Extant research on knowledge transfer within multinational corporations has increasingly focused on knowledge flow, but ignored the process of knowledge translation. Building on translation theory, this article seeks to explain how the translation of relational practices by local Chinese managers occurs in a Swedish multinational corporation subsidiary in China. The findings show that middle managers in the subsidiary adopt three different translation strategies: symmetrical, asymmetrical and substitutive. These strategies and their key drivers, and implications for further research, are discussed.