Translation memory stores every sentence pair your project has produced. When a similar sentence appears again, it is retrieved rather than retranslated. For content that repeats — product catalogues, release notes, policy documents, audit files — this changes the economics substantially.
Where the savings actually come from
Exact repeats cost a fraction of new text. Partial matches cost less than new text but more than exact repeats. On a mature catalogue project, a meaningful share of each new batch will land in one of those two categories.
Ask who owns the memory
The translation memory built on your content should be yours. Ask for it in your contract and ask for it as a deliverable at the end of each project. A vendor who will not hand over the TM is holding your leverage.
It buys consistency as well as money
The cost saving is the visible benefit. The quieter one is that your terminology stops drifting. When four linguists across two years all pull from the same memory, your product still calls the same thing by the same name.
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