HR Managers: Your Translation Tool is Probably Leaking Employee Data

HR translation is rarely “just translation”. It’s employee data, employment context, and documents that people will rely on.

This post is a practical guide to HR document translation with privacy in mind: what to translate with machine translation, what to handle differently, and what to require from a vendor.

HR files contain more sensitive data than people realize

Even “boring” HR docs often contain:

• names, addresses, IDs
• compensation bands
• performance or disciplinary context
• health-related details (depending on the document)

So the main risk isn’t a slightly awkward sentence. It’s data exposure through retention, logs, or uncontrolled sharing.

minimize what you upload, and pick a tool with clear retention + no-training guarantees

If you want the safest default workflow:

1. Translate only what you need (split documents when possible)
2. Redact identifiers when they’re not required for meaning
3. Use a tool with explicit, short retention and clear deletion semantics
4. Don’t share translation download links — download and store in your controlled system

If you’re operating under GDPR, the high-level principles (including storage limitation) are a helpful mental model: https://gdpr.eu/what-is-gdpr/

what to translate with machine translation (and what not to)

Good candidates for MT (often high ROI)

• employee handbooks and policy docs
• onboarding checklists
• internal process docs (non-personal)
• benefits overviews (when they’re not individualized)

Be careful with (consider redaction, splitting, or human review)

• employment contracts with individualized terms
• documents containing performance narratives
• incident reports
• anything that will be used as a legally-relevant source of truth

If the translation will be used to make decisions about an employee, treat quality and traceability as first-class requirements.

A safe HR translation workflow (step-by-step)

Step 1: separate “template” content from “employee-specific” content

This is the easiest win.

• Translate the policy/handbook template once
• Keep individualized employee data out of the workflow whenever possible

Step 2: redact what you can

You don’t need perfect anonymization. Even basic removal of IDs and exact addresses reduces blast radius.

Step 3: use short retention and time-limited access

Prefer tools that behave like a processing step, not an archive.

These internal pages are the canonical references for how we think about this:

• We don't want your data
• How your data is handled

Step 4: store outputs in your system of record

Don’t let the translation tool become the HR archive.

Download, store, and manage access where your HR team already does access control.

Vendor checklist for HR document translation

Ask these plainly:

1. Retention: How long are originals and outputs kept?
2. Deletion: Is deletion automatic? Can we trigger immediate deletion?
3. Logs: Do you store document content in logs, analytics, or support tools?
4. Training: Is customer content used to train or evaluate models?
5. Access: Who can access documents inside the vendor, and under what conditions?
6. Region: Where are files stored and processed (especially for EU orgs)?

If you need a broader vendor map, this is the hub: Which translation services should I use for sensitive documents?

Common mistakes (and edge cases)

Translating individualized contracts in a consumer tool “just once”

One-off use is still use. If the file is sensitive, treat it as sensitive every time.

Forwarding download links to managers

This often bypasses your HR system’s access controls. Download, store, and share from your controlled system instead.

Edge case: “we need a dashboard”

Dashboards usually imply history. History implies retention.

That might be required for your org. Just be honest that you’re trading convenience for a larger long-term data footprint.

Takeaways

HR document translation can be safe and fast if you keep the workflow boring:

• reduce what you upload
• demand short retention + no training
• store outputs in your HR system

Further reading

• GDPR overview
• We don't want your data
• How your data is handled
• GDPR & AI Act compliance
• Data residency in cloud translation
• No-account document translator