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(Updated: 1/5/2024) Real translators are highly trained professionals, but they can’t work magic. They rely on professional tools for translators to make their translation efforts more efficient and to yield better quality results.
IVANNOVATION has collected 150+ professional translation tools in the following article with a little information about each one. Look through this list and explore the options available to find new tools for your translation toolbox.
Summary
The following is a list of professional tools used by translators and localization professionals. The list is organized by type as displayed in the Table of Contents below.
Table of Contents
Professional Tools for Translators: Introduction
- 1. CAT Tools & TMS
- 2. Translation Business Management Systems
- 3. Machine Translation Engines
- 4. Machine Translation Related Tools
- 5. Translation Memories & Glossaries and Related Tools
- 6. Quality Assurance Tools
- 7. Integration Tools/Connectors
- 8. Localization Tools
- 9. Video Localization Tools
- 10. Other Tools
Professional Tools for Translators: Introduction
This article is a living document. It’s one of the most comprehensive lists of professional translation technology on the Internet, and we are continually updating it as we learn of new tools or new information. We make updates sometimes several times a month. We will mark the date of the most recent update at the top of the article.
The format for each entry is: name of the tool, image, advertising slogan, description, and URL.
The world needs translators to communicate, and translators rely on specialized tools to help them get the message across in a new language.
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Suggest a Correction in the CommentsWhy These Categories?
Neatly categorizing these tools is an impossible task. Many of the tools bridge categories. In the case of tools that cover more than one category, we tried to add it to one of the relevant categories. The same goes for a company that produces a collection of smaller tools; we chose to list the company under one category and then mention the types of tools the company offers.
If you see a tool whose category you clearly disagree with, please let us know in the comments!
1. CAT Tools & TMS
CAT stands for Computer Aided Translation. A CAT tool is a software program that is designed to make translation easier for linguists.
It helps translators by showing glossary entries that are appropriate for the sentence being translated, by storing and retrieving translation pairs to and from translation memory, by inserting machine translation for each segment, by doing quality assurance checks, and much more.
TMS stands for Translation Management System. It typically encompasses the functionality of a CAT tool but it also has automations for managing the translation workflow.
Across
“Translation Management Easy and Secure while ensuring maximum translation quality and text consistency”
The Across website further explains their offering as such, “The Across Language Server is our translation management system for enterprises and language service providers. It supports the entire translation process from the project and workflow control to the translation, correction, and release. Thus, it facilitates the localization of your product and corporate communication for the international market.” So the Across Language Server is a TMS with a CAT tool. The Across Translator Edition is a standalone CAT tool.
Anaphrasesus
“Anaphraseus is a CAT (Computer-Aided Translation) tool for creating, managing and using bilingual Translation Memories. It is an OpenOffice.org Basic macro set available as an OpenOffice.org extension or a standalone document.”
http://anaphraseus.sourceforge.net/
CafeTran Espresso
“The feature-rich CAT tool that is fun to use”
CafeTran Espresso is designed for freelancers, but it is claimed that it is powerful enough for corporate use. The tool can be used on Windows, Mac, and Linux and operates as a TM server so that many translators can work together.
Consoltec – FlowFit-TMS
“Translation Management Simplified.”
Consoltec’s focus is on improving translation management workflow. Its toolset encompasses not only the functions of translation management but also business management.
Crowdin
“Agile localization for tech companies”
The Wikipedia article on the tool says, “Crowdin is a closed source cloud-based localization technology and services company. Offered as a software as a service for commercial products and free of charge for non-commercial open source projects and educational projects.”
Déjà Vu
“Other tools have users, we have fans”
Déjà Vu X3 Professional is the power solution for Translators. The CAT tool combines a user-friendly interface with features such as DeepMiner and AutoWrite. From alignment, analysis, translation, proofreading to quality assurance – you do it all in Déjà Vu – no add-ons required. The User Interface is designed to make your daily Déjà Vu experience intuitive and straightforward. Customize and hide the Ribbons at your convenience to enhance your productivity. With the customizable Quick Access Toolbar you can access all functionalities you need in a single click.
GlobalSight
“GlobalSight is an open-source Globalization Management System (GMS) that manages and streamlines all of the tasks involved in the translation process – from requesting a new translation to quoting, project management, translating, reviewing, Desktop Publishing (DTP), reporting and so on.”
http://www.globalsight.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
GNOME Translation Editor
“Formerly known as Gtranslator, GNOME Translation Editor is an enhanced gettext po file editor for the GNOME desktop environment. It handles all forms of gettext po files and include very useful features like Find/Replace, Translation Memory, different Translator Profiles, Messages Table (for having an overview of the translations/messages in the po file), Easy Navigation and Editing of translation messages & comments of the translation where accurate.”
This is free and open source software.
https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Gtranslator
Jabylon Translation Server
“Jabylon is an open-source translation server designed to ease the translation of software projects as a team effort. It provides a web ui for both developers and translators that can be seen as a live demo.”
Lilt
“The world’s #1 AI-powered translation platform: The Lilt Platform vertically integrates the entire localization supply chain – for faster turnaround times, higher quality, and lower costs.”
Lingotek
“Lingotek – Translation Management System; Innovative TMS Apps to Optimize Translation”
https://www.lingotek.com/translation-management-system
Localeum
“Simple localization platform for efficient teams”
It’s a simple and functional SaaS solution for agile teams that use a continuous localization process. It offers a free forever version for startups and solo developers, which includes 1 user and up to 1000 lines (unlimited languages and projects).
Localize
“Reach New Markets In Record Speed. Easily translate websites and applications to new languages and streamline your translation workflow.”
This paid SaaS solution is unrelated to Lokalize – KDE.
Loco
“Translation Management for Developers. Loco takes the pain away from developing multi‑language apps and websites.”
Loco has free and paid plans avialable.
Lokalise
“Accelerate localization from code to delivery. A localization and translation management platform for agile teams. Embrace automation, workflow transparency, and fast project delivery.”
Lokalize – KDE
“Lokalize is the localization tool for KDE software and other free and open source software. It is also a general computer-aided translation system (CAT) with which you can translate OpenDocument files (*.odt). Translate-Toolkit is used internally to extract text for translation from .odt to .xliff files and to merge translation back into .odt file.”
This free and open source localization tool is available for Linux.
https://kde.org/applications/en/lokalize
MadCap Lingo
“Advanced computer-aided translation (CAT) management for technical authors, documentation teams and translators.”
Madcap Lingo is a CAT tool designed specifically for translation of technical writing composed using DITA XML.
https://www.madcapsoftware.com/products/lingo/
MateCat
“The CAT tool that works for you”
We often recommend for students or others interested in translation to try MateCat in order to learn what a CAT tool is and how to use it. It’s free to use and includes machine translation integration. Translated, the company that developed it, monetizes it by letting users choose to have linguists from the Translated network do the translations.
Maxprograms: Swordfish Translation Editor
“An advanced CAT (Computer Aided Translation) tool based on XLIFF 1.2 that supports MS Office, DITA, HTML and other document formats. Swordfish uses TM (translation Memory) and MT (Machine Translation). Supports In-Context Exact Matches, segment filtering, customization and more.”
An open source CAT tool that supports the exchange of TMX files.
https://www.maxprograms.com/products/swordfish.html
memoQ
“Translation Management System Tailored to Your Needs: memoQ is designed to serve the needs of enterprises, language service providers, and translators.”
At IVANNOVATION we have used memoQ for many years and have found it to be a powerful and feature-rich CAT solution.
Memsource
“Translate efficiently with Memsource, an AI-powered Translation Management System. Streamline and centralize your workflows using patented AI technology, dynamic machine translation engine management, and seamless integrations. Our cloud-based TMS comes with a fully-featured CAT tool, available for linguists and project managers on all platforms. Localization is easier, faster, and more cost-effective with Memsource.”
Memsource TMS includes a CAT tool which is a joy to use in the browser. The company has put a lot of effort in recent years to use AI to improve automation.
MetaTexis
“MetaTexis: the easy way to translate. Powerful, user-friendly, affordable and professional solutions for translation agencies, companies and freelance translators.”
MiniTMS
“Run Your Translation Business like You are the World Leading LSP.”
OmegaT
“OmegaT the free translation memory tool”
OmegaT is absolutely free. It may not offer you the CAT tool experience you prefer if you are used to some of the commercial tools like memoQ, but it might be good to check out, especially for open source fans.
OmegaT+
“The OmegaT+ project provides Computer-Assisted Translation tools for use by translators, localization engineers, and other language professionals.”
A free CAT tool.
http://omegatplus.sourceforge.net/
openTM2
“OpenTM2 is an open-source program for managing and handling global translation projects. OpenTM2 is a stable software that supports all languages including bidirectional scripts and East Asian ideographic languages. It provides a platform for integration as an open, yet comprehensive, localization tool. OpenTM2 aims to achieve a cost-efficient, high-quality localization deliverable, based on open standards such as TMX, TBX, XLIFF.”
Pairaphrase
“Web-Based Translation Management System for Enterprises. Helping Global Teams Translate Smarter, Faster and Safer.”
Phrase
“The Leanest, Fastest, and Most Reliable Localization Platform”
Phrase, formerly known as PhraseApp, is a localization management platform.
Poedit
“Poedit is a powerful and intuitive editor for translating interfaces that use gettext. Available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.”
Poedit is shareware, so it’s free to download.
Pontoon
“Pontoon is a web-based, What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG), localization (l10n) tool.”
Pontoon is specifically intended for localizing Mozilla products and websites.
Pootle
“Get your community translating your software into their languages.”
Pootle is a Community localization server that is free to download and use. Pootle is from translatehouse.org. The organization’s website describes Pootle this way, “Online translation platform. Pootle allows your professional or community translators to easily complete localization tasks. For you it becomes easier to manage and monitor the distributed work.”
http://pootle.translatehouse.org/
Prabandhak
“Translate, Manage and Scale with AI powered translation management hub”
Prabandhak is a cloud-based, AI-powered translation management hub with CAT tool that enables easy and accurate translation. Prabandhak is designed for enterprises, language service providers and freelancers. It supports the entire translation process from project creation, resource management, real-time project updating, translation, proofreading, editing enabled with machine translation suggestions, translation memory and terminology management, automated QA/QC, spellchecker, dictionary, auto formatting (DTP) and release.
https://app.prabandhak.in/#/register
Redokun
“File translation made easy”
Redokun is a cloud-based translation tool that can be used to translate InDesign files as well a variety of other file formats such as Word, PowerPoint, Excel, subtitles and XML documents, while preserving the document layout and design. Its intent is to automate the translation workflow and get the whole team on board with minimal training.
SDL Trados Studio
“SDL Trados Studio is the complete translation environment for language professionals who want to edit, review and manage translation projects whilst in the office or on the move.”
SDL Trados Studio, the CAT tool used by over 270,000 translation professionals around the world, offers a complete, centralized environment foe editing, reviewing and managing translation projects and terminology – either offline in a desktop tool or online in the cloud.
https://www.trados.com/product/studio
Smartcat
“Experience Connected Translation: All-in-one platform connecting businesses and translators into a streamlined content delivery loop.”
We often recommend Smartcat to students or others interested in professional translation because it is a simple, easy tool that is free for translators to use within limits. It also has machine translation integration in the free version, making it a powerful tool. The paid version includes project management and payment automation, which makes it appealing for LSPs.
TermSoup
“Translate Faster and Easier: Boost your productivity right now with the most user-friendly translation workspace.”
TermSoup is a simple, no frills, reimagination of what a CAT tool should look like.
Text United
“Automate your localization process, order translation services, manage projects more efficiently, and improve performance, faster and effortlessly from a single platform.”
Text United’s translation system is built for marketers, localization managers, developers, project managers, and designers. Text United is all about automatizing the translation workflow in order to help shorten turnaround time. Further, with the option to integrate their tools with other systems via API, it’s designed to help companies build international audiences without the hassle.
Transifex
“A localization platform that moves as fast as you do”
Transifex is a translation platform that’s optimized for software and website localization. It excels at connecting to clients’ systems with APIs so that they can order translation services and then publish translations with ease.
Translate5
“Open Source Translation System: Cloud translation, review, post-editing and terminology platform”
https://www.translate5.net/en/translate5-open-source-translation-system/
Virtaal
“Virtaal, a feature rich translation tool that allows you to focus on translation, without the tool getting in the way.”
Virtaal is free to download and use and comes from translatehouse.org. According to the documentation, “Virtaal is a graphical translation tool. It is meant to be easy to use and powerful at the same time. Although the initial focus is on software translation (localisation or l10n), we definitely intend it to be useful for several purposes. Virtaal is built on the powerful API of the Translate Toolkit. ‘Virtaal’ is an Afrikaans play on words meaning ‘For Language’, but also refers to translation.”
https://virtaal.translatehouse.org/
Weblate
“Your software, your language.”
Copylefted libre software, used by over 1,500 companies and libre software projects in over 115 countries. Live and open development. Cloud or self-hosted, premium support available, comprehensive public documentation. Continuous localization thanks to the tight VCS integration and many supported translation formats. Features include customizable quality checks, unlimited collaboration, various add-ons like machine translation, glossaries, advanced collaboration features, translation memory, user management, and many more. Supported by a vibrant online community of users.
Wordbee
“Comprehensive Translation Management: Manage every aspect of translation, benefit from integrated linguistic tooling, and discover why Wordbee is the perfect fit for your organization.”
Wordfast
“Wordfast is the fastest Translation Memory software on the market. With advanced translation memory features and a simple design, Wordfast has become the TM software of choice for over 15,000 translators, language service providers, corporations, and educational institutions worldwide.”
Wordfast lists several products on its homepage. Here are four products with the description of each. Wordfast Pro: “Wordfast Pro 3 (WFP3) is a standalone, multi-platform TM tool designed to change the landscape for every stakeholder in the translation process, from project manager to freelance translator.” Wordfast Anywhere: “Wordfast Anywhere (WFA) allows translators to access and work on translation projects from a web browser.” Wordfast Classic: “Wordfast Classic (WFC) integrates with Microsoft Word to create a powerful translation memory tool that is quick to learn and easy to use.” Wordfast Server: “Wordfast Server (WFS) is a secure TM and glossary server application that you host to allow for real-time collaboration among globally distributed translators.”
XTM
“XTM cutting-edge translation technology revolutionizes the localization process. Manage translations with innovative technology at the core.”
Zanata
“Zanata is a web-based translation platform for translators, content creators and developers to manage localisation projects.”
Zing
“Zing is an opinionated online translation tool intended to use in a continuous localization workflow. It integrates nicely with Serge.”
Like Serge, Zing was developed by Evernote.
https://evernote.github.io/zing/
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2. Translation Business Management Systems
Translation Business Management Systems help translation companies manage their businesses with functionalities such as quoting, invoicing, business partner data, CRM, vendor quality management, etc. Some of the translation management systems in the previous section also incorporate these functions, but we have created this category for management tools that do not have their own CAT tools.
Plunet BusinessManager
“Plunet BusinessManager is the leading business and translation management system for professional language service providers and translation departments. This highly efficient software can be adapted to individual requirements, and supports you sustainably in your daily project work.”
With Plunet BusinessManager it’s possible to manage an entire workflow in a single solution, from customer requests to quote, order, job and invoice management to reporting. Extensions for interpretation and quality management as well as integrations with CAT and financial accounting tools further improve efficiency and automation of project work.
Protemos
“System to manage your translation business and projects”
Protemos is an easy-to-use and functional business management system for translation companies. It unifies such features as project, vendor, and client management, finances, document generation, file storage, and business reports. It takes only a few minutes to set up and does not require any special knowledge or long-term training. Free demos, training, and support are included. It has a 1-month free trial.
XTRF
“Integrate your entire localization process in one globally accessible platform”
3. Machine Translation Engines
Machine Translation (MT) is revolutionizing the translation industry. There are numerous mass market machine translation engines available to use, but companies can also spin up their own custom machine translation engines based on their own data. Here are a few of the machine translation engines available today.
Amazon Translate
“Amazon Translate. Natural and accurate language translation.”
Amazon Translate is a neural machine translation engine.
https://aws.amazon.com/translate/
Apertium
“A free/open-source machine translation platform”
https://apertium.org/index.eng.html?dir=arg-cat#translation
Baidu Translate
Baidu is the top search engine in China. Its machine translation is well known and recommended for translation of Chinese text.
DeepL
“AI Assistance for Language: DeepL trains artificial intelligence to understand and translate texts.”
Deepl is a neural machine translation service. It covers a limited number of languages but is known for doing a better job than Google Translate on some language pairs.
Globalese
“Globalese3: 100% Neural. 100% Custom.” | “Outperform publicly available neural MT results by using fit-for-purpose Globalese engines built from your own corpora for your specific projects. Horses for courses!”
Google Cloud Translation
“Dynamically translate between languages using Google machine learning”
The following link is not to the popular Google Translate used by consumers. It leads to the Google Cloud page targeting professional users of Google machine translation technology.
https://cloud.google.com/translate
KantanMT
“A complete Machine Translation platform that you’ll never outgrow.”
Microsoft Machine Translation
“Microsoft Translator: Breaking the language barrier at home, at work, anywhere you need it”
Microsoft offers machine translation in more than 60 languages.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/translator/
ModernMT
“You have 1,000 Translation Memories but only one engine. ModernMT detects the domain of your content and automatically builds up a specialized model for your documents.”
ModernMT is a machine translation service that uses what they call a “human-in-the-loop” approach, meaning that human feedback will help continually improve the output.
Moses
“Moses: bringing machine translation to the masses”
The website says, “Moses is a statistical machine translation system that allows you to automatically train translation models for any language pair. All you need is a collection of translated texts (parallel corpus). Once you have a trained model, an efficient search algorithm quickly finds the highest probability translation among the exponential number of choices.”
OpenNMT
“An open source neural machine translation system.”
The website says, “OpenNMT is an open source ecosystem for neural machine translation and neural sequence learning.”
OPUS-CAT
“OPUS-CAT MT Engine is a Windows-based machine translation system built on the Marian NMT framework.”
You should know that if you use free machine translation tools on the Internet, your content will NOT be secure. However, OPUS-CAT is a free machine translation tool that does all of the translation on your own computer. That means your text stays private.
https://helsinki-nlp.github.io/OPUS-CAT/
Reverso Translation
“Enjoy natural-sounding, accurate translations with the latest technology introduced by Reverso, the Neural Machine Translation (NMT), already used in some of the biggest enterprises and translation companies.”
https://www.reverso.net/text_translation.aspx?lang=EN
Sogou Translate
Sogou is a Chinese machine translation service.
SYSTRAN
“Experience the quality of Neural Machine Translation”
https://www.systransoft.com/lp/free-online-translation/
Tencent Translate
Tencent, the Chinese developer of social networks QQ and WeChat, offers machine translation at the following link.
Yandex.Translate
“Synchronized translation for 99 languages, predictive typing, dictionary with transcription, pronunciation and usage examples, and many other features”
Yandex is a Russian-based Internet company with a popular search engine. It’s machine translation engine includes some languages that Google Translate lacks, such as Hill Mari, a Russian minority language.
Youdao Translate
Besides offering machine translation, Youdao also offers a desktop tool that allows highlighting of text for immediate machine translation as well as dictionary pop-ups when hovering over a word.
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4. Machine Translation Related Tools
As machine translation is revolutionizing the translation industry, an entire ecosystem of tools are being developed to work alongside machine translation for assisting post editing, for analyzing quality, for developing one’s own custom translation engine and so on.
AppTek
“A Leader in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for Automatic Speech Recognition and Machine Translation”
GT4T
“14 MT engines, 28 dictionaries, translating 309 languages, 12 file types, all at your fingertips.”
A program that runs on the desktop, GT4T has three main functions. Pull up a machine translation of highlighted text with a shortcut. Pull up dictionary entries of highlighted text with a shortcut. And pretranslate office or CAT files with drag and drop.
Intento
“Discover, evaluate and use best-of-breed AI: A simple and elegant API to third-party AI models from many vendors.”
Intento allows the user to connect to a large number of MT engines and evaluate how helpful the results are.
Lingvanex
“Remove the language barriers at home, at work, wherever you are.”
This is a machine translation product that can be integrated into apps, chat bots, voice assistants and many other business applications.
MachineTranslation.com
“Our mission is to make machine translation accessible and reliable for everyone.”
The site says, “Our tool is designed to analyze, compare, and recommend the best machine translation for any given text and language pair. It relies on the formidable abilities of GPT-4 to determine the strengths and weaknesses of each MT engine translation output, which in turn provides a tailored translation experience for each user.” To use the tool, enter the text to translate and then choose the target language. Then the best function is the “Translate and Compare” function. It will give you translations from all of the machine translation engines available in the tool (currently Google Translate, DeepL, Amazon, ModernMT, and ChatGPT). After displaying all of these MT results, it will use GPT-4 to analyze the differences between the results and the strengths and weaknesses of each. This tool is a great way to help you choose the best mass-market engine for your particular use-case.
ModelFront
“ModelFront instantly predicts if a translation is correct or not.”
Use ModelFront to get risk predictions for translated segments. Integrate the ModelFront API to auto-approve as many machine translations as safely possible. You can also try the ModelFront console with just a few clicks. It’s easy to predict post-editing effort, validate final translations, evaluate translation quality, or filter parallel data for training custom machine translation.
MS Office Translator
“Microsoft Office products offer translation using the AI-powered Translator service.”
This tool integrates machine translation in Microsoft Office applications such as Word.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/translator/business/office/
Multilizer Translation & Localization Tools
“Translate. Localize. We have the tools.”
Multilizer translation and localization tools help you to be efficient and fast. You can localize dozens of file formats, and many document formats are also supported. You can use machine translation and then post-edit. A wide range of plug-ins makes it easy to customize the tools to become the best match for your translation needs. Quick and fast translation tools for developers, translators, and everybody.
TAUS DQF
“Take charge of your global content and resources: Standard methodology for quality evaluation. Real-time reporting. Unique industry benchmark.”
5. Translation Memories & Glossaries and Related Tools
Translators use translation memories to store all the segments they have translated in the past, and they use glossaries to reference the accepted translations for particular words. Here are tools that are used for creating and managing these resources.
ActivaTM
“With ActivaTM, you can create a server version of all your translation memories and bilingual language assets, no matter what Computer Assisted Translation (CAT) tool you use. Translators can translate and access each other’s work simultaneously. But this time, it does not matter which CAT tool they are using.”
https://www.pangeanic.com/translation-technology/activatm/
amaGama
“Translation Memory server. AmaGama stores all your previous translations and provides translation suggestions for both Pootle and Virtaal. Deploying your own amaGama server allows you to host your own data internally or privately.”
http://amagama.translatehouse.org/
BaseTerm
“BaseTerm is an open-source and free to use terminology management system built with the primary goal of natively supporting the most popular TBX dialect for exchange, TBX-Basic.”
https://github.com/byutrg/baseterm
Maxprograms: RemoteTM
“RemoteTM is an open source Translation Memory (TM) server designed for sharing the super fast database engine included in Swordfish IV in network environments.”
https://www.maxprograms.com/products/remotetm.html
Maxprograms: Stingray Document Aligner
“Stingray is an open source cross-platform document aligner designed to assist professional translators in the production of translation memories from existing translated material.”
https://www.maxprograms.com/products/stingray.html
Maxprograms: TMXEditor
“TMXEditor is an open source desktop application designed for editing TMX (Translation Memory eXchange) files on macOS, Linux or Microsoft Windows.”
Maxprograms has a variety of tools for translators, including the Fluenta DITA Translation Manager, Swordfish Translation Editor (CAT tool), TMXEditor, Stingray Document Aligner, RemoteTM, and more.
https://www.maxprograms.com/products/tmxeditor.html
MyMemory
“MyMemory is the world’s largest Translation Memory. MyMemory is 100% free.”
“MyMemory is the world’s largest Translation Memory. It has been created collecting TMs from the European Union and United Nations, and aligning the best domain-specific multilingual websites.”
https://mymemory.translated.net/
NEC TM
“The NEC TM Data consortium’s objective is to organise unexploited national bilingual assets that can be used as open data and general data for machine learning, in order to lower translation costs at a national level and across member states. It will gather translation memories from previous national contract awards from Member States and help them to centralise these language assets with the fast-performing NEC TM database, following industry best practices.”
Okapi: Olifant
“Olifant is a cross-platform application that allows you to manage multilingual TMX documents. Olifant imports and exports the TMX documents into translation memories (TMs). Those TMs are stored in a TM repository. A repository is a collection of independent TMs stored in a single database.”
https://okapiframework.org/wiki/index.php/Olifant
Okapi: Ratel
“Ratel is a cross-platform application to create and maintain segmentation rules. The tool works with the SRX (Segmentation Rules eXchange) format.”
With Ratel you can immediately preview the segmentation as you edit the rules. You can also enable and disable rules to enable debugging. Easily exchange the SRX document between Ratel and other tools with copy and paste.
https://okapiframework.org/wiki/index.php/Ratel
Prospector
“A monolingual terminology extractor — one of the best tools of this type in the world. The tool automatically extracts terms from source texts in English.”
https://cloud.logrusglobal.com/#prospector
QTerm
“QTerm, the advanced terminology management system built on memoQ fundamentals. QTerm is a browser-based terminology management system. With a well-defined corporate terminology, you can streamline your communications and save up to 40 times the cost that you invest into terminology management. QTerm allows you to tailor your term entries to the needs of your organization, and it enables everybody in the organization to look up and suggest terms. As QTerm also integrates directly with the memoQ translation environment, translators can directly leverage the suggestions from QTerm.”
This is a memoQ module.
https://docs.memoq.com/current/en/memoQWeb-help/mqw-qterm.html
Star Transit NXT
“Transit NXT is the latest generation of STAR’s translation memory system.”
https://www.star-ts.com/software/translation-memory-transit-nxt/
Tb-Scout v2.0
“A Terminology Software Tool for Translators. A Companion Tool to the SDL MultiTerm Explorer.”
Tb-Scout v2.0 allows translators and editors to quickly explore, search, find, and export SDL MultiTerm termbases into Excel and PDF files, in plain text. No need to make conversions. It includes functions and features not found in either SDL Trados Studio or SDL MultiTerm Desktop. Power users and LSPs will benefit with this nimble and practical tool to help them manage their inventory of MultiTerm termbases.
https://tbscout20.translationist.com/
Terminator
“Terminator is an online terminology management and discussion tool. It tries to lower the barrier of entry, but also provides tools to enable teams to work towards higher quality while welcoming newcomers.”
Host terminology collections or glossaries on Terminator. The tool alows teams of linguists to manage permissions, discuss terminology, and search for terms.
https://github.com/translate/terminator
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6. Quality Assurance Tools
Quality assurance tools run checks on the translated text to ensure that there are no errors such as misspellings, grammar errors, number errors, inconsistencies, etc.
Crosscheck
“Formal Error Checker for Translated text”
Crosscheck runs a variety of quality checks on translated text including checks on terminology, noun phrase consistency, number consistency, adherence to style guides, and custom checks. One interesting feature to help clients to avoid being cheated is the following: “Get notified if text segments in a project have been copied straight from some of the most common MT engines without any editing by the linguist.”
Okapi: CheckMate
“CheckMate is a cross-platform application that allows you to perform various quality checks on bilingual translated documents.”
The tool checks for such issues as: repeated words, corrupted characters, inline code differences between target and source, missing translations, extra spaces, etc. These warnings can also be “ignored” to indicate that you have checked and approved the translation pair as it is.
https://okapiframework.org/wiki/index.php/CheckMate
TQAuditor
“Translation quality assessment system”
TQAuditor is the system that evaluates and monitors translation quality. You can use it to: — Compare the unedited translation made by the translator with the edited version received from the editor and generate a report about the corrections made by the editor. — Classify each correction by the mistake type and gravity thus allowing to get the translation quality evaluation score with a maximum 100 points. — Ensure anonymous communication between the translator and the editor regarding corrections and mistakes classification. — Automate the process of maintaining the evaluation project. — Save all the evaluated translations in the database and create the translation quality reports at the company. For example, you can create the list of top translators with the highest score, see dynamics of quality per individual translator by month, etc.
Verifika
“Treat translation quality seriously.”
Verifika is a QA tool for professionals who need to deliver high accuracy translations within tight deadlines.
Xbench
“Easy Quality Assurance and Terminology”
Accepts dozens of CAT file formats for quality assurance checks.
7. Integration Tools/Connectors
Automation and integration makes our lives easier. This is especially true in the translation industry where companies may receive files from a portal that is integrated with their CAT tool or they may send document analysis from their CAT tool to their business management system via an integration. These are a few connectors and integrators that free translation industry professionals from needless busywork.
Belazy
“BeLazy monitors jobs offered by your customers and automatically creates those you decide to accept in your business management system such as XTRF or Plunet.”
Clay Tablet
“Clay Tablet Technologies is a unique translation integration software solution that easily connects any number of content management systems (CMS’s) to any translation provider or translation technology. Clients immediately benefit from Clay Tablet with improved translation process efficiency, making it significantly faster and easier to set-up, manage, send and retrieve translation projects directly from their CMS. Based in Toronto, Canada, Clay Tablet helps mid-size and enterprise clients around the world in all industries. Clay Tablet is the leading provider of CMS integration and connectivity tools for Web content translation, translation automation, translation workflow, the process of content localization and content translation management.”
Clay Tablet was purchased by Lionbridge in 2014. The documentation for legacy Clay Tablet connectors can be found at the following link. Lionbridge has moved new documentation for the connection tools to its own website and has changed the name to Lionbridge Connectors. Find the link to those connectors on the page at the following link.
https://connectors.lionbridge.com/
iLangL
“A reliable solution for quick website localization”
iLangL Cloud is a middleware that is designed to safely and quickly transfer content between different CMSs (such as AEM, Episerver, and Contentful.) and translation tools (such as Memsource, memoQ, and SDL MultiTrans). Apart from out-of-the-box connectors, iLangL offers custom connector and custom extension development services. That way, even if you can’t find the CMS and CAT tool you need on the list, you still can get what you need as a part of custom services. The main benefit of iLangL Cloud is that it is not a standard plugin that is installed by clients. iLangL team treats each case personally and customizes connectors according to the client-specific localization requirements.
8. Localization Tools
Copying and pasting text from a CMS to a CAT tool is a time-wasting and error-prone process. Fortunately solutions exist to make localization of websites and software faster, easier, and safer.
Easyling
“Website translation made easy”
Easyling is a translation proxy, a platform for localizing websites quickly and painlessly. Acting as a screen in front of the original website, it allows localization without the associated pain of copy-pasting translations or heavy IT involvement.
FormatJS
“Internationalize your web apps on the client & server.”
This is a tool intended more for developers than translators. It is a collection of JavaScript libraries for internationalization with a focus on formatting numbers, dates, and strings for various regions and languages.
Gtranslate
“GTranslate – your window to the world.”
GTranslate is a localization product for websites. With a simple configuration, your website will become multilingual and available to wider international audiences. Alongside the automatic translations, with GTranslate’s in-context editor, you can translate the content directly on the webpage. All the paid plans start with a 15-day trial and the free configuration is included in the plans. GTranslate is available for use with popular CMSes such as WordPress and Shopify.
i18next
“learn once – translate everywhere”
This is a tool intended more for developers than translators. It is an internationalization framework written in and for JavaScript
Linguise AI Translation Tool
“Translate your website into over 85 languages with unlimited, instant translations!”
Linguise is an automatic AI translation service that offers instant translations in over 85 languages. It integrates seamlessly with popular CMS platforms on the market, including both self-hosted PHP systems like WordPress and various cloud-hosted platforms.
Multisite Language Switcher
“A simple, powerful and easy to use plugin that will add multilingual support to a WordPress multisite installation.”
Multisite Language Switcher is a WordPress localization plugin.
Polylang
“Making WordPress Multilingual”
Polylang is a WordPress localization plugin.
TranslatePress
“WordPress translation plugin that anyone can use”
TranslatePress is a free WordPress localization plugin that lets you translate your entire website using a front-end visual translation interface. Just click to select any piece of text, enter its translation, and the change will appear in real time. It supports both manual and machine translation, integrating with services like Google Translate or DeepL. The visual translation approach makes it one of the most easy to use translation plugins for WordPress.
Transposh
“Breaking language barriers”
Transposh is a WordPress localization plugin.
Weglot
“Weglot allows you to make your website multilingual in minutes and to manage all your translations effortlessly.”
Weglot is a WordPress localization plugin.
WPML
“WPML makes it easy to build multilingual sites and run them. It’s powerful enough for corporate sites, yet simple for blogs.”
WPML is a WordPress plugin that allows you to easily send webpages to translators and then after translation, publish them with a click.
XiLi
“xili-language provides for a bilingual (or multilingual) website an automatic selection of language (.mo) in theme according to the language of current post(s) or page.”
XiLi is a WordPress localization plugin.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/xili-language/
Marketers: How should you organize the URL structure of a multilingual website?
Download the free ebook here: The Best URL Structure for International SEO [Complete Guide]
9. Video Localization Tools
Localization of videos can involve different challenges than other types of translation. Fortunately tools exist to simplify and improve video localization.
Amara
“Caption, Subtitle and Translate Video”
Their website says, “Amara’s award-winning technology enables you to caption and subtitle any video for free. For larger subtitling projects the platform makes it easy to manage teams of translators.”
memoQ Video Preview Tool
This is a tool offered by memoQ for use with their main CAT solution. According to the documentation, “The memoQ Video Preview tool is a separate app that helps when you are translating video subtitles in Excel or in .srt format. It talks to memoQ, and shows exactly that part of the video that you need. The video preview tool is built on our Preview SDK.”
https://docs.memoq.com/current/en/memoQ-video-preview-tool/memoq-video-preview-tool.html
Ooona
“Rethink Everything You Know About Localization”
According to the website, “OOONA Ltd was founded in 2012 with the aim to develop professional management and production tools to service the localization industry. The company’s flagship product is OOONA Manager, a cloud-based system for managing translation, subtitling and captioning workflows in a user-centric approach, with full visibility over the localization workflow and integration with financial tools.”
https://ooona.net/ooona-tools/
Studio Subtitling
A free SDL plugin for subtitling videos
https://appstore.rws.com/Plugin/5
Subtitles Translator
“This program is intended for translating subtitles in MicroDVD format from one language to another. All you need is a subtitles file in MicroDVD format ({start_frame}{end_frame}subtitles_line) in language from which you want to make the translation. First of all I should write what Subtitles Translator is not some sort of gadget where you load input file, specify output file, press magic button and wush! the translation is done. No, you still have to translate every single line yourself, but this program helps you by taking care of formatting the subtitles, editing start and end frame numbers and so on.”
10. Other Tools
We will doubtless add more categories to this list in the near future, but for the time being, we placed all of the odds and ends, the tools that didn’t quite seem to fit anywhere else in this list. In many cases, these tools can be some of the most fascinating.
Bohemicus
“A program that’s actually on your side.”
It runs in the background and provides services to other programs or CAT tools, namely: machine translation, voice dictation, translation memory concordance search, convenient online/offline dictionary search and Googling, clipboard management, useful text editing functions and much more.
https://www.bohemicus-software.cz
Coreon
“Knowledge meets language.”
Explore language repositories and make use of multilingual terminologies.
https://www.coreon.com/product
Google Sheets translate function
GOOGLETRANSLATE(text, [source_language, target_language])
There is a function in Google Sheets called GOOGLETRANSLATE that can be used to translate text in the spreadsheet with Google Translate. At the link below you can get your own copy of the Google Sheets Machine Translation Template that we created.
https://ivannovation.com/resources/free-machine-translation-spreadsheet/
Google Translate for Excel
“Excel Add-in for Google Translate: Use the power of Google’s remarkable machine language translation capabilities directly from your Excel Sheets”
Kaku
“A simple Photoshop plugin to translate your text layers to a different language.”
Use this tool to translate text layers in photos on Photoshop.
Kaleidoscope
“Taking Your Content Global”
Kaleidoscope was challenging to categorize neatly since it is more of an array of tools. The website says, “Using our software solutions, you can create and manage your multilingual product documentation more efficiently than ever before. Perfect for technical documentation, marketing materials, and catalogs.” We asked Michal Gaman at customer support how he would categorize the company’s offering, and he said, “Our solutions cover CAT Tool Plugins and Integration Tools/Connectors (see our portfolio), but we focus on Terminology Management as well.”
https://www.kaleidoscope.at/en/translation/
Logrus Global Language Cloud
“Logrus Global Localization Cloud is a cloud-based universe of tools and services created to support translation and localization workflow in the era of diverse, both cloud-based and desktop toolset where information worker has to operate with often incompatible tools and formats.”
Logrus Global Language Cloud includes several tools. Goldpan is for managing bilingual data. Memrose is a cloud based TM and CAT tool. Rigora is for running quality assurance (QA) on bilingual files. Finally, Interpretisto is a video conferencing and remote interpreting platform.
Maxprograms: Fluenta DITA Translation Manager
“Fluenta parses your DITA map, resolving the references to all topics and subtopics, and prepares a unified XLIFF file that you can send to your Language Sevice Provider (LSP) for translation.”
An open source tool that simplifies translation of DITA projects.
https://www.maxprograms.com/products/fluenta.html
mojito
“Continuous Localization: Be agile. Continuously develop and localize your application real-time. New strings in the code flow into mojito, get translated, then flow back into the code. All automated!”
mojito is an open-source automation platform designed for continuous localization of software.
Okapi Framework
“The Okapi Framework is a cross-platform and free open-source set of components and applications that offer extensive support for localizing and translating documentation and software.”
The collection of tools perform tasks such as extracting text, performing quality checks, creating and maintaining segmentation rules, converting file formats, and more. Some of these tools are covered individually in other sections.
Omniscien
“Professional Custom Machine Translation, Language Processing and Machine Learning Solutions: Built on the World’s Leading Translation and Workflow Automation Technologies”
Oxygen DITA Translation Package Builder
“This add-on contributes contextual menu actions that help you build a translation package for DITA files that can be sent to translators. You can also extract the changed files back into your project once you receive the package back from the translators.”
This tool is a plugin for Oxygen XML Editor. It allows Oxygen users to create DITA files for translation and them import the translations back into their XML authoring tool.
https://github.com/oxygenxml/oxygen-dita-translation-package-builder
Pseudolocalize!
“Pseudolocalize your text online with one easy click”
RyCAT
“Studio Enterprise RyCAT FOR TRADOS & OFFICE; Productivity-Boosting Tools For Professional Translators Only”
Serge
“Serge (String Extraction and Resource Generation Engine) is a continuous localization solution that allows you to configure robust localization automation scenarios in minutes, and integrate localization processes into your everyday development, content authoring and CI/CD workflows.”
Serge was developed by Evernote and is free to download.
TAUS Matching Data
“Select language data tuned to your own domain from the largest industry-shared language data repository using the TAUS high-performance clustered search”
Use TAUS Matching Data to assemble a corpus of text to use in your translation projects or for training your own machine translations engines.
Terminotix
“Terminotix is a software company with a mission to help language services departments and translation providers improve productivity by automating and enhancing their translation processes.”
Terminotix has a variety of tools related to translation, document alignment, machine translation, project management, term extraction, and other translation tasks.
https://terminotix.com/index.asp?lang=en
Translate Toolkit
“The localization engineers’ Swiss Army Knife. Use it to convert, count, manipulate, review and debug texts. Tools that you can expand, adapt and grow.” | “Essential Toolkit for Localization Engineers.”
This free-to-download toolkit is from Translate House, which has been developing translation tools for more than a decade. Translate House came from a translation non-profit in South Africa, which interestingly has 11 official languages. On the website, it lists “format converters,” “quality assurance,” and “localization hacking” to be its main functions.
https://toolkit.translatehouse.org/
TransTools
“TransTools+ Productivity tools for translators, editors and content creators” | “50+ translation productivity tools for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio and AutoCAD.”
TransTools and TransTools+ are sets of tools for Microsoft Office programs (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Visio) and for AutoCAD designed to increase the productivity of translators, PMs and editors in document preparation before/after translation with CAT tools, during QA, when translating drawings, and in other common scenarios.
http://www.translatortools.net/
Various tools by AIT
“Focus on Translation not Administration!”
This site has a collection of tools for freelancers and LSPs for quality assurance, word counting, translation management, etc.
https://www.translation3000.com/
WeBiSearch
“WeBiSearch is a reference tool for language professionals. It uses a powerful multilingual search engine to scan your chosen websites.”
Set a source language and a target language and enter a search term. WeBiSearch, or Bilingual Web Search, will search a selection of localized websites for the term. It will display a table of results with source and target languages.
Final Thoughts on Tools for Translators
We hope you enjoyed browsing this huge list of amazing translation tech, innovation, and creativity. We hope you came away with a few more secret weapons in your war chest.
We learned about many of these tools for translators from searching the web, but we also learned about many of them from professional publications. We would like to thank them and recommend that our readers also subscribe to these publications.
The first is Jost Zetzsche’s The Tool Box Journal; it’s a fascinating guide to translation technology that you will read from beginning to end every month.
The second is Multilingual Magazine.
And the third is Slator. Read these resources to learn of new translation technology and to become an expert in the translation industry.
A final resource we’ll share is the Nimdzi Language Technology Atlas, a downloadable infographic listing more than 700 language tools.
If you want to suggest more translation tools to include on our Tools for Translators list or if you want to make corrections or suggestions, please leave a comment below.
We hope you enjoyed the list. Adopt a new tool today!
A great collection! Very helpful information. Thank you for your research.
Thank you for checking out the list of professional translation tools!
Some companies have asked for me to include a link in their description to demo videos or something else. Unfortunately, I can’t do that because of the way I created this article, which is: 1) I created a huge list of tools in a spreadsheet with columns for title, image, alt text, marketing slogan, description, and URL. 2) Then I put html in the columns between this information. 3) I sorted the tools by category and copied all of them and pasted them into Notepad++ 3) I ran a macro to format all the information as nice html to be pasted into our CMS. 4) Finally I pasted the text in the appropriate categories in our CMS. I did it this way so that I could more easily make updates in the future by copying entire sections from the spreadsheet and replacing them in the article. That also means that I can’t add links in the descriptions for the tools because they will be replaced with plain text from the spreadsheet next time I replace the html. Anyway, feel free to recommend changes, and I’ll be happy to try to include them.
You should add Terminotix to this article.
Yes! We added it! Thanks for the suggestion.
Looks like it’s missing XTRF
Not anymore! Thanks
Check out: Verifika, Antidote, and PerfectIt
Great ideas! We added Verifika to the list.
Writefull would be a useful addition. Writefull is an app that gives feedback on your writing by checking your text against databases. https://writefullapp.com/
Hi Erwin, Hmm, that’s an interesting idea. I was aware of Writefull, but I hadn’t thought of it for this list. I already included it (the old free version) in this post: 50+ Desktop Productivity Tools You Can’t Live Without in 2020. I’ll look at it again and see if I can get it in this translation tools article too. Thanks for the recommendation!
You’re welcome, Darren. Thanks for your list with productivity tools!
Excellent work, thank you for your initiative and generosity!
Thanks! Absolutely!
Maybe add Lingvanex
Added it thanks!
Some CMS plugins include: Polylang, TranslatePress, Multisite Language Switcher, Weglot, XiLi, Transposh
We included these. thank you!
https://www.i18next.com/ “I18next is an internationalization-framework written in and for JavaScript,” according to the website.
React Intl https://formatjs.io/docs/getting-started/installation/ is a localization package for React projects.
These two might be good for the section on localization tools, but these two are more on the development side rather than the linguistic side of things. So I’m not sure if they are relevant to this article.
We may need to break out the development-oriented tools into another article someday, but we included them in the localization section in this article for now. Thanks!
Crosscheck https://runcrosscheck.com/#/ can tell you if you have received text from a translator that is actually raw MT. It also runs a variety of other quality checks on translations.
We added this. Great suggestion!
OPUS-CAT is a desktop MT tool: https://helsinki-nlp.github.io/OPUS-CAT/install
This is really cool. We added it
Thanks for this amazing list. A couple of more suggestions: the excellent Termweb interverbum, amazing for terminology, and QA Distiller.
I’ll add those to my list of tools to check out and possibly add to the list. Thanks so much for your suggestions!
Hi Juliet, I found https://interverbumtech.com/ for Termweb and http://www.qa-distiller.com/en for QA Distiller, but I didn’t find “amazing for terminology”. Could you point me to a URL for that?
I use Subtitle Workshop XE. Thanks a bunch for this list!
Very informative and good article. Thank you very much!
This is great platform which outlines the latest out the in terms of Translating services present in the market. The resources in this page helps translation professionals with technological advancements to efficiently deliver the assignments on hand.
TOO MANY CHOICES. I AM NTO A COMPUTER PERSON, I JUST NEED TO USE IT FOR MY TRANSLATIONS. IT’S LIKE WHEN I USE MY CAR, I DON’T NEED TO KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT ITS ENGINE AND MECHANICS.