Why a holistic approach is key when choosing translation tools

Ready to sell your product or service overseas? In two or five or 20 locales? To make your localization program a success, the technology you select to support the translation of your product will likely carry as much — if not more — weight than the translation services themselves.

How to choose translation tools

Why? Because the industry has evolved so rapidly, deciding which tools to use can be a daunting task. The wrong choice could have some major cost and quality implications.

In 2000, there were only a handful of mainstream computer-aided translation (CAT) tools. Today, there are over 700 language technology solutions, according to the Nimdzi Language Technology Atlas 2020. CAT tools, translation management systems (TMS), connectors, plug-ins, API scripts, machine translation (MT) — amazing things can be done with them, and the resulting solutions are quite useful and stable.

There is a sticking point, though. Development of any such translation tools must follow defined specifications on a roadmap, and once a company commits to a roadmap with dollars on the table, it can’t turn back.

You don’t want your priorities to become subordinated to an out-of-date tech agenda. Because there’s one blindingly obvious truth in technology: tectonic shifts are happening all around us. Before you know it, the aforementioned roadmap is slightly, or in material ways, out of step. What happens when it doesn’t fit anymore?

Evaluating the tech landscape

To be transparent, Acclaro has its own technology, including the industry-leading translation business management platform My Acclaro. We produce quality translations for some of the largest localization programs in the world using My Acclaro in concert with third-party tools. The essential features of My Acclaro are free of charge.

This holistic tech approach gives us a sweeping perspective of the translation technology landscape and, in turn, gives you the freedom to choose.

Conflict free, Acclaro listens to your use case, considers your requirements and budget, and then recommends the right technology. How much does it cost? How much value does it add? How many pain points does it remove? Is it worth it?

Before we translate a word, Acclaro assesses your readiness. We learn your company’s mission, your localization team and experience level, your sprint cycles and your product. Then we help you investigate the details of the translation solutions that would work best.

In this discovery process, we stay above the riptides — the gaps in new products or solutions purporting to do it all. Costwise, you’re not locked into a subscription where a key add-on would require tens of thousands of dollars, either.

Your options with us are the marketplace

Now, we don’t connect to absolutely everything or possess magic powers of omniscience. But we’re vocal and proactive about the things that matter most: testing and validating solutions to back up our claim.

Don’t just take our word for it! Give us your most complicated pieces of content, with nested fields, matrices, images and whatever else to test. We’ll show you how it comes together in a plan tailored for you. With expertise at every position in the supply chain, we will help you vet the solution to your satisfaction.

Then — and only then — we start to translate.

If you want to work with a translation agency that makes technology work for you, contact us today.