What is the best TMS in localization? I’ve tried 13 different platforms and I’ll try to rank them according to my first experience – which one stood out with its translation editor?
In this video, you’ll see my thought process behind the ranking of our favorite TMS tools. Everything is subjective, based on my own personal taste.
Andrej Zito
In this video, we’re going to put together to Tiermaker for the best online editor.
Andrej Zito
What’s up everyone? This is Andrej. After two weeks, I am back with the third episode in our mini series with Tiermaker. In this one, I’m going to try to rank the 13 different TMS platforms according to my first experience with online editors, which mostly included either looking at the machine translation, or copy pasting the translations that they had previously. So I still had some interactions with the online editor, but definitely, we have to make a big disclaimer, I have never worked as a professional translator. So this is a very limited narrow perspective of someone who again, mostly focuses on first experience on the UI, how it looks like and how it feels, how I feel the editors as an app is designed. If there are any translators looking at this video, and if you want to share what is important for you, when you’re using online editors, and what would be maybe your best preferred choices, feel free to comment below. And we’re going to get shortly into the thought process which by the way I livestreamed. I recently started testing livestreaming on LinkedIn under my personal profile, and also on YouTube. So you might see me go live, even during the future. And in two weeks, hopefully I’ll put it together. We’ll have the final ranking of all the different TMS platforms, consolidating all the different perspectives that I did before. So, the homepage, project management UI and online editor. And then we’re going to have our ultimate ranking your peers for different platforms that I tried. So that’s what’s coming up. Without further ado, now let’s go finally into the Tiermaker process for the online TMS editors.
Andrej Zito
We’re going to use the same process that I did last time. I’m just going to rely on my videos so starting with POEditor and I remember with POEditor is I don’t think I did a lot of translation. Hey guys how are you doing? Welcome to another episode. Hey guys. Yeah, I was thinking about this before I started recording especially about POEditor because POEditor doesn’t have… Yeah, how does it look like? POEditor doesn’t have fully-fledged editor I would say. Yeah, you just entered these things. I don’t think it can compare with the other editors. There’s not even an editor. What am I going to do here? A great start. You’ll see beschreibung platform here. Yes beautiful beautiful. Lower the volume here. If I export right? Import is for getting a new files. This is how we cut it. I mean so techinically you change the translations here. There is a translation memory. Do the software strings have any tags? They should have right? But it didn’t copy anything because it’s just the strings. The bare raw strings. I wanted is that this is like commenting, I don’t know what is A and F you’d think okay. I have no idea. Okay, where am I going to put POEditor? You could technically disqualify it from everything. Yeah, it’s weird to say it’s the if it’s technically. Okay, maybe I’ll just put POEditor at the end. Let’s start with that.
Andrej Zito
Next one let’s go look at translate5. Hey guys my name is Andrej Zito. Well if I remember correctly all the other TMS had some sort of an editor. So yeah, let’s leave POEditor and… Okay, this will not be anything spectacular. I assume? No, nothing it’s got nothing. I don’t want to use so it treats it separately. Okay, that’s fine. No, trip dude BAM trip trip pain, okay. So they have the the preview as you do the translations, but otherwise the translated bout as this goes on. I don’t know. That’s at the back of my mind. When I first opened the editor target language kept hoping it’s somewhere here. Next here. Oh, it actually matched the strings. Yo, this is cool, actually. Super cool. I don’t expect to have any empty your target text. Let’s say they just copy paste the translations. Connects to serve. That’s good. That’s actually a good test for no one directly jumped raw. Okay. First metric highlights. Thanks. Wow that’s pretty awesome. Oh, what? Okay. I think this was the first time I saw something like this. Brian, that you guys gave us? Just like a quick test. Okay, that’s fine. Yep, nothing is what did it actually translate? The files or no? Now I have translated already. So let me let me go to it. Okay, this is where I fast forward and now I have worked. Anyway, I have you gotta remember that copy paste experience. And okay, maybe I’ll put it as C, for starters. The UX here looks very ancient. But based on my comments, I guess it wasn’t that bad.
Andrej Zito
Okay, let’s go next one Phrase. Phrase. How are you? This is Andrej, welcome. Tell you something, then maybe there should be uploading the source files just PM UI. Strongly so yeah, it’s gonna be similar to POEditor I think. Oops. No. Let’s see. All right. Oh, no, it looks different. It looks different. It actually looks different. English. I guess the keys are a little bit compared this one phrase with POEditor. I think they’re both mainly focused on software localization. But the editor here looks much more robust than POEditor. Next up, oh, key name A to Z. Right now. Even here, the UI is still consistent with everything. That is great. No description, no screenshots. There. It’s part of this job. Okay. Now my question is, is there any way how I can get empty? Gets me empty. Okay. Listen, that’s good. Very fast review. So that’s done. Mark as transition complete. That’s it. So, okay. Now, when we think about comparing the TMS against each other, is this better than translate5? I think it is. Definitely looks better. Doesn’t have the income tax preview or however we call it. Maybe it is somewhere. I just didn’t activate it. I don’t know. But I think it looks better than translate5. So it’s better. Oh, I still don’t like it that much. I know there are better editors as we go forward. So I’ll just put it here for now.
Andrej Zito
Okay, next one Wordbee. Wordbee. Hi guys. Welcome to a new episode of the TMS UX series. Where are we translating? PM UI. Okay here here. Oh. Oh, is this the online editor? Oh, yeah. Oh, actually, the editor looks better. The editor looks more modern than this whole thing. That’s true. Germany I think this is where I was complaining that this logo here looks like it was just slapped on some other third party software like it’s not even their own editor. I don’t know why it’s it’s a white background. Why they didn’t put some transparent thing how do I do it? I mean like the you the editor looks slightly modern. Want sudo Oh, I just copied the English. Okay. You see copy paste. I don’t know. I think I might just copy paste it. Looks like I currently sit you see? Okay, everything’s done. Let’s do the batch thing. Change status to Okay, so here we are. Your are we. So Phrasee is definitely better than Wordbee. Is translate5 better than Wordbee? I think it’s not. I think Wordbee is better than translate5. Whoops at the whiteboard I mean to D? I don’t know.
Andrej Zito
I know that soon we’re going to hit the bottom so stay tuned and let’s go to Transifex. Transifex was the one where I firstly I think I said that I really enjoyed the copy pasting. Okay, so the UI here is slightly different. It looks like Phrase. Phrase had less space for the left side of strings because of his origin empty space. How do I get him they something grayish I was complaining about that for what? I think Text United maybe? Their editor? That the important things were greyed out here to have it white so that’s good. Now I need to just figure out machine translation work right away copy paste from actually cooked. Oh yeah, remember this? This was a cool thing. Okay, that’s the board actions that you want to do. Oh my God even this this action is so good. Oh mark as reviewed. Okay, it’s done. Oh my God works so fine. This is the best copypasta ever. Wait, okay, so we have a bunch of filters I assume. Source translation. Here is where you enter it. I think this is slightly different right from the others where you are entering let’s say here you didn’t have a special feel for that. Is that better or no? No character limit Nice. Yeah, I think okay. Like I know exactly so Transifex better than Phrase to me. Put it into A for now. I think that was the last time that I use this thing so yeah even this thing that the statistics here look nice. Yeah, this looks very clean. I think.
Andrej Zito
Okay, next one memoQ. So this one will be easy, welcome to the… This one will be easy because, because of this. Oh, it’s loading the document HUngarian Yeah, oh, Okay it’s very, very, very, very old looks. But where the hell is the machine translates to how do I send it to the next day or reaching muster any more anything more from the ad or No. Are Not sure. No, there wasn’t. So yeah, the editor was total crapshoot, I would say. Now how does it compare to Wordbee? Is Wordbee better than memoQ? How many people are praising this thing? I would say that Wordbee is better than memoQ. Is translate5 by better than memoQ? Translate5. is Hi guys, my name is Andrej Zito Welcome to your… memoQ go to the bottom.
Andrej Zito
All right, next one. Memsource, Memsource. Hi, my name is Andrej Zito Welcome to my scene. Okay, so this editor looks nice, but I think the others are simply better. Again, once again with no answers, I do have experience of using it. So it’s technically not capturing my first experience with this thing. But that’s it. I like it. This is the typical thing where you have source translation, you enter translations into the translation column. And then you have something on the right side for I don’t know if we’ll go sorry, for tm and even empty for in this case, where it would it would have put it I think I would put it probably next to Phrase. Transifex is better. Phrase. How did Phrase look like? Phrase the has the different. Hey, guys, how are you? This is Andrej, what was the different layout? Yeah, this one? Question is do they use the space efficient? And like you have so much space here? What? What goes here here into this space? Or is it probably where you would have description about the keys? Properly? No, there’s description here. I don’t know what would normally go here. But I’m pretty sure it’s just empty space. My question is how, how do I rank this sort of layout versus the traditional one? Think it’s a matter of preference. Thanks for now, okay. So Memsource is definitely better than Wordbee is it? It is yes. To where to be does the same style as Memsource. Same layout. So if there is definitely better. Transifex is better layout of same layout as Phrase. But better than Phrase. So okay, I think I’m good with this for now.
Andrej Zito
XTM Cloud. I do not remember much how it looks like. Here, but I know I was frustrated because I couldn’t get the empty word. So yeah. So it’s again the same style. Source translation, it looks like spreadsheet where you have something at the bottom. What is this? Tm? And this is term base wrongly. This is what it looks mobileme Hello. Where are we? So we’re gonna figure it out. It’s just a copy pasting. Sorry. Swipe is so nice, but not. mishaps. Awful. What do they say? Oh, my God. This looks so nice. But not I just am for this I have to copy pasted. We’ve done Yes, we’re done. Okay, so this is how it looks like I do not like it that much. Everything is great. They’re great because they already translated No, it’s not. It’s all in scratch even before. That’s what I like about Transifex is that fields where you need to input something Oh, next few changes to white one you are there, my bath and they have the contextual menu. Okay, is it better than Wordbee? Yes. Is it better than Memsource? I would say no. I still think I refer Memsource to this one doesn’t mean I need to separate these two or No. What else do we have here? These two I think actually might put Transifex to the top. And do it like this. Will XTM be on its own? Maybe. Let’s see.
Andrej Zito
Text United. Text United dictionary was good. What’s up everyone? Hello. Hello. Hello, everyone. led scholars. Closer to Okay, here we have the editor. Okay, so this is the style of Memsource. Again, I think it’s worse than Memsource. shortcuts. I want to see the shortcuts. Okay, so instead of editor they’re using the that machine translated before problem. The Green Blue. What is it called? Teal color shortcuts and receive cygwin detected the status like the fact Well, I usually don’t command on the editor. I don’t, I don’t like the fact that everything here has the same background color. The only thing in status would actually put the actual text with the white background to it stands out more. And the rest would be grayish. I like the progress bar. Okay, that’s super cool. Should be I should have listened to myself more. What I said when I copy source target nice. Machine translate nice. Holy shit. This is a script. I know exactly what I’m going to do. Good. It has the same feeling as XTM Cloud. I think that’s where I’m going to put a ton of this think things happening. This is the machine translation. But the question is okay, is that it? I think that might be it. Yeah, I know. I know. I know. I know what I need to do. So I would put it on the tier with XTM Cloud.
Andrej Zito
Next Lokalise. Actually, it’s not going to Well, I mean, not going that badly today. Lokalise one of the first ones is Andrej Zito Welcome remember how it looks like it has so many colors for the tax? It’s Yeah, this is a different layout now dungeon in books. This page is the project guide where you can manage transition keys and an actual issue right in that tutorial. Review. Oh, okay, so they have a completely different layout. I’m not sure if there are more different layouts based on your project are based on what you can translate or which language you can provide translations for but here I have all the languages in my system. See the trust is review is it because there was a project manager what they don’t know why that that’s why can’t worse. Okay, here we are stoking. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Here I have the English Czech Republic. Oh, so yeah, it was probably a different layout. Which I think might come in handy when you see the different translations. Okay, so what about the editor? This one is even way different than the years because the others have source target and something. This one just a source target and where do you have the other things probably here somewhere. Wait, but this view is different. I just set up a document. Okay. So this is key 1234 and the tags there and we are translating into Czech Republic. Let’s switch to Germany. It should be Germany. I think I would prefer to do it like this instead of doing it in the multilingual view, but how was it received before? What projects has any effect? Click the document? No. I have it my blind No, I don’t know maybe just doesn’t word with the document. I don’t know. Whatever. Let’s start with the good Germany. The Germany the Germany. Eu reaction. Oh, okay, hold zero to insert source. It’s an interesting integration is the one game. Oh, it worked. It worked. Press on zero and then confirm Can I confirm the country? tap Next it’s probably length. Tap next up we work. Darkest Dungeon Who? I don’t have any false it should be false here. Why? Why are they not there? So here I think I’m not sure I didn’t pay attention to the acts before but I like the fact that it has these cars different cars for the tax I think the integration with the MTS so what what it looks like they make it very convenient. I’m not sure if like a full professional translator would be liking this. But for someone like me, it was pretty different issues. It has Yeah, like QA, those kind of things. We’re not going to analyze in this video on dictionary. Got it? In overview, I think it’s it’s just a different layout and approach to things. I think it looks better than XTM Cloud. I put it here. I think it’ll do. Okay.
Andrej Zito
SDL Language Cloud. I wouldn’t put it to S. Lokalise I think no. What do we have here next? SDL Language Cloud. How are you doing? This is Andrej. I’m back the SDL Language.. SDL Language Cloud will have the expected stratus layout or SDL language. I already resume it here. anymore. You cannot do a what? See? Don’t push them looking at the online editor. That was a file. Loading. Oh, it didn’t merge the two files. Document in read only mode while document is open in read only mode. You cannot do any changes. How do I start editing? My question? Oh, we have already NNT nice in place. And no, it’s just about I’ll do switch to the documents. Okay, it opens in two tabs. Yeah, I think it’s the center language. Quickly resume comes to do. Back to my project. How do you confirm this Ctrl Enter work? It does. Oh, it’s confirmed. I like the user interface. So I didn’t comment I usually don’t comment much on the online editors. I already said that lag of the ribbon. Highlighting here is green true. Again, like I said before, I think maybe the header could be different. Not so bold because it’s the saturated green. And I think the header could be all the bits to tone it down. I think is good. Hell then you’re fine. You’re contented, contented, contented, contented. Okay, this one I don’t think I’m going to get any more information from this one. So where would I put this? Put it next to A? SDL Language Cloud. I like the ribbons. Because it looks like a desktop app. But do you actually need it? I don’t know. Another translator. Where would I put SDL Language Cloud? I think maybe I would put them here. Maybe at the front should it be the same category as this one? We’ll call it I didn’t like Lokalise. It might actually, do I need another category again? Memsource I’m sure it’s not so special. No. Do I need another category again? Wait SDL Language Cloud? Is it better than XTM Cloud? I think I liked it more. Okay, let’s see. I might do another category again and then we’ll just shift it a little bit.
Andrej Zito
Next one is Crowdin. I think that one I remembered that the editor was the best out of whole crowd in Hey guys. What’s up Welcome to this is okay. I don’t know this is this this is this or editor here’s that a German string trimmer files here German about all those that oh, we have private preview nice ads review scores are listed on the left sidebar. Colors didn’t know their status and icons next to them then no comments or issues great strengths. Many services. See here. Like the editor, it looks like like this. This looks so great. This. Okay, I don’t want to read everything. Yeah, this looks good. At the first glance, this looks like it’s consistent. First of all consistent with the homepage. And TMM the suggestions nice and it just looks better. It doesn’t look so blunt. That’s where that was the highlight of this good watching. Everything is translated. Okay. Yeah, I think Crowdin probably S. Is it better than Phrase.? Yes. And then our Memsource? Yes. Okay. I’ll put the Crowdin to the S category.
Andrej Zito
Okay, Smartcat. Now let’s see about that one. Is it going to be on the top again or no? Doesn’t look like when you try out smartcat you can’t wait for translation. This is probably not wanting to editor whatever. First time. Ladies and gentlemen, this is what do we do? Yeah, it looks I think the closest one is Memsource. Okay, we have a tutorial. So it looks nice. No doubt about fields. There’s nothing here. All new. incontext preview. Quick. Okay. Oh, yeah. Oh, it’s exactly the same layout. Almost. Not bad. Not bad. Even with a preview at the bottom. Nice. Oh, I like this. Yeah. This was cool. The editor, by the way, on the right there, by the way. Thanks. The UI looks good. I like the fact that everything is has a progress bar here to where you put the translation. Then we have some bunch of things here. That’s all good. Statuses confirm all segments. Nice, too. But let’s do do with like Target. Okay. Hey, let’s make it a decision. Let’s make a decision. Do I need the representative of this sort of layout? In S category? Crowdin and Transifex they have different approach to the editor slightly with the different layout. In Crowdin Do you wait- in Crowdin do you actually translate string by string without seeing it on a string? Welcome to another episode of the existing I mean, you see them in the preview right viously. priority. Oh, yeah. Yeah, click. That’s interesting. I like the fact that it’s combined with the preview. So back to Smartcat. Where would I put it? Maybe I should group them that Phrase and Lokalise. Lokalise has a layout on their own. Memsource, SDL Language Cloud are similar. Smartcat has the same. Is it better than Memsource? I think I do like it more than Memsource. Let me see one more time. One more. What does it look like when you try a text? Can I just go? How did Transifex look like? Where is this Transifex? In this big big? Yeah, they have a different approach. Okay, they have a list of strings on the left side. transition here. Yeah, Transifex is better.Do I still put it here? Yeah, I might put it here for now and then we’ll do something about the category. Oh, no.
Andrej Zito
Okay, finally, back to POEditor. I do not know where to put it. I do not know where to put it. Hey, guys, how are you doing? Welcome. Ah, doing okay, so everything is here. So English is 100% because it’s the same problem is that I haven’t done much because I got everything in one sheet. Yeah. And already saved right. That’s how it works. Yes, some strike German. Anyone? Is that the reference language? Switcher completes the target. Machine translations. Yes. Good. We can do this using the classic John Whitmore language. Translation. Toggle. I don’t know what it means. You’ll see beschreibung plug for me. Yes. Pure toggle fuzzy translation. Where did to know Marshall session. Okay, so this is our German. What is this thing? Automatic translation. Okay, comment. Translation. Toggle toggle. I don’t know what it means. You’ll see beschreibung plot for men. Yes. Beautiful. Beautiful. Where did two Oh gosh. Okay, I think this is the only editor that has max width. Just like oh POEditor it’s very minimalistic compared to the others. Is that a good thing? Or no? I have no idea. I have no idea where to put POEditor. Why you do this to me. Okay. So it’s definitely not Wordbee. XTM Cloud. It looks better if we’re just talking about the locks. I think I might put it here. It’s not on top.
Andrej Zito
Okay, so that means I need another category. Unless I want to merge C and D. Do I want to merge C and D? I think we might want to see Wordbee again. Is Wordbee way better and better. I think it is. Yeah, it still looks really shitty. And all these things but it looks better than memoQ. translate5? I’m not sure. Yeah, I think we’re going to add another column again. I mean, another tier. How do I do it last time? Okay, at a row price. below. Okay, close. I think I called it E right? What color did we give it last time? Did we put blue? There’s no way I could do that. Put the other green? Probably. Wait. Let me see. Where is my stuff? TMS UX. What did we do? After two weeks? We are back guys. This is two weeks. I’ll be having this. Okay, yes, I did that. Okay, so now look you put down Wordbee, translate5. Wordbee is better. I think yes that’s how you look at it okay XTM Cloud, Text United. now what do we do with this 123456. Transiifex, Crowdin I think I would keep them on top. There’s a possibility to include Smartcat there because Smartcat this different thing but what do I do with these six? What was Transifex Crowdin? POEditor, I’ll put POeditor down. Okay we have Phrase versus Lokalise. Think I like wait, Phrase doesn’t look that great. Where are we? Phrase, Phrase is just.. Was Phrase? Phrase versus Lokalise. Depends how we look at it right? Because Phrase has more things here but POEditor looks better because it’s clean and minimalistic. How do I consider this? Think. POEditor. You’re driving me crazy. Put it back No, no, I can I put it back. Do I like Lokalise more or Phrase? Think I like Phrase more. Smartcat definitely stays here. I like that. Memsource vs SDL Language Cloud.
Andrej Zito
Smartcat, I sort of remember Smartcat. Memsource again. Hi my name is Andrej Zito. I’m using it, but yeah it’s so teeny tiny. So which actually like in case of the editor, but yes. I think Smartcat looks better. I put it here. Now, what about SDL Language Cloud? That one looks big. Hey, guys, how are you doing? And it looks like doing it yet? Only mode looks like the best. I think there are just a couple of things on the right side to show you some status. I do not know where you get the transition memory things. If it’s something that you open, and then it pops up and you can see the information right now. I don’t know. I don’t know. If I assume that. I don’t know you pull it somewhere is going to mess up the UI. I have no idea. I like the others because there’s some extra information that they show you in the outer panels. I think I’m going to put it down. Yeah, I definitely like Smartcat more, something like this. That’s the last thing and then we’re done. We’re done. We’re done. We’re done. POEditor? Where do I put POEditor?
Andrej Zito
I really think I’ll just leave it here. I don’t know what else to do. I think that’s it. Wait, let me think about it one more time. POEditor can enter the strings then you do basic things. You can do much more things with this one. I’m actually Lokalise this one. I’m pretty sure you can do stuff, but I didn’t see it in before view, POEditor. Not sure if Lokalise… SDL looks dark. SDL also doesn’t look that good. This is better. This was better. This definitely look better. SDL Language Cloud looks better. Yes. POEditor. POEditor looks good, because the whole POEditor looks good. And it’s just consistent. But I don’t know. I’m just going to leave it here as sort of a middle ground. Okay. This is it. This is the final Tiermaker for the online editors, which I had the pleasure sometimes not so much pleasure to try out.
Andrej Zito
So starting from the top, S tier Transifex. I really like that copy pasting the best one. And it has a very similar style layout to Crowdin. I think I like those layouts. I don’t know if it’s called modern thing. But then the other things they used they do the typical source target columns, which looks like spreadsheet or typical trotters that we are used to from the past. So I do like these things. They also show some extra statistics, I think Transifex show statistics. Same way, this mark of uses shows progress bar and Text United shows progress bar I think. Crowdin, Crowdin, looks good. I can imagine I can totally see Crowdin use for crowdsource translations, where you have multiple suggestions from different people and use one and they have the preview there and you jump from string to string. Yeah, I like Crowdin. Phrase, I would say slightly worse than Transifex. Smartcat is the best one that does the typical source, or get to be columns, and then some extra thing. We have Memsource, Lokalise. I mean, I like those editors think I’m used to more Memsource, because I have the experience with it. Lokalise, it was new to me. Like I mentioned before it looks the UI is not clunky. It’s for sure. I think that more of the features show up once you get into a string. I don’t know how you integrate with TM, probably there is a way. SDL Language Cloud looks like this app. POEditor, that, that was the one that I had absolutely no idea where to put because of how minimalistic the editor is. So I’ll leave it here because it looks better than these guys. And I don’t think it does a lot more than these guys are just kind of let it float here. No, we have XTM Cloud, Text United. This is where I’m mostly focused on the design part. The XTM cloud is pretty dark. I mean grayish. Same thing for same thing, I think for Text United. Actually, I don’t know thinking about it maybe. Lokalise. I don’t know I’m not such a huge fan of that. Those different to all those different buttons, they have different colors. And when you have those tags with different colors, it looks very wonky. Maybe I would put Lokalise down here like this. Do I like Memsource more than Lokalise? I do. SDL Language Cloud. Probably because there’s the standard. Lokalise tries to do things different right. Lokalise has the only unique layout in the whole set of TMS that we have here. I think nobody else does just too well. POEditor .Yeah. POEditor, POEditor was limiting me because it was only keys and the strings raw strings without any tax. So I don’t even see how the tax look like But okay, maybe I’ll keep it like this. XTM Cloud. Text United Sure. Wordbee, translate5 as you know, in the previous tiermakers, they’ve been usually at the at the bottom because the whole UI was looking not that great.
Andrej Zito
And it’s the same thing in this case. It’s not that special. And finally we have memoQ. Unfortunately, the same thing that I said during the review. The editor I was very very surprised by it. So that’s that. Okay. That was it. That was the tiermaker for online editors. Just again, based on my experience, let me know what you think. I think we will include as usually link to this tiermaker in the video description below. So if you by any chance want to do your own ranking, you can do it. And that’s it for now. Thank you for watching. I’ll be back in two weeks with the ultimate ranking of the TMS platforms. According to you, my first experience, we’re going to look at it as a whole picture. In the meantime, if you like what you saw, if you want to see the ultimate ranking, be sure to subscribe to Localization Academy. This is a YouTube channel that only has localization content from now on. And thank you for watching again, and I’ll see you in two weeks. Until then, bye bye!
