Smartcat vs. Trados Studio

ABBY SmartCAT is truly a universal solution that can fit any type of organization from freelancers flying solo, to small team of translators and large translation agencies. Anyone who wants to establish themselves as a professional translator can benefit greatly from the CAT tool that SmartCAT offers absolutely free of charge, while teams will surely appreciate the collaborative features that make it possible to work simultaneously with other translators, proofreaders, editors and QA experts on a single project.

SDL Trados Studio is extremely well suited for expert CAT tool users. More novice users will have trouble getting up to speed. I have an office full of employees that constantly ask questions on how to do specific tasks, mainly because the task sequence is not obvious and is only uncovered by rote repetition of the same things. If you learn and apply the same techniques repeatedly, it becomes easier, but it seems the software was designed by software people, sometimes with little thought to the end users who have to figure it out. I don't know that professional training should be so necessary.

Incentivized

• Segmentation.
• Translation overall quality.
• Customer service.
• Pricing.

Incentivized

• Xbench plugin works great. You can run Xbench on the whole project with one click.
• TM and TB management
• It is one of the most common CAT tool thus it is easy for translator assignments.

Incentivized

• Performance has been an issue initially. Sometimes it takes longer for some things to load and it can be frustrating.
• UI seems a bit confusing at times. For example, I don't understand why I need to have a translator's profile when I'm clearly a project manager.
• Their support team can take a long time to reply which often crucial for urgent projects.

• Preview feature
• Accessing server-based TM often takes time.
• When connecting to server-based TM, I need to enter credentials twice every time. The first attempt always fails.

Incentivized

Again, the list of functions is impressive but the way it is organized (not process-driven) and the fact that complex tasks should be close to basic tasks make the product suitable to hardcore users that have a lot of time to research the manuals and blogs. By the way, Nora Diaz is one of the most respectable users of this product. Her videos help a lot!

Incentivized

We rarely had any issues with SDL safe for a few bugs that we fixed promptly in the upcoming service packs and updates.

Incentivized

I regularly use the two other products and appreciate Smartcat including more features than MateCat, such as storing of projects and contact with agencies and clients.

Incentivized

memoQ is better quality and cheaper. Previously, Trados had a monopoly on the market but fortunately there are other adequate options available now at a lower cost.

• Translation memories and CAT tool help us ensure maximum consistency in our translations which is always appreciated by clients.
• Team collaboration made it easier for us to grow our business and take on bigger projects, which brings us more revenue.
• Payment solution helps us save money on wire transfer fees which is always great when working with multiple freelancers.

• Trados is used by many clients, so it helps me to get more jobs.
• Having one of the latest versions helps me a lot. I can, for example, import editable pdf documents and work on them within the Trados environment.
• It also helps me with files which need to be returned in bilingual format in Word.

Incentivized