In the TMS tools market, Lingotek, XTM Cloud, and GlobalLink stand out from the crowd and are widely adopted by many clients or LSPs. They share similarities regarding the functions and differentiate from one another regarding their unique features.
Lingotek
Compared with the old-fashioned interface of Worldserver, Lingotek looks much more modern and user-friendly. You can judge its usability solely by its appearance. The developer of Lingotek has precisely seized the chance to integrate new functions into this system, in order to suit emerging needs from the fast-growing industry.
- Integration with CMS and Crowdsourcing: Lingotek is integrated with many popular CMSs such as WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla. It also integrated crowdsourcing solutions. Project managers can crowdsource or outsource projects to a community, reducing time and cost.
- File Preparation: In the file preparation phase, Lingotek separates the content from websites or other products, removes all of the non-translatable parts, breaks the text into segments. Conventionally, this task needs to be assigned to an engineer, but now it is fully automated by the system. When the translation task is done, the translated text can be easily returned to the original product, with images, style, formatting intact.
- Collaboration: On Lingotek workbench, linguists can work on the same document at the same time, and easily communicate with one another through real-time chat and segment-specific notes. This function is helpful in a scenario where more resources are needed due to a large quantity or an urgent deadline.
- From Content Creation to Translation: In Lingotek, the users can not only manage translation asset but also the original content. Any changes made to the content will be sent as notifications to the translators so that they can follow up and edit the corresponding translation. When a project is completed, users can complete real-time publishing on the platform.
- Actionable Analytics: If the users don’t know which language should they choose to translate in order to best expand the market, Lingotek can provide the statistics on web page views etc. for them to make a better decision.
- Content Value Index: Lingotek developed this measurement to tailor different workflows for different content. Automatic: machine translation (MT) + translation memories (TM). Community: Activate a community to voluntarily translate. Professional: Professional translators.
User’s Notes –
- In the project settings of Lingotek TMS, there is a button called “new” next to workflow and client name. When project managers could not find the correct workflow or client, this button can navigate them to create new ones, instead of dismissing the project creation and start again.
- Every account can have multiple roles in Lingotek TMS, unlike WorldServer. As a project manager, I can assign the translation to myself. This feature has its pros and cons. If a person wants to switch his or her role (for example, from translator to the reviewer), he or she does not need to log out and log in again, holding several accounts in hand. However, it might also cause chaos and confusion when PM is assigning tasks because all accounts are not designated in one role.
- In Lingotek TMS, there is a leaderboard to show the top translators and top teams. PMs can assign tasks to more capable human resources, and linguists can also be encouraged to provide a better translation. In WorldServer, the roles and teams are arranged in an alphabetical order, and it does not provide a similar function.
- In Lingotek TMS, there are two types of resources for reviewing, voting pool and moderators. The review tasks can be assigned to a community instead of a person or a team.
XTM Cloud
As another leading TMS in the market, XTM Cloud has its functions as follows.
- Filter customization: Just like other popular TMSs, XTM has a lot of filters above the project list, which guides the users to find the target project efficiently. However, the “Save as Project Filter” function makes XTM stands out from the crowd. It allows users to customize new project filters based on their needs and save them for later use.
- Instant Messenger: As we all know, communication is a vital part of successful project management, especially translation management. XTM takes it into consideration and integrates instant messenger into the system, so that project managers can chat with linguists, clients on the on-going process, and avoid any kinds of vagueness.
- LQA: XTM integrated TAUS Dynamic Quality Framework as its Quality Assurance metrics. The QA reports from the reviewers will be used to rate translators.
- The context for segments: In the notes of segments, images or the link to API context can be uploaded as a reference for translation. Thus, linguists can get enough background knowledge from the original content, and avoid the embarrassment of “lose the context” situations.
- Mobile Application: XTM has a mobile application for users to track projects on phone. It’s very thoughtful.
User’s notes –
- While choosing the language combination for projects, users must change the languages of the client first, then add those languages to linguists. It will cause a certain degree of confusion.
- While changing the status of translated segments, there is no “confirm all” feature, and users must confirm one by one.
- There are too many features in XTM, and sometimes it can be a problem and cause confusion for users.
GlobalLink
GlobalLink is another powerful TMS adopted by the leading LSP, TransPerfect. It has its unique features as follows:
- Client Customization: it has several modules, including Order Portal, Term Manager, TM Server, Review Portal, Trans studio, Machine Translation, and Report Portal. Clients can decide which modules can be combined and used for their products.
- Integration with connectors: it has over 40 connectors including eCommerce, database, CMS and other products.
- GlobalLink OneLink and Transport: GlobalLink OneLink is a branch of its workflow can do proxy localization, and GlobalLink Transport is another for simplified projects.
- Security: Other than “account and password” requirement, it has XM decrypt function to eliminate the security concerns for cloud-based tools.
User’s notes –
- PMs can manage notifications based on needs, eliminating the unnecessary information.
- UI Design: different colors indicate different things (such as the process bar).
- Linguists have instructions, reference files, highlighted terms and live review function which is compatible with Office files, and Indesign files in the future.
- Reviewers can have two types of reports: segmentation report as a feedback to linguists, and a graph report for clients. It uses Tableau as its report tool, integrating the power of data into this system.
- The “Gate task type” setting can be used to set up “where to stop or jump through”(Do linguists for this particular project need a review?)
Scenario
China’s largest e-commerce company, Alibaba, want to bring in localization service and provide multilingual web pages of its major online shopping website Taobao, in order to expand its business globally. They decided to adopt a TMS to help them manage website localization projects.
Target Analysis –
Company Size: Large
Organization of company: Client & For-profit
Typical project types: website page (with images)
Typical workflow: Agile (web content is not fixed)
Solution –
Lingotek.
- The purpose of webpage translation is to let more online buyers know about the products. So the quality goal of content is “understandable”. Plus, the volume of tasks is super large considering its business scale. Alibaba can use Lingotek to crowdsource its projects, saving time and cost by reaching the “understandable” level of quality.
- Regarding the project type is website page, Lingotek can integrate the CMS base into its system, economizing time on transfer.
- Users can use its Actionable Analytics function to determine the target market, in order to maximize its profit.
- The agile workflow needs Lingotek to allow users to change content and corresponding translation simultaneously.
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