Technical and CE Documentation: What Brno’s IT and Engineering Firms Need to Translate

Brno’s engineering and IT firms export across the EU, and sooner or later that means translating something — a manual, a declaration of conformity, a spec sheet. The confusing part is knowing which documents actually need a sworn translation with a court stamp, and which just need accurate professional translation. Getting this wrong either costs you unnecessary certification fees, or worse, fails a market surveillance audit. This guide covers both.

For a general overview of certified translation in the Czech Republic, see our full guide.

• Manuals, specifications and CE documentation almost always need professional translation, not a sworn (court-stamped) translation.
• CE documentation has three different translation rules: the technical file, the Declaration of Conformity, and the instructions — and they’re not the same.
• The Declaration of Conformity must be translated, not just the manual — a mistake we see often.
• Machine translation is a real compliance risk for safety-critical technical content.

This distinction alone can save a company real money, and it’s one of the most common points of confusion we see.

Sworn (certified) translation — the kind with the round stamp of a court-appointed translator — is a legal requirement only for documents submitted to Czech authorities or courts: contracts filed with the Commercial Register, documents supporting a foreign employee’s residence permit, and similar official submissions.

Manuals, technical standards, specifications, and software UI, on the other hand, almost never need that stamp. What they need is professional translation with accurate, consistent terminology — the stamp adds no legal value here, since no Czech authority is going to ask for it.

CE documentation isn’t one document with one translation rule — it’s three, and they don’t all work the same way.

The most common mistake we see is treating the Declaration of Conformity as translation-exempt — companies translate the manual carefully and leave the DoC in English for every market. That doesn’t satisfy most directives: the DoC must be available in the language required by the destination country, even though it’s often a short document. Official guidance on both the technical file and the Declaration of Conformity is available via the EU’s official business portal.

For most products, the Declaration of Conformity only needs to be produced when a market surveillance authority asks for it. For a specific group of product categories, though, the rule is stricter.

Directives covering machinery, potentially explosive atmospheres (ATEX), radio equipment, measuring instruments, lifts, recreational craft, and rail systems require that the DoC physically accompany each product — not just be available on request. For Brno’s manufacturing and engineering firms, many of which fall under the Machinery Directive, this is worth checking directive by directive rather than assuming.

For safety-critical content specifically, this is where the real risk sits — and it’s not always obvious until an audit happens.

Machine translation tools produce output that often reads as plausible but is unreliable for precise technical terminology. A safety instruction that looks grammatically fine in the target language can quietly shift meaning — turning a mandatory step into something that reads as merely advisory, for instance. National market surveillance authorities reviewing documentation are checking for terminology that matches the applicable harmonised standards, and inconsistent or imprecise wording is exactly what gets flagged. For recurring technical documentation, we build a glossary and translation memory per client, so terminology stays consistent across every manual, spec, and revision — not just within a single document.

For companies that need technical and CE documentation translated regularly, a one-off arrangement rarely makes sense.

We work with several Brno-based IT and manufacturing companies under a framework agreement — signed once, covering all future orders, with standard 14-day invoicing terms and no minimum volume. A client-specific glossary and translation memory come as part of that setup, along with an NDA on request. Our office is on Příkop in central Brno, close to the city’s IT and engineering firms, and we offer express delivery within 24 hours even for business clients with recurring volume. For more on how framework cooperation works, see our business terms.

We handle manuals, specifications and CE documentation with terminological accuracy — plus sworn translation where it’s actually required by law.