L.1321-6 of the Code du travail requires that any document containing obligations for the employee, or information necessary for performing their work, be written in French. The usual sanction is not a fine — it is that the document becomes inopposable. You cannot enforce it. A target, a safety procedure or an internal rule that exists only in English can be set aside in a dispute. Two exceptions apply: documents received from abroad, and documents intended for foreign employees.
Belgium. Language use between employer and employee is regional. In Flanders, the Language Decree of 19 July 1973 requires Dutch; in Wallonia, French; in Brussels, the language of the employee. The Flemish sanction is nullity: the document is treated as if it never existed, and the employer carries the consequence, not the worker. Translations alongside the official version are allowed and are the normal way out.
Health and safety, everywhere. The Framework Directive (89/391/EEC) requires instruction and training to be adequate, which in practice means comprehensible to the person receiving it. And from January 2027, Regulation (EU) 2023/1230 requires machinery instructions in a language easily understood by users, as determined by the Member State where the machine is placed on the market.
The practical read: your deployment runbook can stay in English. Your disciplinary procedure, your safety instructions and anything that sets an obligation probably cannot, in at least France and Belgium.
What the tools actually do
| Tool | Languages | Plan required | Text inside screenshots | Where translation is processed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scribe | 14 | Enterprise, select modules | Not translated | US-headquartered; ask for the sub-processor list |
| Tango | 10 | Enterprise workspaces only | Not translated | US-headquartered; ask for the sub-processor list |
| Guidde | Markets 50+ | Not published | Not translated | US-headquartered; ask for the sub-processor list |
| Loopyback | 10+ | Included from €16/month | Not translated | EU (Belgium) |
Two things stand out. Translation is an enterprise-tier feature at the two best known tools, which puts it out of reach for the twelve-person ops team that actually has the France problem. And nobody translates the pixels.
On the last column: none of this is an accusation. US hosting is a normal commercial arrangement, not a defect. It is simply an extra step in your paperwork — a transfer mechanism, a signed DPA, and a sub-processor list you have actually read. Ask any vendor, including us, which translation engine sits behind the button.
The screenshot problem nobody solves
Every tool on that table translates the step text and leaves the screenshot in the source language. You end up with a Dutch procedure illustrated by English screens, which is exactly the situation the language rules were written to prevent: the words are compliant, the thing the worker actually looks at is not.
There is no clever fix. If your Warsaw team uses the Polish interface of the ERP, the Polish guide has to be recorded on the Polish interface. That means capturing twice, not translating once. Budget for it on the handful of guides where it matters, and accept English screenshots everywhere else.
Translation is a processing operation
Sending a guide out for machine translation means sending its text to an engine somewhere. If a step description still contains a customer name that survived redaction, that name goes with it.
Four questions worth asking:
- Which translation engine is used, and is it listed as a sub-processor on the DPA?
- Where is the text processed, physically?
- Is it retained, logged, or used to train a model?
- Does redaction run before the translation call, or after?
The last one is the one people miss. Redaction that happens before capture keeps personal data out of the translation path entirely; redaction applied afterwards does not, because the original text was already sent. Our comparison of European SOP and documentation software goes through the hosting side of this in more detail.
Common mistakes
Translating everything. Five languages across a 200-guide library is a maintenance project nobody finishes. Translate the obligation-bearing subset first: safety, HR procedures, anything with a signature at the end.
No source of truth. Five equal versions become five divergent versions within a quarter. Nominate one source language. Every edit starts there and flows outward.
Publishing machine output unreviewed. For documents with legal weight, a machine draft with native-speaker sign-off is the right shape. For a guide on resetting a password, the raw output is fine.
Version skew. A translation that lags the source by two releases is worse than no translation, because people trust it. Show the source version and date on every localised page.
Translating UI labels. "Click Instellingen" when the button says Settings sends people hunting. Keep interface strings in the language of the interface and put the local word in brackets.
Forgetting the export. The version that ends up in front of a works council or a labour inspector is a PDF, not a link. Check that your export carries the translated version and not the source.
FAQ
Do we legally have to translate all internal documentation?
No. The rules target documents that impose obligations on employees or that they need to do their work. Architecture notes, meeting minutes and internal wikis generally fall outside. When in doubt, ask whether you would want to rely on the document in a dispute.
Is machine translation good enough for an SOP?
For most operational guides, yes, as a draft. Procedural language is short, repetitive and low on idiom, which is where machine translation performs best. Domain terminology and anything with legal consequence still needs a human pass.
Does the French exception for foreign employees let us stay in English?
It is narrower than it looks. It covers documents intended for foreign employees, not an English-speaking workplace in general. If a French national is bound by the document, the French version is the one that counts.
How do we keep five versions in sync?
Pick a source language, re-translate on publish rather than on a schedule, and stamp each localised page with the source version it was generated from. If you are still deciding what belongs in a procedure at all, our note on SOPs versus work instructions is a reasonable starting point.
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If you want to see how this works in practice, Loopyback records a guide once, redacts personal data before it leaves the browser, and publishes it in 10+ languages from a single source, hosted in Belgium. Pricing starts at a free plan, €16 per month for individuals and €24 per seat for teams.
Founder of Loopyback
Suleyman is the founder of Loopyback, a Belgium based tool that turns workflows into step by step guides. He writes about documentation, SOPs and getting knowledge out of people's heads.