Source:

  1. “Eight Steps to a Successful TMS Roll-Out” by Andrew Lawless (Rockant/DigIT) http://rockant.com/wp-content/uploads/ubpfattach/eight-steps-to-a-successfull-tms-roll-out.pdf
  2. “Implementing a Translation Management System: 4 Things to Keep in Mind” by Camille Poudens (Freedman International) https://www.freedmaninternational.com/blog/blog/category/implementing-a-translation-management-tool
  3. “Choosing a TMS: Getting Started” by Yee Lam Cook and Viviana Bertinetto (Global Language Solutions) https://www.gala-global.org/publications/choosing-tms-getting-started
  4. “Shopping for a Translation Management System: How to Choose the Best for Your Company” (Sajan) http://www.sajan.com/shopping-for-a-translation-management-system-how-to-choose-the-best-for-your-company/

 

Selecting a suitable and effective translation management system is an important thing for both client companies and LSPs. For a company from the client side that wishes to find the best translation tools, it has several steps to go through before making the decision. Firstly, according to Brian McConnell in his article “Choosing The Best Translation Technology for Your Company”, the most valuable thing to do is to do some research and get itself familiar with the translation and localization industry to understand how this industry operates and what categories of products and services are. Second, evaluate the tools based on its own technology and process rather than on the needs of its translation agency. Third, involve bilingual staff in the localization and translation efforts since they are able to assist with translation and market expansion projects. And finally after filtering out some of the options, all it has to do is to test out the candidates and evaluate them based on the staff’s opinions in terms of their usability, workload reduction and output quality. Resources can now be shift into the solution that wins.

For the vendor side, there are much more factors to be taken into account during the selection of the best TMS.

The first thing to do before the search is to understand the current and future translation needs in the company. This includes evaluating the actual necessity of owning a TMS tool based on the projects to be managed, the project management needed (regarding the way the projects to be handled and the desired level of automation), finance tracking system and the requirement of integration and interoperability between systems. After having a big picture of the company’s blueprint, the next thing to do is to involve all the human resources in the process of selecting a TMS. All the different internal departments that will be affected by the decision should be taken into consideration since they will be the ones to implement the product. Moreover, vendors should also be involved as early as possible and they have the right to be notified of the change in advance. Research on the vendors’ major concerns and their opinions is significantly necessary to build constructive suggestions for choosing the right tool. Before implementing the tool, the company is supposed to think about the allocation of resources for setup, training, customization login creations and so on. Last but no least, test, test, and test again. But testing can be tricky. The core is to identify a team that works on the same project type, ask them to launch a small internal project to test the tool out and gain feedbacks.

For me, I couldn’t agree more that it is so necessary to consider the translators during the selection of a new tool. It aroused my consensus that “Some tools are far better for managers than for translators. The different editor interfaces and features might be great for PMs, but not for the people actually working with the copy”, especially for an external vendor. A good LSP is a one that also think about the vendors, asking them whether they are willing to learn new tools and delving into the way the tool works to make sure their life won’t be made hard because of it. Since vendors consists of one of the crucial part of the translation and localization process, they are key to the company’s success and whether they are happy with the chosen TMS matters. And that’s why when we started to look for volunteer vendors for our Localization Practicum projects, the first thing we asked on our survey form is: Are you interested in learning a new tool for your translation?