With the growing demand for localization brands worldwide, businesses are heavily relying on translation management systems to localize their websites, apps, software, and daily publishing content. However, choosing the right TMS service provider is crucial to effectively manage your localization processes. To execute your translation project seamlessly and efficiently, you must buy TMSs with smart features that will support your translation workflow.
So, how would you decide which TMS is best for your localization project?
Understanding the technicalities of your TMS is critical to finding the right tool for your business. You have to do detailed research on various TMSs, comparing the features of different TMSs, so you can find your perfect TMS partner. This article is your buyer’s guide to the translation management system, so make sure you don’t miss any of the points.
Translation Management System – Introduction
Your TMS is a specialized tool that uses advanced AI-powered algorithms to regulate your translation operations more effectively. Streamlining your daily translation workflow, a translation management system speeds up your localization processes. There is minimal manual work involved, and most tasks are managed by the machine itself. It eliminates the complication and simplifies the whole translation procedure. Using these tools, you can generate automated translations in a few minutes. It takes way less time to produce translations through TMS tools than for professional human translators. Using a TMS tool, you can easily manage large translation teams, assign them tasks, manage translation files, and get complete control over your translation processes. Moreover, the AI technology used in these tools would help you achieve excellent quality outcomes without any delays. TMS service providers also allow you to customize the translation features as per your project needs.
Why Do You Need the Best Translation Management System?
Rapid globalization, which allows businesses to explore new markets, also puts a lot of pressure on them to stay relevant. It is only possible if you localize your brand based on the interests and preferences of local customers.
And, to make it happen, you need to invest in localization management systems that will make your localization journey much smoother and easier.
Regardless of the nature of your business and the scope of your translation project, having a smart TMS improves your efficiency and gives project managers more control over things. From managing high volumes of content to enabling seamless communication between translation teams, a professional TMS keeps localization simple for you.
Moreover, it will make the whole translation process much faster, so you will not have issues like missed deadlines, and your team will achieve targets on time. Using TMS translation indeed saves a lot of time, money, and effort.
Major Translation Management Challenges Faced By Companies
When it comes to translation projects, companies face a lot of challenges while expanding their roots to other markets. Following are some common problems most companies may face when it comes to translation management.
1. Increasing Translation Needs
Targeting more markets means your need for quality content will also increase significantly. To manage the sheer volume of content, you should have a reliable translation solution in place. Human translations are not just time-consuming but also expensive at the same time. Moreover, in the case of professional human translations, companies face more delays in content delivery as their translation needs increase.
2. Complicated Workflow
Secondly, traditional translation management processes are complex and involve a lot of manual work. You have to hire extensive staff, and still, quality issues keep coming. Chaotic workflows and slow translation operations lead to more errors in outcomes that impact the overall efficiency of the project.
3. Poor file management
Third, file management is quite complicated in manual translation project management. It required excessive emails sent back and forth to the concerned person until the final version of the file was received. Still, there are chances of redundant information that can cause a lot of trouble and complications.
Top 6 Advantages of a Translation Management System
Why use a translation management system for brand translations and localization? This is a common question asked by translators and business owners working on multiple translation projects simultaneously. Below are some advantages of the translation management system that might give you fair reasons to buy one.
1. Agile Workflows
Traditional translation workflows could be slow and sluggish because there is enough manual work involved. It does not just make the translation operations more time-consuming but also increases the complexity, which leads to more hassle.
Having a TMS is a real blessing because it doesn’t just make your translation operations agile but also reduces the complexities by streamlining the translation workflow.
It would speed up your translation operations and help you manage more work in less time. The professional TMS tool is a must-have for global businesses and LSPs that are managing multiple translation projects at the same time.
Moreover, it will save you time by optimizing the translation workflow. There will be absolutely no need to send extensive emails to translators or wait for the updated files. Everything is accessible, and you get automatically notified whenever there is an update.
2. Quality Translation
This is all that a brand needs at the end of the day. Quality translations that deliver the core message of the brand to foreign audiences. Hiring professional translators is an ideal scenario; however, it can be expensive.
Moreover, it might not be feasible to hire an extensive number of translators as your translation needs increase. Translation management systems can significantly improve the quality of your translation with their advanced AI-powered tools.
TMSs contain translation memory that holds records of all the previous translations and uses them to create new translations with more accuracy and quality.
Similarly, most translation management systems have brand glossary options that allow you to insert brand terminologies, definitions, and other guidelines. It would help the TMS to understand the brand’s unique tone, style, and context and generate more relevant translations.
Moreover, the QA tools in TMSs detect and remove all grammatical, contextual, and logical errors from translations.
3. More Flexibility and Transparency
Translation project managers around the globe prefer using a professional TMS tool for their translation projects for a couple of reasons. Undoubtedly, having a TMS can make translation management super convenient and hassle-free.
It offers more flexibility and transparency to the translation project managers, helping them get better control over the project and deliver the expected results.
It is much easier to manage remote translators and editors with TMS. Project managers can easily assign tasks and get the work delivered on time. Moreover, TMS tools allow project managers to have a clear and broader view of their translation project.
The project manager can always track the progress of translation projects in real-time and make timely improvements. Moreover, you can get an idea of the performance of all employees and give them honest feedback on their contributions and hard work.
4. Better Collaboration
There is nothing more critical for your translation project’s success than open communication between the project team, manager, and clients. Collaboration is quite an essential thing that is mostly ignored by project managers, which can even lead to project failure.
TMS tools enable effective collaboration between the localization team, project manager, and clients. If you are facing communication challenges or there are gaps in the communication between employees and managers, then you can consider using a professional translation management system with advanced communication features.
Especially if you have to deal with remote employees, this tool can be very helpful. Working with freelance employees would be 3x easier with cloud translation management system tools.
It would allow your remote employees to have real-time communication with the in-house team. Moreover, they can collaborate with other translators working on the same translation project.
5. Reduced Workloads
When you’re on the way to globalizing your business, your localization needs will increase abruptly once things get momentum. So, as the demand increases, you have to bring in more resources, which is not always very feasible.
TMS tools can be very useful for you to support your growing business needs. Rather than exhausting your employees with excessive workloads or hiring an extensive number of translators, using TMS translation is always a more convenient option.
It would aid your translators in managing high volumes of translations without spending much money. Most TMS tools have machine translation and proofreading abilities that allow you to manage more translations with limited resources – that too without spending a lot of time.
Not just that, it will significantly improve the performance of your employees and lead to higher job satisfaction.
6. Centralized Data
In a TMS tool, all the translation files and other data are stored at a centralized location. It makes the data accessible to all team members, and they can retrieve and access it anytime they want. Having centralized data storage saves a lot of time and effort.
Moreover, it doesn’t just make it easier to maintain records but also reduces the chances of redundant information.
Redundant information is a major issue in manual file management, and you have to ask another team member every time you need the updated version of a file. It makes things very complicated.
In the translation management system, there is only one version of each file (which is, of course, the latest one). Whenever a redundant file is detected inside the storage, the system automatically removes the duplicate file and keeps the latest version only.
Features to Look for In Professional Translation Management Systems
It could be challenging for you to choose the perfect translation management system with all the right features if you don’t know your project goals. So, make sure you have your goals clear in your head. Below are some technical features of TMS that you can add to your TMS package based on your requirements.
1. Machine Translation Tools
Managing high volumes of translations is probably the most challenging thing when it comes to taking your brand to global markets. If you are targeting multiple markets at once, you better get yourself a TMS with a machine translation (MT) tool. Having this tool will reduce your dependency on the human translator, and you can generate automated translation much faster. Unlike professional translations, machine translation is not expensive at all, and you don’t have to spend too much time on the translation process.
Make sure you always use a professional TMS tool for your brand translations. Open-source tools are not effective enough to generate up-to-the-mark translations; you are more likely to have relevancy and quality issues.
2. Translation Memory
If you are using a TMS with an MT tool, it must have a translation memory as well. Having this feature in your TMS would make your overall translation management faster and cheaper. All of your approved translation documents are stored in translation memory. Your MT software searches through this translation database for similar phrases every time you upload a new text for translation. So, the larger your translation memory is, the faster and more consistent your translation results will be. If you have to translate content regularly, this is the best tool to avoid repetitions, and it also reduces the chances of inaccurate translations.
3. Glossary Management
This is also a useful MT feature that saves a lot of time and improves your translation quality. Glossaries are like your brand vocabulary and contain industry-specific terminology and brand definitions. It also allows your localization team to better understand brand translation tone and style.
This way, your translations remain consistent, no matter how many translators are working on them. Brand glossaries are created once and used throughout the project. So, you don’t have to separately train your translators regarding brand translation requirements.
4. API Feature
It is a great tool to streamline your translation processes by integrating your TMS with other applications. The API features would allow you to connect your TMS with third-party CMS, and editing platforms directly. So, you don’t have to frequently switch between different platforms. It will save you time; you only edit content in TMS and it will automatically be updated in other apps. If you want to integrate a platform that is not listed by the vendor, you can contact him to customize your API integrations.
5. QA Tool
Make sure your TMS contains a quality assurance tool as well to improve the quality and accuracy of translations produced by the MT system. Once you have generated automated translations, the QA tool tests your translations to ensure that they are error-free. In the quality assurance process, all the grammatical and sentence errors are removed automatically. Because the mistakes have already been eliminated by the system, your professional proofreaders and editors have to spend less time on the content proofreading process.
This way, you can save a lot of time and deliver accurate translations without any delay. Moreover, it is important to note that every TMS uses different QA processes that significantly impact your overall content quality. You better ask your TMS service provider about the QA processes before buying the subscription.
6. Communication Features
Language service providers have to manage large localization teams, so your TMS should provide smart communication features. Real-time chatting features in your TMS allow the translators working on the same project to collaborate. It will eliminate communication gaps, and teams can develop a strong understanding of the translation project. Better collaboration between teams would automatically reduce complications and chaos. Moreover, it becomes much easier for you to manage remote employees with a professional cloud-based TMS. There will be fewer chances of communication issues that remote employees may face when you have a smart TMS in place.
7. Cloud Technology
When looking for professional TMSs, make sure they are cloud-based systems only. Rather than investing in a server-based TMS, which would be more extensive and difficult to maintain, you better get your hands on a cloud TMS. Cloud technology would promote more flexibility and transparency throughout your translation project. These systems are cheaper and easier to manage because there is no dedicated physical system involved. Project managers have more control over things and they can easily track the project’s progress whenever they want. Your employees will also have more convenience at work, and there will be no location restrictions.
8. Advanced Security Measures
Cloud technology comes with a lot of benefits, but its downside is that you will be more vulnerable to cyber security issues. Cloud systems are more likely to face hacking issues because they are an easy target for cybercriminals. You must keep your security game up to avoid any inconvenience. Considering this fact, most cloud TMS provide an advanced security framework to prevent all sorts of data breaches. Make sure your TMS offers advanced security measures to ensure your data protection and keep hackers at bay. It would be even better if the TMS performed security measures automatically without any need for manual updates.
9. Reporting & Cost Visibility
TMSs also contain data analytics and reporting features to give you detailed insights about project progress and its overall impact on your business. It would allow you to make more informed and data-driven business decisions. You can ask your TMS service provider to provide you access to data in the form of regular reports. It would allow you to do holistic monitoring of overall translation project performance. You can calculate your overall ROI and significantly reduce translation costs by effectively managing the resources.
10. Customer Support/Vendor Management
If you’re a language service provider who has to deal with multiple clients daily, your TMS must have customer support features. The customer support team will always be on your back if you’re having any technical problems or if any error occurs during the execution of operations. Make sure they offer a quick response to your queries with no delays.
Similarly, having a vendor management tool on your TMS is also significant. You can’t simply depend on one vendor; you have to work with different vendors throughout your localization project.
Having a vendor management tool would help you keep track of all vendors, maintain their records, and communicate with them in real-time. It would save you time and show your professionalism to the vendors’ community.
11. Language Pairs
Based on the markets you’re targeting currently or the ones you want to target in the future, you must choose a TMS that supports all target language pairs to fulfill your translation needs.
Language pairs that your translation management system supports are an important factor to consider because some TMSs are more efficient at translating some language pairs than others. Here you must set your priorities to choose the best TMS option.
How To Find the Right TMS Service Provider?
To achieve higher efficiency and effectiveness in your translation project, make sure to buy your TMS from a reliable vendor only. Following are some tips that would help you choose the right TMS service provider.
- Write down your translation project goals to be clear about what you exactly want to achieve.
- Do in-depth research online to compare the different TMS tools available online.
- Visit their websites, explore their social media pages, and see Google reviews to get an idea of their credibility.
- On social media sites, ask their existing customers about their experience with TMS and the issues they have faced so far.
- Contact the customer support assistant to get further details about TMS, such as their pricing method, customization options, etc.
- Once you have found an ideal TMS for your translation project, you can send a quote to the vendor.
Final Verdict!
By every means, translation has become an important factor in order to do your business in this multicultural and multi-linguistic world. For this, companies are looking for the best possible technical solution to fulfill the demands of translating the content. In this regard, the selection of a translation management system is a crucial and comprehensive step. The above article has explored the various factors in choosing the right TMS. TMS systems enriched with features vary from company to company. The best one depends solely on your unique demands.
Following all the steps mentioned above, you will be able to land on a TMS that will meet your translation management needs. Moreover, you can easily upgrade the specifications of your TMS whenever there is a rise in your content requirements. So, you must choose a TMS that will support you in scaling your business globally.
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