The dependence of manganese-ion intracenter-luminescence intensity on optical excitation level has been studied in the Cd_{1 - x}Mn_xTe dilute magnetic semiconductor with 0.4<x<0.7. It is shown that the intracenter luminescence saturates due to effective nonlinear quenching already at low excitation levels. Mechanisms are proposed which can provide nonlinear quenching and offer a qualitative explanation for the temperature dependence of the luminescence saturation in samples with different manganese concentrations.