The challenge: how do you scale multilingual content in a regulated world?

Disclaimer: This story is based on insights from multiple DeepL customers in the life sciences sector. Names, job titles, and identifying details have been changed or anonymized to protect their work and compliance requirements.

Across global life sciences teams, multilingual content is a constant need. This includes internal training modules, clinical protocols, regulatory filings, and patient-facing materials. You could be a frustrated R&D scientist in Tokyo, unable to start stability testing until you get a German-language label. Or a QA team in Boston anxiously waiting on Spanish SOPs for an urgent batch release.

Yet in many organizations, manual translation processes remain painstakingly slow and fragmented. A single product user manual might bounce back and forth between multiple email inboxes, Excel tracking sheets, and external agencies before it finally gets approved. Multilingual documents can take weeks to finalize. And when vendor co-ordination and manual reviews are required, the delays only grow. As one global pharmaceutical company put it, each week of delay could mean millions in lost revenue.

Every handover between the product owner and a language specialist (and back again for approval) adds days, often due to time-zone differences, vendor scheduling, and manual checks. And in regions where the quality of machine translation has historically lagged, teams find themselves spending even more time correcting translations. The result? Even more delays, inefficiencies, and inconsistent content quality—all of which slow down product launches and compromise the customer experience. 

A regulatory burden

But inefficiency isn't the only issue teams are facing; security and compliance add another layer of complexity. After all, life sciences organizations handle sensitive intellectual property and personal health data. That means any translation solution must not only be fast and accurate: it must also meet strict data protection requirements across jurisdictions.

Meanwhile, internal demand keeps growing. Thousands of employees across operations, IT, quality management, and legal rely on translation tools daily. But without centralized oversight, teams struggle to maintain consistency, keep costs predictable, and stay compliant with strict data-protection laws.

Put simply, life sciences teams needed faster translations, fewer corrections, and full compliance, all in one place.

“Every minute a product isn’t licensed because of translation delays means patients don’t receive the medication they need.”

Global Localization Lead, multinational biopharma company

The solution: secure, scalable Language AI

Life sciences organizations have found that, by using DeepL, they can simplify and consolidate translation processes across multiple teams, regions, and use cases.

For example, rather than juggling multiple machine translation tools (each with their own quirks and limitations), one global biopharma group centralized their entire translation workflow onto a single DeepL-powered platform. With over 15,000 employees now using this unified solution, their localization team can centrally manage terminology. No more keeping track of databases of previously translated sentences to ensure consistency. And that means lower overhead and more reliable translations at scale.

But there’s more to DeepL than centralized platform solutions. One healthcare organization operating in over 10 countries discovered this firsthand when leveraging DeepL’s seamless integration options. With browser extensions and intuitive web-based tools, their IT team enabled frontline staff across support, training, and documentation teams to translate content in real time. As a result, multilingual teams now collaborate effortlessly across borders, ensuring patient care and critical workflows continue without delay. All this, without relying on external vendors or requiring specialized training—and with the reassurance that DeepL complies with ISO 27001 data security standards.

“In a healthcare setting, our primary focus is on data and the security of our data, especially where we’re dealing with personal health information. When we selected a tool like DeepL, we ensured, from a security, data‑privacy and data‑residency perspective, that we’re not putting any of our rules or guardrails at risk.”

Enterprise IT Lead, global healthcare provider 

Speed and security, without compromise

DeepL already meets the rigorous data security standards required in healthcare and pharmaceutical settings. Every translation request is encrypted end-to-end and GDPR-protected by default. That's why IT teams were able to confidently roll DeepL out across regulated teams, without compromising privacy policies or risking non-compliance.

For QMRA (Quality Management & Regulatory Affairs) teams in diagnostics and lab‑instrument companies, including one European manufacturer we spoke to, features like glossaries and manual post-edits proved indispensable. They made it easier to control terminology across product documentation and ensure audit readiness. So instead of relying on slower output from agencies, teams could manage their own translations at scale, on their terms, and with no loss in quality.

“In regulatory translations even a minor error (like the wrong dosage) can become a life-or-death issue.”

Global Localization Lead, multinational biopharma company

The results: from translation bottlenecks to business enablers

With DeepL, life sciences teams are able to significantly reduce translation turnaround times. Documents that previously took weeks are now translated in days, with no compromise in quality or compliance.

Translation volume also shifted internally, thanks to a reduced reliance on external vendors, resulting in increased speed, cost transparency, and consistency. In one enterprise use case, DeepL now powers over 100 million characters of monthly translation volume. That's equivalent to translating roughly 3000 clinical-trial protocols per month.

Organizations also saw operational benefits during time-sensitive scenarios, such as during company mergers and acquisitions, where rapid multilingual document review was critical. Internal teams were able to process large batches of documents securely and quickly, without outsourcing.

A platform that works for everyone

Perhaps most importantly, adoption grew organically. Employees across departments (from IT and regulatory to marketing and training) began using DeepL as part of their daily work. Because DeepL is easy to use, secure by design, and works with the tools that teams already rely on, it caught on fast. This brought Language AI into the hands of non-specialist users, leading to productivity gains across the business.

The move to DeepL shortened timelines, improved consistency, and kept every workflow inside an environment that is fully GDPR‑compliant and ISO 27001‑attested. This is critical in a sector where patient data and IP must stay protected.

Bottom line? DeepL doesn't just help life sciences teams translate faster. It gives them back time and confidence to focus on critical innovation, patient care, and compliance.