Welcome

The needs for translation and localization have never been so strong. As a fast-increasing number of enterprises and companies are seeking for expanding their sales scope oversea, translation and localization begin to play vital roles. However, translation has no longer been a simple process——one people gives you the source file and then you give him back the translated file. This is not in a translation class, in which all you need to do is translating the document that your instructor gave you and then turned in. Instead, translator is a part of the vendor team, and plays a role in a complicated workflow. Clients, sales person, project manager, language provider and many other roles work together in a project, thus translation management systems are necessary to automate the workflow and reduce the manual processes which may be tedious or time consuming.

XTRF is a TMS that manages the flow of globalization and localization processes. The fundamental tasks throughout the translation are automated. It also has different portals for people in different positions, and they are simultaneously connected so that people, such as PM and vendors do not have to meet together to get things done. For me, XTRF is a convenient tool to have a clear overview of the whole workflow, and I will talk about my experience of using it from several aspects.

Interface:

The interface is very user friendly, as shown on the picture.

It is user friendly because roles and task are clearly categorized, so that it does not take much effort for the project managers to tell where to click. 

Man Management:

The project manager can view, add, and edit the clients’ information, assign the contact persons by clicking the button “clients”. Clients can be added here or clicking the “Add” tab on the top of the interface.

The data of the vendors are pretty detail. Other than the personal information, such as contact info and language combinations, CAT tools, software and hardware using are also shown, which is very convenient for the project managers, helping them to decide which vendor can be contacted to complete a certain type of project.

In addition to those above, XTRF also has a wonderful email management. Emails can be sent automatically, thus the project managers do not need to manually send notifications to all of the people involved. This feature will be even more important if a Project manager is in charge of a complicated project, for example, to translate the source file into 30 languages, and more than one vendors may be needed.

In short, XTRF knows the workflow well, so it manages to send notification whenever an important further action is needed; for example, asking for approval of quotations, notifying the translators to start, telling the proofreaders to start reviewing, and so forth.

(The list of vendors)

Workflow:

XTRF is a highly automated system which frees the PMs from doing much tedious works. For example, after the creation of a project, a quote can be automatically compiled and sent, with almost all the information that the clients may use to approve a quote. In addition to it, PMs can supervise and see the progress of the current project, without having to worry about losing control.

Another fantastic feature is that XTRF allows the project managers to customize the workflow base on their own preference; and it can also be adjusted during the project, hence users do not have to start from the beginning.

Compatibility:

XTRF supports a large number of file formats. Commonly use file formats, such as TMX and XLIFF are supported. However, XTRF is not a CAT tool, so it is not a platform for translation.

Conclusion: 

As a conclusion, XTRF is one of the most fascinating Translation Management Systems. If you are a project manager, XTRF can not only enhance your working efficiency with its highly automated system, but also provide the users high quality management of the localization process. If you are a vendor or a client, this TMS can also prevent you from wasting much time on looking for contact persons, unnecessary communication, and thus boosts your time efficiency.

Some common worries about crowdsourcing may deter people’s interests. A typical one is that how do companies maintain their quality-control (QA) for crowdsourcing translation.

1. The first practice is to hire LSPs to complete the final reviews of translations, like what Facebook did for their website localization into hundreds of languages. It is a fairly direct way to keep high-quality translation, and do not take much effort for the companies of reviewing, as they hand over the tasks to language providers. Another merit is, professional language providers can help the companies to catch up the deadlines.
2. An alternative way to maintain QA is to employ a voting system; It is expected that translation with the highest votes will be more likely the better translation. Many translation management systems allow the project managers to choose voting as the way to accept translation. Typically, project managers can decide for how many votes that a translation will be automatically accepted by the system.
3. For companies which want to localize their products to hundreds of languages, a difficult challenge will be that it is sometimes hard to find enough translators, not to speak of professional reviewers. In such cases, project managers can apply the round robin test——letting each of the competitors to grade all other people, in order to decide the potential best translator.