If you’re a business owner or manager looking to expand internationally the thought of managing the complexity of translation workflows, maintaining consistency, and keeping track of everything can be daunting. Translation keys can help simplify this process by organizing multilingual content efficiently. In this article, you will learn about the benefits of translation tools for business and how they can help streamline workflows, increase productivity, and improve the quality of translation.
We’ll give you a clear understanding of the value that a language translation software can provide to your business and how it can help you achieve your international growth goals, plus give you some examples of how our clients are using them across the Lokalise platform.
The case for growth: how translation tools can help
If you want a global (or even international) brand, it might seem strange that the essence of going global is going local. But think about what you represent to your audience – a certain personality and character, with a specific voice. And to make that consistent means communicating with words and ideas that are different in each market.
What makes a Texan think you’re a stand-up guy is very different to what creates the same feeling in an Indonesian. Each culture has a set of shared values and understandings that define how you present yourself when entering its market. Getting this localization right is the key job of every successful global brand. Of course, localization can be complex.
Translation software for business can help manage that complexity. By clarifying workflows, storing assets for reuse, keeping track of the 1,0001 things that make the difference between mere translated text and a true localized offer. In other words, international business expansion needs localization – and localization needs a translation business management system that lets your business grow faster than your costs do.
So which areas of your business can make use of these tools? Short version: everywhere. Let’s list a few.
- Your website. Obvious perhaps, but even a small site needs to maintain a tone of voice, the information on each page, and consistency in the way it labels buttons and links. And links between different versions need to stay accurate. Software can help.
- Mobile apps. Small-screen form factors make the differences in spare requirements of different languages plain. Not to mention those written right-to-left, or top-to-bottom. Using translation software can keep text elements meaningful even as developers roll out new versions.
- Marketing assets and channels. From Google Ads to YouTube, engagement and conversion rates are higher when you talk to people in their own language.
- Software. SaaS or desktop, there’s a surprising amount of text in any application – and it needs to be fully localized to win share in different markets.
- Business documents. From Terms of Service to full-blown contracts, many countries have formal rules for how business documents are structured – and the more structured and concise, the more the machines can help.
- Videogame text and dialog. Think how many variants of a single utterance are needed to keep a game feeling real – formal, informal, or spoken while being shot in the face! Software can help keep these “conversation trees” smooth.
- Customer Services and the HelpDesk – you need to offer support in local languages too. But in many organizations the same customer issues and pain points come up time and time again – and software can help standardize and formalize those responses, putting time back in your business.
Translation tools for business: the key benefits
In essence, language translation software for business brings the same benefits as technology in general: leveraging human potential and letting you get things done faster, more accurately, and in greater volume. It also simplifies translation and localization efforts, ensuring consistency across global markets. Let’s list these too:
- Better translation quality. Teamed with human translators, consistency and maintainability of a piece of text gets easier with software. By making sure a slogan is always translated the same way, processes and conventions are set and enforced everywhere, and tone of voice guidelines are applied.
- Building “translation memory”. In days past, even large corporations would treat translation as a job for local markets with Word docs and email. Meaning the same work would be redone again and again. A library of assets with snippets and fragments available for reuse – called a “translation memory” – prevents this.
- More streamlined workflows. Wherever complexity rears its head, there’s the risk of inefficiency, as people pour energy into understanding what’s happening. Translation tools for business mitigate this, keeping everyone on the same page and making collaboration easy.
- Automations and repetition. If a task is clearly defined, it’s often automatable. And automating it is a lot less boring for your humans!
- A faster time to market. With less resource wastage and higher productivity, your localized products and services will be in-market sooner. Always a good thing.
- Happier employees. Many translation and localization tasks are intricate and detail-oriented, which many people find difficult or dull. By leveraging software, your employees will be more positive about their jobs.
Integrating them into your business workflow
Of course, no one tool does it all. It’s likely you’ll need a set for the various translation tasks facing you: a tool for briefing translators, managing projects, maintaining assets, and more.
In other words, you need a platform that can integrate different tools. And not just those you start off with, but the ones you’ll bring in as your business grows. (Business translation software for European markets isn’t the same as those you’ll need for Japan and China.) There are standards for making these tools work together – it’s time well invested.
Informing your choice of tools needs a clear localization strategy, on which we’ve written before. Decide what you’re going to do, in what order. You may want to move into Eastern Europe, but choose a country or region to do first, and start small. Because the learnings from that first project will make the rest go smoother.
While to stay efficient as you grow, you’ll need to integrate more than tools: you’ll add automations to those tools, to execute repetitive and predictable tasks without human involvement. It’s vital to have a deliberate policy on this – because every process automated is an efficiency gain for your business.
(Don’t forget to do the same with your customer support process – service and aftersales needs to be offered in the locale’s language, too. While this can involve the HR of hiring local professionals, there’s also a role for translation software for business, to create and maintain training resources, help documents, CSA scripts, and FAQs.)
All the above can be slotted together with a full go to market plan. Laying out the actual steps of getting your products and services in-country for each market you’re approaching. This will give you an idea of what translation tools you need and how they’ll have to link together – ensuring your sales, marketing, operational, and localization workflows all work together as one. Next, let’s see what all these actions add.
Assessing the ROI of translation tools: a simple back-of-envelope method
Surprisingly, it has a simple equation:
ROI = (current value add of localization – cost of localization) / cost of localization
Where “value add of localization” is your increase in business value (sales, profits) minus its costs so far, all divided by that same cost. This lets you use the equation over time, and see it (hopefully!) rise as your systems and processes bed in, letting you add more markets and languages with greater efficiency.
That’s the real game changer: whatever your ROI figure is (as long as it’s positive) you want it to rise with time. This means your localization strategy is working – with each new market, you’re making more money per unit of effort. Read our blog post on Measuring the return on investment (ROI) of localization for more.
What are the different types of translation tools for businesses?
As mentioned above, this isn’t Google Translate. Different tools go into the mix for effective translations out – and it’ll be different for every business. Here are the main types of applications you might need.
Translation management systems
A Translation Management System is broadly a tool for running translation projects and keeping multiple interlocking projects on time and budget (such as different projects for French, Spanish, and Serbo-Croat.) They share features with the project management tools you probably use already – and they can be pleasantly easy to use.
Most are SaaS, with a monthly subscription per seat, although there are a few desktop competitors out there charging a one-off flat fee. We recommend using one even if your ambitions are to start small with just one new market and language, since a TMS sets you up for fewer growing pains. And if you’re larger already? The benefits only rise, since a TMS lets you join together a huge number of “moving parts” for ongoing efficiencies. (Of course, Lokalise itself is a platform for managing translation projects.)
Probably the make-or-break feature will be how easily it lets you integrate other applications. At Lokalise, we frequently see clients using multiple apps and sites to move data around their TMS, and we offer integrations with as many of them as possible.
Check out this demo of our platform to see all the features that can help you manage and streamline your translation workflow.
Computer-aided translation tools
A CAT is like an administrative assistant for translation. It doesn’t translate for you. Rather, it’s a database of standard phrases the business will need again and again (for example, the marketing tagline or a product description) and the approved translations of them. There’ll also be a “termbase”: instructions for when specific sentences and words should be used. This means the translator doesn’t have to engage in guesswork!
These tools tend to be online and subscription-based, working with other software (like text editors) and simple to use.
Lokalise
Our platform provides a wide range of CAT tools, including Translation Memory, Terminology Management, Quality Assurance Tools, In-context Editing, and Collaboration Features. As we continue to expand our feature list, subscribing to our platform gives you access to these and other valuable resources.. Read more about our CAT tools here or grab a free trial to try them today.
WordFast
This app’s been around a long time. It pushes speed as its USP, although this is less of a selling point in these days of cloud-based applications with the crunch of a datacenter behind them; thanks to its history WordFast continues to support desktop and server versions as well as its newer cloud product Anywhere, which went commercial on Jan 1st, 2023. If you’re in education, be aware WordFast offers free licenses.
Redokun
Redokun claims to preserve a document’s format while its content is being translated – a very useful feature, given how many formatting decisions can affect how your text looks! With plugins for machine translation and translation memory, it’s a useful all-rounder with many use cases.
Machine translation tools
Machine translation tools are what most people understand by “business translation software”. Mostly in the cloud, they offer direct translations of the text you type in. But the translation apps from Google and Bing have serious limitations for professional translators.
First, they’re designed for ease of use, not a client’s tone of voice or reusing approved assets like a tagline. Second, the quality of translation varies widely – so without a human translator fluent in the target language, the risks are huge!
Google Translate and Microsoft Bing
Everyone’s heard of the big two, of course. But while APIs are available, they’re not business-friendly tools; they lack integrations with enterprise tools, and are better thought of as useful apps for when you’re traveling. The quality of translation is marginally better with Google.
DeepL
The DeepL project is another web-based tool – integration with your business processes may be problematic. It claims to be the most accurate, and its quality is certainly high. One area where it scores over the search engines is the way you can drag and drop whole documents (including .docx and .xlsx) onto the web form.
Lokalise
Our platform gives you access to the 3 most popular Machine Translation models, Google Translate, DeepL and Microsoft Translator so you can compare the output of each against each other. We have also worked with Open AI to develop Lokalise AI which allows you to automatically translate with context, create translation variants and rephrase your translation.
Reverso
Reverso works as a writing tool as well as a machine translation one. It also lets you drop files into a form window – but can spell and grammar check too, plus pronounce words (and whole texts) in natural spoken language. More full-featured than the search engines, it’s genuinely useful in a business setting.
So: every translator has his/her favorite machine translation tool, but it’s worth mentioning that virtually no company relies on machine translation alone. But to get an idea of your localization challenges – for example, seeing how much space Chinese text takes up versus its German equivalent – even the free tools can be useful.
Terminology management tools
Localization is a detailed process, and TMTs allow you to put in that detail. Sectors like engineering, pharmaceuticals, and finance – all global – have strict standards (sometimes legally enforced) for how products and processes are described. A TMT lets you agree and approve a standard set and apply them to your text. They vary from phone apps to enterprise scale: a few are Glossaries2Go,
TMTs differ from CATs above in that terminology tends to be sector-specific and longer in format. Looking around the market, you’ll see a lot of companies use legacy TMTs developed inhouse, sometimes no more sophisticated than an Excel spreadsheet! Of course we’d recommend going further.
Glossaries2Go
Here’s a simple terminology manager for your phone – for small businesses it may make sense. Available for iPhone and Android, Glossaries2Go works with the method many small companies use to manage terminologies – Excel spreadsheets – and lets you import and manage them as files on your phone, ready for searching or categorizing. Simple, but limited in scope.
InterpretBank
InterpretBank takes a step up, onto your desktop or laptop. It’s AI-assisted – what isn’t these days? – and lets you prepare glossaries for specialized assignments, either as a standalone application or collaboratively with a team (there are both Personal and Enterprise variants available.) Realistically, it’s a halfway house between individual translators and large team efforts.
TermWiki
Designed for enterprise users, TermWiki is cloud-based, enabling deeper functionality like change tracking, customizable workflows, and a Google-like search experience. It’s definitely a better option for larger companies or those with complex translation needs.
Translation memory tools
These tools go to the heart of professional translations for business: they match a source sentence (text in your own language) with an existing translation in your “target” language, the tongue spoken in your target market. The software scans a source document, matches sentences and phrases in it with target translations if they exist, and insert those translations into the translator’s document, saving him/her time.
Over time, translation memory tools can grow large, as they capture more and more of a company’s texts. This can make future translations cheaper and easier.
Lokalise
Our Translation memory provides inline suggestions that are automatically fetched and displayed in the editor, allowing you to view the source language text and its corresponding translation to the target language. You can also see when the entry was added and from which translation memory it was sourced. Additionally, our feature enables bulk translation population from your translation memory for even greater efficiency. Explore our full suite of Translation Memory features to unlock the full potential of our platform.
Gridly
Gridly does a lot more than TM – it’s a full-featured content management platform – but its translation memory functionality is strong, so we’re including it here. As with all TMs, it lets you store and reuse defined snippets. But Gridly also lets you share those matched sets across different projects and people, making it a better fit for the enterprise.
OmegaT
Unlike the two above, OmegaT solely a translation memory software. Making use of AI means it can handle “fuzzy matching” (where an input term doesn’t quite match its intended translation) and it can import a range of file formats – useful if your translation pairs are in a spreadsheet. OmegaT’s biggest difference, though, is that it’s Open Source: freely downloadable, shareable, and modifiable.
From our files: businesses using translation software to grow
Lokalise has a raft of success stories from our customers – but you’ll find three standouts here: Arduino, Indeavor, and Deliveree. They’re all technology companies with a regional or global footprint, dealing with many languages.
Arduino’s mission is to bring its open-source maker platform to the world – which means operating in 46 languages. And it uses a variety of business translation tools to do it. They settled on Lokalise to bring their resources together.
“We looked at other localization management software, but no other option across the market offered such an easy solution as Lokalise, especially from the developers’ perspective.” – Gaia Castronovo, Education Localization Specialist at Arduino
Meanwhile, Indeavor adopted Lokalise to solve a manual labor problem: it was emailing Word docs around between translators, and having to create fresh “keys” – tags that link translations together – every time. Automating this has reduced their workload considerably.
“With Lokalise, Indeavor’s development team spends 80–90% less time on adding new translation keys.” – Sylvia Taube, Senior Product Manager, Indeavor
Finally, freight logistics app developer Deliveree realized it needed business software translation tools to keep its coders happy! Their app is updated frequently, and their developers were constantly waiting for translations to arrive, delaying in-country rollouts. Again, they went for Lokalise.
“Before we had Lokalise, our developer team would lose a lot of time waiting for translations. Now, the developers can work on their tasks without interruptions while translations are automatically updated.” – Eric Vu, Backend Developer at Deliveree
As you’ve seen, there are many types of translation software for business on the market – and many companies delivering them. The choice is yours. But we strongly recommend adopting a platform that can integrate the ones you want – and offer many of their capabilities itself.
Integrate your translation infrastructure, with Lokalise
Lokalise lets you integrate applications, workflows, dictionaries and databases. It also brings together the people who need them – marketers, developers, country managers, and the translators themselves. So we’d claim we’re a level above these different translation tools: by letting them work as one solution, we let you manage them all. Leading to better business outcomes when you move beyond your home market.
FAQs
How do I choose the right translation software?
The right choices aren’t the same for every company – so it’s best to go as broad as possible, with a translation platform able to integrate and connect to many different data sources and applications, and give people a straightforward and intuitive way to collaborate on translation projects. Like Lokalise.
Are there any free translation tools for professional use?
Yes! You can try our platform for free for 14 days, giving you access to all Lokalise features which are normally available on the Enterprise plan only. Once your 14-days free trial is over, you’ll be automatically downgraded to the Free plan which includes up to 500 hosted keys (strings), 2 seats (which basically means you can add up to two users to your team), and 2 projects.
