Japan’s impressive technological transformation during the Meiji period was initially spurred on by heavy government investment, much of which went into developing technical education. The Kōbu Diaigakkō (Imperial College of Engineering), an institution that epitomised the government’s approach to technical education, was staffed by highly remunerated foreign teachers who taught in English and prescribed technical manuals in English for their students. However, at the same time a significant number of manuals, many of which were translations, were being published in Japanese for those not catered to by such deliberately foreignised institutions. After 1880 foreign teachers were increasingly replaced by Japanese ones and concomitant with this indigenisation of technical education was a change in the publishing of technical textbooks to respond to the exigencies of a new audience. This resulted in the re-translation of a number of previously translated works. This paper charts the development of the technical community in Japan by comparing translations and re-translations of some of these works, such as W.J.M Gillespie’s 'A Manual of Land Surveying' (1873, 1886) and John Rawle’s 'Practical Plane Geometry' (1876, 1880). Not only do the re-translations demonstrate a growing self-assurance in the way technical knowledge was communicated, they indicate significant shifts in the profiles of those involved in the production of the book from translators, to publishers, booksellers and readers. The change was not simply one of growing competence; there was a codification of technical communication engendered by the growing authority of local technical institutions and a consolidation of the publishing industry. This study responds to appeals (e.g. Secord 2004) to view the communication of science as an integral part of its formation. Furthermore, it challenges the notion, which has been undergoing re-evaluation for some time, that textbooks are purveyors of staid knowledge, showing them to be sites of considerable creativity where translators demonstrated intellectual dexterity in finding new ways of engaging with the demands of constantly shifting audiences.