Best Practices

Bureau Works vs. Transifex

Bureau Works and Transifex are popular platforms for localizing apps and Web content. Both are cloud-based solutions offering features and functionalities that appeal to and support various roles in the localization workflow – from developers (with webhooks, public API, CLI client, version control, integrations, and numerous supported formats) to project managers (with TM, MT, QA, and collaboration tools) to translators (with an in-context editor, glossaries, and CAT functionality).

Lucky Eze

31 min

Company Overview

Transifex Overview

Transifex was established as a start-up in 2012, initially aiming to serve the open-source community. Since then, it has evolved into a prominent US/Greece-based company that provides a comprehensive cloud-based translation management platform. This platform serves a diverse clientele, encompassing both burgeoning start-ups and established enterprises, assisting them in localizing a wide array of digital content such as websites, mobile applications, videos, games, and much more.

With a firm focus on meeting the needs of end customers, Transifex has developed two distinct versions of its platform, tailored to cater to the requirements of developers and marketers, respectively. This approach ensures that technical and non-technical professionals can efficiently utilize Transifex's services to streamline their localization processes.

The cloud-based nature of Transifex's platform offers numerous advantages to its users. It facilitates seamless collaboration among global teams, allowing them to work together on real-time translation projects. Additionally, Transifex provides a range of powerful features and tools, including translation memory, glossaries, and workflow automation, enabling businesses to achieve faster and more accurate translations.

Transifex has expanded its reach and forged strong partnerships with notable companies and organizations in various industries. By leveraging its expertise and cutting-edge technology, Transifex has established itself as a trusted provider of localization solutions, helping businesses overcome language barriers and effectively engage with their target audiences worldwide.

Transifex has grown into a leading player in the translation management industry with a rich history of serving the open-source community. By delivering innovative and user-friendly solutions, the company continues to empower businesses of all sizes to navigate the complexities of global markets and successfully communicate with customers across different languages and cultures.

Bureau Works Overview

Established in 2005 in California, Bureau Works initially operated as a translation agency. However, recognizing the potential of technology, the company shifted its focus and embarked on a new mission. Today, Bureau Works is an organization driven by the vision of tackling complex projects and optimizing repetitive translation tasks through automation. At the heart of their operations lies a proprietary platform, which serves as the foundation for their innovative solutions.

Bureau Works differentiates itself by harnessing cutting-edge technology to help companies address intricate challenges. By automating repetitive translation tasks, businesses can optimize their time and resources, resulting in increased efficiency and productivity. Additionally, the company boasts an extensive on-demand pool of skilled providers, ensuring seamless connectivity and access to expert linguists whenever required.

Through its robust platform, Bureau Works facilitates collaboration and coordination between clients and providers, streamlining the translation process from beginning to end. By harnessing the power of automation and technology, Bureau Works empowers businesses to overcome language barriers and effectively expand their global reach. With a strong commitment to innovation and customer satisfaction, Bureau Works continues to lead advancements in the translation industry, setting new benchmarks for excellence and efficiency.

Key Differences Between Bureau Works and Transifex

Localization is crucial for expanding your business globally and reaching a wider audience. It involves adapting your content and products to different languages, cultures, and markets. To streamline this process, you need reliable localization software to efficiently handle translation, manage projects, and maintain linguistic consistency. Two prominent players in the localization industry are Bureau Works and Transifex. This blog post will delve into the key differences between these platforms, examining their localization workflows, translation capabilities, support for multiple languages, and more.

Localization Process

The localization process is a series of steps involved in adapting content for specific target markets. Both Bureau Works and Transifex offer comprehensive localization workflows that guide you through this process. However, the key difference lies in the approach they take.

Bureau Works: Bureau Works provides an end-to-end localization solution. They offer a full-service model, where experienced translation professionals handle all aspects of the localization process, from project management to linguistic quality assurance. This ensures accurate translations across multiple languages, allowing you to focus on other core business activities.

Transifex: Transifex, on the other hand, offers a self-service model. They provide a cloud-based localization tool that empowers you to manage the localization process in-house. Transifex offers collaborative translation workflows, allowing your team to work together seamlessly. This flexibility can benefit organizations with their localization resources, and they prefer more control over the process.

Translation Memory

Translation memory is a crucial component of the localization process. It stores previously translated segments to ensure consistency and reduce the time and cost of translation. Let's compare how Bureau Works and Transifex handle translation memory.

Bureau Works: Bureau Works leverages a robust translation memory system, capturing and reusing translations to maintain project consistency. Their experienced translators benefit from the accumulated knowledge, resulting in accurate translations and improved efficiency.

Transifex: Transifex also supports translation memory to facilitate the localization process. Their system allows you to leverage previously translated content, ensuring consistency across multiple projects. However, the translation memory capabilities may vary based on your chosen plan.

Localization Software

Both Bureau Works and Transifex provide localization software to streamline the localization process. Here's how their offerings differ.

Bureau Works: Bureau Works offers a comprehensive localization software platform to simplify project management, automate tasks, and streamline communication with translators. Their software integrates various localization tools, allowing for a seamless workflow and enhanced productivity.

Transifex: Transifex provides a cloud-based localization tool that enables you to manage translations, collaborate with your team, and track progress. The platform offers an intuitive interface, making navigating and working with your localized content easy. However, it's important to note that Transifex primarily focuses on translation management, whereas Bureau Works provides a more comprehensive solution.

Support for Multiple Languages

When expanding into new markets, supporting multiple languages becomes crucial. Here's how Bureau Works and Transifex cater to this aspect.

Bureau Works: Bureau Works supports a wide range of languages, allowing you to localize your content for global audiences effectively. Their network of professional translators covers various language pairs, ensuring accurate translations across diverse markets.

Transifex: Transifex also supports multiple languages and provides translation services for numerous language pairs. However, it's important to consider that the availability of translators for specific languages may depend on the demand and resources within the Transifex community.

Machine Translation

Machine translation can significantly speed up the localization process. Let's explore how Bureau Works and Transifex incorporate machine translation into their platforms.

Bureau Works: Bureau Works integrates machine translation into their localization process. However, they emphasize the importance of human expertise in reviewing and editing machine-translated content to ensure linguistic accuracy and cultural nuances.

Transifex: Transifex offers integration with machine translation engines, enabling you to leverage automated translation for quicker results. However, like Bureau Works, they advocate for human involvement to guarantee high-quality translations.

Mobile Apps Localization

In today's mobile-driven world, localizing mobile apps is crucial for reaching a global user base. Let's explore how Bureau Works and Transifex cater to mobile app localization.

Bureau Works: Bureau Works offers specialized expertise in mobile app localization. They understand the unique challenges and requirements of translating and adapting mobile apps for different languages and cultural contexts. Their localization software and translation professionals work together to ensure a seamless and accurate localization process for mobile apps.

Transifex: Transifex also supports mobile app localization, providing the necessary tools and workflows to manage translations for mobile apps. Their cloud-based platform allows for collaboration among translators and developers, ensuring efficient localization of mobile apps. However, it's important to note that Transifex's mobile app localization capabilities may require additional integration with development tools.

Localization Tools and Integrations

Effective localization often requires the integration of various tools and services. Let's compare how Bureau Works and Transifex handle integrations with other localization tools and services.

Bureau Works: Bureau Works offers various integrations with popular localization tools, such as CAT (Computer-Assisted Translation), version control systems, and content management systems (CMS). These integrations allow seamless data exchange and workflow automation, making the localization process more efficient.

Transifex: Transifex also provides integrations with several localization tools and services, enabling smooth collaboration and streamlined workflows. They offer integrations with version control systems, project management tools, and content repositories, allowing you to leverage existing infrastructure and workflows.

Linguistic Quality Assurance

Ensuring linguistic accuracy and quality is vital for any localization process. Let's examine how Bureau Works and Transifex approach linguistic quality assurance.

Bureau Works: Bureau Works places great emphasis on linguistic quality assurance. They have a team of experienced linguists who meticulously review and edit translations to ensure accuracy, consistency, and cultural relevance. Their quality assurance processes involve rigorous linguistic testing and validation to deliver accurate translations across multiple languages.

Transifex: Transifex provides features and workflows that enable linguistic quality assurance. Their platform allows for collaborative review and editing of translations, ensuring linguistic accuracy. They also offer functionalities for linguistic testing and validation, allowing you to maintain the quality of translations.

Customer Support and Service Level Agreements (SLAs)

Relational customer support and clear service level agreements (SLAs) are essential when using a localization platform. Let's see how Bureau Works and Transifex handle customer support and SLAs.

Bureau Works: Bureau Works offers dedicated customer support to assist you throughout the localization process. They provide personalized guidance and assistance, promptly addressing any issues or queries. Additionally, they offer SLAs that outline the expected turnaround times and service quality.

Transifex: Transifex provides customer support through various channels, such as email, chat, and documentation resources. They offer different support tiers based on your subscription plan, ensuring you receive the assistance you need. However, it's important to review their SLAs to understand the level of support provided and any response time guarantees.

AI Integration and Capacities

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has revolutionized the field of translation, making it faster and more accurate than ever before. Two popular translation platforms, Bureau Works and Transifex, harness the power of AI in their systems, albeit with some differences. Let's explore how these platforms utilize AI for translation.

Bureau Works

Bureau Works, a prominent leader in its field, offers a comprehensive suite of AI-powered capabilities that empower translators and reviewers to enhance their workflow efficiency and accuracy and unleash their creativity. In this section, we will delve into four key AI capabilities provided by Bureau Works: the BWX Generative Language Engine, BWX Quality Professor, BWX Translation Smells, and BWX Translation Critic.

BWX Generative Language Engine (GLE): At the core of Bureau Works' toolkit lies the sophisticated BWX Generative Language Engine (GLE). This powerful engine learns from users and provides personalized suggestions by seamlessly integrating Translation Memories, Machine Translations, and Glossaries into a cohesive and intelligent system. Recent research indicates that using the GLE can boost translation efficiency by up to 50%. Not only does this integration save time and effort, but it also elevates the overall translation quality. The GLE equips translators with contextual information, enabling them to create precise and swift translations.

BWX Quality Professor: As part of its commitment to delivering top-tier translations, Bureau Works introduces the BWX Quality Professor, an AI-powered tool that benefits translators and reviewers. This tool classifies and explains modifications made during the translation process. While users can disregard the tool's recommendations, doing so significantly reduces the required time and effort. The information provided by the BWX Quality Professor proves invaluable for educating reviewers, communicating with clients and stakeholders, and fueling the BWX Autopilot function. By leveraging this feature, translation efficiency, and quality reach extraordinary heights, resulting in exceptional outcomes.

BWX Translation Smells: Bureau Works offers the BWX Translation Smells tool to ensure semantic correctness and foster better translation innovation. Serving as a vigilant ally, this real-time semantic verifier alerts translators to changes in meaning and highlights potential issues that could hinder the overall coherence of the translated material, such as trailing spaces and missing tags. Correcting these discrepancies allows translators to focus on producing flawless translations, providing them with improved confidence and bandwidth to unleash their creative potential and craft linguistically precise and engaging translations.

BWX Translation Critic: For translators seeking an impartial evaluation of their word choices, the BWX Translation Critic proves to be an invaluable resource. This AI-driven tool reviews translations from a reader's perspective, independent of Translation Memories or Glossaries, with just a button press. The Translation Critic serves as an objective set of eyes, offering constructive criticism on language decisions. Importantly, there are no negative repercussions whether translators accept or reject the tool's suggestions. This functionality fosters continuous improvement, allowing translators to refine their skills and produce translations that deeply resonate with readers.

Transifex

Auto Translation Memory: Transifex offers an impressive AI capability known as Auto Translation Memory, which is worth highlighting in this review. With Auto Translation Memory, you can effortlessly leverage 100% matches from the Translation Memory whenever new content is uploaded. This feature proves to be a major time-saver as it eliminates the need for retranslating those specific strings. By automatically utilizing the existing translations stored in the Translation Memory, Transifex streamlines the translation process and enhances efficiency for users. This AI-powered functionality undoubtedly contributes to a smoother and more streamlined localization experience.

Auto Machine Translation: Transifex's Auto Machine Translation feature is a game-changer for anyone involved in localization. It takes the burden off manual Machine Translation (MT) initiation, as it automatically runs whenever new content is added, or existing content is updated within a project. With Auto MT, you no longer have to worry about initiating the translation process yourself. It seamlessly kicks into action, ensuring that your content is promptly and efficiently translated without any extra effort. This capability saves valuable time and enhances the overall translation workflow, making it more efficient and hassle-free. Transifex's Auto Machine Translation is undeniably a powerful AI capacity that takes localization to a new level.

According to Christos, one of Transifex's live customer support agents, Transifex offers quality assurance tools and supports Machine translation Vendors like Google, Amazon, and Deepl. Transifex is starting to utilize AI intelligence inside its platform.

Conclusion

While the final products produced using these two platforms may appear similar at first glance, the journey through the localization process to those results was probably very different depending on the choice of platform. Regarding technology, the two solutions are comparable regarding integrations, supported files, and other aspects. For enterprise localization, Bureau Works is the much suitable platform of the two, because it possesses an all-in-one platform that helps the smooth running of enterprise localization and translation services. But Bureau Works takes a clear lead in delivering a feature-rich experience across the entire localization workflow.

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Collaborative translation is a powerful tool for your business if you’re looking to expand to new global markets. By coordinating a team of professionals who work together in real-time, you can quickly deliver high quality translations that resonate with local audiences.

But what if you don't know how to synchronize a large team's efforts? Or are you‌ struggling to find the right software for a well-coordinated translation process? Well, look no further! In this guide, you'll learn all the know-how's of collaborative translation to bring your brand to global audiences.

Overview

What is collaborative translation?
Why seamless translation collaboration is important
Best practices for collaborative translation and global market success

What is collaborative translation?

Collaborative translation is when multiple people simultaneously work together to translate content. A collaborative translation process often makes use of specialized tools and software to make sure the translation is quick, accurate, and consistent.

Example: Let's say you're a B2B SaaS company looking to translate your marketing materials into a new language to connect with potential clients abroad. Use collaborative translation to bring together translators, developers, and other specialists to translate content into many languages at once.

Your team can use a collaborative translation platform like Redokun to work on projects simultaneously. A coordinated workflow will make sure that your translations use the same terminology and style, improving the quality of the translated product for your target audiences.

Collaborative Translation vs. Crowdsourcing

People often confuse collaborative translation with crowdsourcing and think the two are the same. However, these approaches to translation are different.

Crowdsourcing is when a large group of people contributes translations, often through an open call or invitation by a company or author. Brands can turn to crowdsourcing, community translation, or volunteer translation when they are looking to reduce costs and accelerate the process, especially for large multi-language projects.

In crowdsourced translations, the contributors can be volunteer translators, subject matter experts, or just anonymous individuals online. In other words, you may not know who's worked on the translation and what their qualifications are. It makes crowdsourcing distinct from collaborative translation, where the team would be an established group of professionals you've selected

Why seamless translation collaboration is important

As a busy B2B/B2C marketing manager or project manager, you might ask yourself: Isn't the "divide and conquer" a better strategy when working on a translation or localization project? It seems logical that each project team member, including translators, designers, and editors, works on their tasks separately and step by step.

However, collaborative translation can help your team reap many benefits compared to a traditional approach to translation projects:

Reasons why seamless translation collaboration is important

Produce high-quality translations consistently. When your whole team works on a translation project simultaneously on one platform, it's easier to stay in context and keep track of the translation accuracy for every target language. On top of that, your team can conduct agile QA throughout the project cycle.
‍Faster turnaround times. By working together, your team can complete projects faster and more efficiently. Centralization saves a lot of time at every stage of translation. And since your team can work on more than one translation at a time, you can publish your translated content in several new markets at once.
‍Reduced costs. You get to improve efficiency while working with a smaller team of translators. The smaller and more coordinated the team, the less the risk of costly translation errors. It means reduced translation costs and better project budget compliance.
‍Increased flexibility. Collaborative translation allows your team to produce translations into many languages at once and easily make changes to any project document. You can conveniently engage in a feedback loop and guarantee a continuous localization process.
‍Better communication. Collaborative translation effectively brings all members of your localization team together on one platform. It helps you make sure that everyone is working toward the same goals ‌and simplifies overall localization management.

Six best practices for collaborative translation and global market success

To be great at collaborative translation, you need to approach it strategically. Even if you've never used this approach before, you can follow the six steps below to build an efficient collaborative translation workflow. And if you're already familiar with this method, these practices will help you improve the way you collaborate on any translation projects.

Six best practices for collaborative translation for your global business success

1. Work out a detailed project plan

Before you start working on translations together, you need a clear-cut project plan. You should first identify the following items.

Project timeline: Define crucial deadlines, project milestones, and the overall project duration.
Translation volume and key deliverables: Calculate the general word count, and determine the workload for every language pair if you translate into multiple languages.
Project budget: Keep in mind possible added and hidden translation costs.
Project team: Define what kind of specialists you need: translators, editors, proofreaders, etc. Will you need to find external translators? Consider all your HR needs in advance.
Your approach to the translation process: How much do you want to rely on machine translation? At what point will you edit translated strings? Answer all these questions before you go on.
Quality assurance protocol: Establish an efficient QA procedure for all the language pairs you're working on.

It may sound like a handful but the more detailed the plan, the more streamlined the translations will be down the road. Besides, you can already use Redokun to boost this stage of the localization process!

Redokun is a translation management system you can use to automate, coordinate, and optimize your translation processes from content creation to publication.

Redokun simplifies your project planning. In particular, you can use the tool to:

Monitor your ongoing translations easily. Keep track of all of your translation files and projects across multiple languages in one space, and check their progress at a glance.

Meet deadlines with digest emails. Redokun will send you daily or weekly email digests to update you on the progress of translations. From there, you can initiate one-click reminders to your translators who are potentially falling behind schedule.
Making budget planning easier. Redokun has a transparent, scalable pricing structure that will cover exactly the volume of work your project needs.

Redokun is an easy-to-use tool that requires no onboarding. Your team can start using all the system’s features right away. During your project planning stage, you won’t need to factor in a lengthy training period to introduce team members to the tool.

2. Divide tasks and assign responsibilities the smart way

Good collaboration is impossible without a well-planned distribution and organization of roles and tasks. Ensure that every team member is on the same page and understands their respective responsibilities.

For example, the project managers should divide ‌translation tasks among translation team members according to their language proficiency, area of expertise, or subject matter knowledge.

On Redokun, you can invite translators to work on different language pairs and content types depending on their skills. All you need to do is enter the translator's email. The software will send them an email invitation and let you know once they've started translating the file.
You can also invite several translators to work on one document.

To maximize the efficiency of project management and task division, establish a clear structure of your workflow. Make sure all your pages, files, and folders are well organized and team members know where to find necessary resources for their respective tasks. A centralized, cloud-based storage for all your documents is a must.

Redokun is a cloud-based software that makes file management easy. You can create folders and customize permission settings for multiple users for better organization. No more need to look for spreadsheets and lost documents scattered around different digital locations.
Don't forget to make the most of the Reporting Dashboard. It shows you the status of the translation project and helps you see how users distribute tasks (for example, what methods they use to translate different content segments).

Redokun Dashboard with translation statistics

3. Enhance the collaborative translation process with clear communication

It's important to have open communication channels among all team members in your translation project, including internal and external translators. For a successful collaboration effort, you need a shared communication space to:

Conduct regular check-ins.
Discuss translation options and other aspects of the working process.
Update and adjust requirements and guidelines.
Maintain feedback loops.

It's up to you to choose between email, messengers, or tools like Google Drive or Slack to keep your collboarative operations flowing. However, using multiple channels for different aspects of the project can get messy. It's harder to manage your team and make sure all collaborators are up to date on the ongoing translation tasks.

You can avoid these potential problems by centralizing all your communications and project management. With translation software like Redokun, you can manage, translate, communicate, and collaborate — all in one place.

Translate content in context. Your translators or editors can use page previews in Web Editor to understand the context of the text while working on it.
Work together in real-time. Use Redokun as a full-scale collaborative translation platform. It enables real-time cooperation among your team members, improving efficiency and reducing communication errors.
Use comments, mentions, and notifications to exchange feedback quickly. Redokun's Web Editor is a convenient place to stay in touch and discuss your translation progress every step of the way.

Create a hybrid workflow. Work with your in-house teams or external translators to suit different localization project formats and scalability needs.

4. Use machine translation and translation memory tools

Computer-assisted translation tools are a great addition to human translation. Machine translation (MT) helps your collaborators speed up the localization process by automating translation. Of course, it doesn't have the quality of a human professional translation — it’s more like a helping hand that's always there to facilitate the translation of complex phrases or new terms.

Redokun is integrated with two Machine Translation tools: Google Translate and DeepL. Translation suggestions by these two tools pop up right below where the translator should key in the translation, as shown here.

To enhance collaboration even further, consider using translation memory tools. They ensure consistency and save translation software users a lot of time.

Translation memory (TM) is a translation technology that stores previously translated sentences or phrases as segments and creates a unique database for your localization projects. You can reuse your translation to increase efficiency and consistency in ongoing and future translations.

With Redokun as your collaborative translation platform, you can leverage TM to:

Consistently translate any repeated word, phrase, or sentence across different language pairs and documents. It's especially important for translating technical terms, marketing slogans, CTAs, and other catchphrases. Translation memory helps you stay consistent in your marketing messaging.
Pre-translate your entire documents. Combine TM matches from your previous translations with Machine Translation to get a fully pre-translated document even before your team gets to work.
Manage your translation memory database. Import and customize your TM database to further improve translation quality and consistency.

”The speed of translation is quite impressive in that it doesn’t take [much time], maybe a couple of minutes when you translate from English to eight markets. I think that’s what I’m most impressed by.”

Read more about how Kenni and the marketing team at Rockfon increased their translation productivity by 70% using translation memories and other Redokun features here.

5. Use glossaries and style guides

Glossaries and style guides are valuable resources your team can use for reliable reference.

A glossary is a list of terms and their corresponding translations that are specific to a company or industry.

A style guide outlines the preferred tone, voice, and style for a company's marketing materials across markets and languages.

Your collaborators can refer to these resources when they’re not sure about a translation. For example is when they're deciding how to translate a company abbreviation, whether to the Oxford comma, or choosing the right tone to address customers, etc. No more ambiguity about linguistic, stylistic, and cultural aspects of your translations.

Use Redokun's glossary feature to create a glossary and style guide that outlines rules for spelling, grammar, punctuation, terminology, and tone specific to your project.

6. Continuously review and revise

A key benefit of a collaborative translation platform is the ability to review and revise translations in an agile and efficient manner. By involving multiple specialists in the process of editing and QA, you can guarantee accuracy and consistency in the translated content at every stage of the project.

To implement effective review and revision procedures in your collaborative translation projects, it is important to:

Plan for review and revision in advance. Identify who will be responsible, set the timeline, and use specific tools.
Consider involving in-country reviewers who are familiar with the local market and culture to ensure that the translations are accurate and appropriate for the target audience.
Perform regular QA checks. They should include consistency in terminology and formatting, and verify that the translations are free from grammatical errors and typos.

Pro-tip: Ever experienced the headache of having to update a translation that’s already 70% done when there is a last-minute change to the source document?

With Redokun’s revision feature, you don’t have to spend hours poring over Excel sheets and comparing files to spot the places where new words have been added or sentences have been changed. Just upload the latest document version and the system will identify new text that needs translating — saving your team’s time and effort while keeping previous translations intact.

Summary

Collaborative translation is an excellent approach if you want to improve the consistency of your translations, reduce costs, and establish a strong presence in global markets.

The key to seamless collaboration is a combination of careful planning, role distribution, agile QA, and smart use of translation software.

Make Redokun part of your collaborative translation efforts and enhance the pace of your global business growth‌. Start your 14-day free trial today and benefit from a quicker and more streamlined translation workflow.

Till next time,

Anastasia

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Lucky Eze

Lucky Ezeihuaku is an SEO expert and specialist Translation content writer with Bureau Works. He has a master’s degree in English and Literature, and has been writing professionally for at least 7 years. He has gone on to specialize in the Translation and Localization niche, churning out multiple quality, informative, and optimized articles for Bureau Works over the past year. He claims writing and developing SEO strategies keeps him going, and he’s also interested in Data Analytics.

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Bureau Works vs. Transifex