When translating content into different languages, accuracy is obviously essential. Moreover, so is efficiency. The best translation software will pay for itself many times over.
This highlights the value of language translation software. When you choose the right tool, you quickly deploy quality translations and reap the rewards even sooner.
But choosing a robust and reliable software that meets your needs can seem daunting. Let’s see how Smartling compares with other translation software tools available.
Smartling: What makes it the best translation software?
Smartling’s powerful translation management software is a content repository and administrative suite for translation projects. Smartling supports projects large and small from end to end, with capabilities to translate between any language combination. It streamlines the translation process for the following:
- Web pages, blog posts, and other global marketing content
- Software translation, app translation, and other product experiences
- Customer support content
- And more
The best part? Smartling has a 100% translation quality guarantee that helps users reduce time to market by up to 80% and translation costs by up to 60%. The following contribute to those outcomes:
- Neural Machine Translation Hub (NMT). Driven by AI and backed by professional translation services, the NMT Hub trains custom engines using your own Translation Memory and Glossaries, ensuring quality and consistent translations that are on brand at a fraction of the cost.
- Quality Assurance (QA). Smartling centralizes various QA features, all of which are customizable. Smartling also has 25 settings for quality checks, which review translated text much like a human translator would.
- Workflow Automation. Smartling’s translation management system workflow automation uses AI to train workflow classifications. Flexible workflow training with machine learning or manual programming considers your budget, timeline, and rules, so that you can automate as much as possible, and you're only notified when something requires your attention.
- Collaboration. You can collaborate directly with translators on the string level via Slack, email, or Smartling itself.
- Integrations. Smartling software integrates with your systems to facilitate efficient workflows, helping you eliminate 90% of manual effort currently done by your internal Marketing/Product and Localization Managers. Smartling’s available connectors include content management systems, marketing automation tools, ecommerce platforms, and more.
- Security. Smartling maintains compliance with strict security standards and holds several compliance certifications. Its security infrastructure is enterprise-grade, unlike that of some alternative tools.
- Translation Memory - Reuse translation more efficiently across your website and marketing assets to reduce translation spend by 30%.
But this is just a taste of what Smartling has to offer.
4 Standout features of Smartling
Let's take a look at a few of the Smartling features that customers love.
1. Global Delivery Network (GDN)
The Global Delivery Network (GDN) is the fastest low/no-code way to translate and deliver localized versions of your website. It automatically surfaces changes to website copy for translation. Furthermore, it rewrites links to keep users on localized, SEO-friendly versions of your site.
2. Computer Assisted Translation (CAT) tool
The computer-assisted translation tool (CAT tool) shows how translated content will appear in context with your content, wherever it lives, including video context.
3. Transcreation tool
Besides translation, Smartling is the only tool that also handles transcreation at scale. Rather than simply translating words, the transcreation tool captures the source text’s meaning, style, and tone.
This allows the translator to re-interpret your message in an appropriate way for different cultures and languages while maintaining the effectiveness of your message.
Then, Transcreation Memory, which is separate from Translation Memory, maintains that consistent messaging.
4. Performance analytics
Smartling takes a data-driven approach to translation and localization. For example, you can keep track of the following:
- Workflow efficiency reports to help you identify and remove bottlenecks
- Cost estimates for each translation job
- Translation savings reports to show how effective your translation memory is over time
Smartling also created the first predictive translation quality measurement powered by machine learning. It's called the Quality Confidence Score. It gives a real-time overview of translation quality for each job and recommendations for raising the score.
Then there’s Linguistic Quality Assurance (LQA). It's a customizable, human-driven process that reviews translated text and evaluates translation quality. The Quality Confidence Score and LQA combined make Smartling one of the best translation software options on the market.
Users love that Smartling eliminates the need to use several different solutions or spend hours in the editing process to get the job done manually. All in all, Smartling is a one-stop shop for accurate translation.
How do other translation software tools compare?
How do other translation software alternatives on the market compare? Many share similar base features. Yet, they also have some disadvantages you should be aware of as you consider various software options.
Common features and benefits of alternative translation software
Let’s dig into an overview of some of the most common features across alternative translation tools and their advantages. We’ll also cover some of the issues their users commonly encounter, along with Smartling’s answers to those challenges.
Quality assurance
Termbases and glossaries are crucial features of good translation tools. They help organizations manage, translate, and approve the following:
- Branded terms
- Technical terminology
- Industry jargon
Some tools also have terminology management features that check context, spelling, variants, and more. These allow users to identify translation errors and find alternatives.
Plus, machine translation tools use artificial intelligence (e.g. neural networks) to provide more high-quality translations. Some of these machine translation engines even calculate quality scores. At a glance, these show how accurately source texts have been translated into your target languages.
In Smartling: Smartling features a first-of-its-kind Quality Confidence Score, Linguistic Quality Assurance, customizable quality checks, and more.
Workflow management
To boost efficiency, many tools make it possible to build custom translation workflows. Many of these tools allow workflow automation to keep projects moving seamlessly from status to status. Because automation reduces manual work, it may also reduce human error, like forgetting to change the status of a piece of content.
Branching (or version control) is also a popular feature. It allows you to merge versions, as well as see and resolve translation conflicts.
In Smartling: Workflow automation, custom translation rules, quality checks, budgeting tools, and more are part of Smartling’s comprehensive translation management system (TMS). Smartling’s workflow automation uses AI and machine learning to train workflows based on your budget, timeline, and rules.
Collaboration
Most established translation tools now have collaboration features such as the following:
- Built-in chat with @mentions
- Team task lists so everyone knows what’s on their to-do list
- Comments to clarify which portion of text notes apply to
Some also integrate with tools like Slack to centralize project discussions where your team is most active.
In Smartling: Smartling is one of the only translation platforms that allows you to communicate directly with your linguists, ensuring full transparency of the entire process, brand integrity, and control over quality and cost.
Integrations
Some have more options than others, but the best translation software tools on the market integrate with the following:
- Content management systems
- Marketing automation tools
- Code repositories
- Project management tools
- Ecommerce platforms
- Design tools
Some also integrate with tools like Intercom. This facilitates live chat translation, reducing the pressure to have multilingual support agents always available.
Many also offer webhooks and APIs for building custom integrations. With these, continue using the tools in your tech stack without making translation workflows longer.
In Smartling: Smartling offers the Global Delivery Network (Proxy solution), REST APIs, and dozens of integrations, including AEM, Contentful, Contentstack, Drupal, Sanity, Sitecore, Marketo, Google Drive, Mindtouch, Zendesk and more.
Security
To be in the running for the title of best translation software, a tool must, of course, take security seriously. This is especially true if you work with external service providers or translate proprietary information.
The top software tools today have various security measures in place, such as the following examples:
- Single sign-on (SSO)
- End-to-end encryption and immediate text deletion
- The freedom for users to choose between deployment options: server-based (hosted or on-premise) and cloud-based
When evaluating a translation technology company, learning how it keeps your data private and protected is a top priority.
In Smartling: Enterprise-grade security infrastructure meets HIPAA, GDP, SOC 2, and PCI standards. Smartling has also attained ISO 9001, 13485, and 17100.
Common disadvantages of Smartling alternatives
Translation accuracy
A goal of translation software is to make the job of professional translators easier. However, some tools are inconsistent as far as translation quality goes. User reviews for various software options report some of these issues:
- Inaccurately translated words
- Mechanics errors
- Detected untranslated words or phrases
In addition, with no agreed upon quality SLA, the topic of good quality versus bad can become subjective.
In Smartling: Smartling stands by a 100% translation quality guarantee - based on your standards. User interface and user experience Some translation software tools can confuse or even overwhelm users. Some users have reported trouble with the following, among other things:
- Finding the features they’re looking for
- Checking the status of projects
- Customizing settings
Establishing integrations with a website can also be complex and require a fair amount of programming. Ultimately, however, the steeper the learning curve, the less efficient your team will be.
In Smartling: Smartling’s Proxy, the Global Delivery Network, for example, is a hassle-free, no-code solution that’s simple to set up. The rest of Smartling’s technology is equally easy to use.
Cloud-Based Platform for Performance and Reliability
Occasional glitches are inevitable with any software. Yet, some tools are more prone to bugs, crashes, and slowdowns than others. According to public reviews from users, these have resulted in a variety of problems:
- Pesky spelling errors due to lags while typing
- Missing formatting in translated files
- Delays on translation and localization projects due to slow loading, crashes, or the need for heavy translation editing
In Smartling: Users on G2 rated Smartling the #1 translation management system. The translation management software is cloud-based and fully accessible at all times, andIt’s well-known as one of the most reliable translation solutions on the market.
Plans and pricing
Many users of popular translation tools have noted that they can be expensive. Also, for businesses with limited, sporadic, or unpredictable translation needs, plans may not be flexible to justify the cost. Additionally, features may not be robust enough to handle large translation projects at scale.
In Smartling: To help you maximize your budget, Smartling offers three pricing options:
- Core - for basic translation projects and documents
- Growth - for teams looking to localize software and build translated product experiences
- Enterprise - for teams looking to automate and customize the full localization process
Choosing the right translation tool
If you choose wisely, the benefits of translation technology are abundant. They include decreased time to market, higher quality guarantees, and cost savings. Smartling, in particular, accentuates those benefits through truly full-service solutions. Quality is guaranteed.
Smartling has all the essential features we covered (and more) but with fewer significant disadvantages than alternatives. Want a complete overview of these features and how they can support your translation efforts? Learn more about our translation software and language services.
