Smartling customers are invited to install Smartling Draft today as a Google Docs extension. Let us know at draft[at]smartling.com what you love about it, what features you’re hoping to see, and any other feedback you have!
When I was in high school, we had a motto in Latin: Finis origine pendet. The end depends upon the beginning.
While at that time, this applied to precocious young children like my 16-year-old self, this motto continues to play out in every aspect of life.
A solid blog outline. An enthusiastic kick-off meeting. A hearty breakfast with the perfect cappuccino. A strong start makes it much easier to have a strong finish.
Which brings us to translation.
When is the best stage of the translation process to improve translation quality? Is it when content is in the TMS? Is it when your translator is in the CAT Tool, consulting the glossary and style guide?
Yes, these matter, but the most important way you can improve quality is to make sure the content is good before you even start translating.
At Smartling, we noticed that some of the best translations happen when their source content has a consistent tone and brand voice. It makes it easier for translators to infer connotations and meaning. Especially for brands with very particular brand voices (take Slack’s witty copywriting, for example), it's important that the brand voice doesn't get lost in translation.
The topic of improving translation quality is ever present at Smartling. Our customers have asked us time and time again for support in this area. We got to work building technology solutions that would help content creators improve source content, with the goal of improving translation outcomes.
This is Smartling Draft, a tool that unifies the entire global content creation experience. It’s available today as part of our beta release.
Draft is meant to help content writers and translators alike. By using Draft, content creators can more easily stay on brand and increase their writing speed. Translators can work off of highly consistent source content to create high-quality translations that retain the original meaning. Completed translations can then inform the tone and language used in new source content, bringing the process full circle.
To go more in-depth, Draft is an automated writing collaboration tool. As a Natural Language Generation tool, it draws on available data in translation memories to suggest phrases to incorporate into new content. It also leverages style guides and glossaries stored in Smartling for brand and tone consistency between source content and translations.
Ultimately, the tool narrows the gap between what’s expressed in the original source content and how this comes out in other languages, creating a consistent content experience in any language.
This is the first tool of its kind that integrates with a translation management system (TMS) and directly ties into the translation process.
If you’re digging it as much as we are, we invite you to install Smartling Draft today as a Google Docs extension. Let us know at draft[at]smartling.com what you love about it, what features you’re hoping to see, and any other feedback you have!
In addition, tune in to our Smartling Draft webinars on July 24th (for EMEA and North America) to hear directly from Andrew Saxe, VP of Product, and Jeremy Shankle, Principal Engineer, who built the tool from the ground up. They’ll demo Draft, provide an update on the latest features, and look ahead at the roadmap towards the full release.
Bring all your questions, as we'll leave plenty of time for Q&A. Hope you can join us!
About Jennifer
Jennifer Chew is the Product Marketing Manager at Smartling, responsible for overseeing go-to-market for Smartling's new products and features, and creates content to educate customers and buyers on benefits and best practices of using Smartling Translation Cloud. Jennifer has been a part of the Smartling team for over two years, previously contributing as the Marketing Manager, and collectively has over five years of B2B and B2C marketing experience.
