With the growing demand for localization brands worldwide, businesses are highly relying on translation management systems to localize their website, apps, software, and daily publishing content. However, choosing the right TMS service provider is crucial to effectively manage your localization processes. To make your translation project managed seamless and simplified, 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 features of different TMS, 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.
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 no 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 translation through TMS tools than 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 needs.
When it comes to translation management 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.
Targeting more markets means your need for quality content would also increase significantly. To manage the sheer volumes 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.
Secondly, traditional translation management processes are complex and involve a lot of manual work. You have to hire extensive staff, and still, more quality issues are emerging here and there. Chaotic workflows and slow translation operations lead to more errors in outcomes that impact the overall efficiency of the project.
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. And still, there are chances of redundant information that cause a lot of trouble.
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.
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 marketplaces 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.
Ensure 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.
If you are using a TMS with an MT tool, it must have a translation memory as well. Having this tool in your TMS would make your overall translation management faster and cheaper. All of your approved translation documents are stored on translation memory. Your MT software searches through this translation database for similar phrases, every time you upload a new text for translation. So, the more translation memory you have, the faster and more consistent your translations will be. In case you have to translate content regularly, this is the best tool to avoid repetitions and it also reduces the chances of inaccurate translations.
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 marketing 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. In case you want to integrate a platform that is not listed by the vendor, you can contact him to customize your API integrations.
Make sure your TMS contains a quality assurance tool as well to improve the quality and accuracy of translation produced by the MT system. Once you have generated automated translation, 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 you can deliver accurate translations without any delay. Moreover, it is important to note that every TMS uses different QA processes for QA processes that significantly impact your overall content quality. You better ask your TMS service provider about the QA processes before buying the subscription.
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, remote employees may face, when you have a smart TMS in place.
When looking for professional TMSs, make sure it is a cloud-based system 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 would have more control over things and they can easily track the project’s progress anytime they want. Your employees would also have more convenience at work, and there will be no location restrictions.
Cloud technology comes with a lot of benefits though, 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 provides an advanced security framework to prevent all sorts of data breaches. Make sure your TMS provides advanced security measures to ensure your data protection and keep the hackers at bay. It would be even better if the TMS performs security measures automatically without any need for manual updates.
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.
To achieve higher efficiency and effectiveness in your translation management project, make sure to buy your TMS from a reliable vendor only. Following are some tips that would help you to choose the right TMS service provider.
Following all the steps mentioned above, you will be able to land on a TMS that would meet your translation management needs. Moreover, you can easily upgrade the specifications of your TMS whenever there is a raise in your content requirements. So, you must choose a TMS that would support you to scale your business globally.
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