The key to an improved translation workflow is to find the best enterprise translation software for your business.

While your exact needs in a translation system might differ from another company’s, there are some features that enterprise businesses should always check for when narrowing down their enterprise translation software options.

In this post, you’ll learn the top 17 best enterprise translation software features to help your company achieve high-quality translations and simultaneously reducing its costs and improving productivity.

Best Enterprise Translation Software Features to Look for

1. Important Commercial Language Pairs

One of the best enterprise translation software features you could look for is compatibility with the language pairs that are important to your company’s business dealings and employees.

Language pairs are combinations of source languages and target languages. Before you invest in enterprise translation software, list the languages you need to translate to and from. Consider the audiences and countries your company might do business with in the future.

Keep in mind that just because an enterprise translation software platform claims it will translate German might only mean that it translates from German to English, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it will translate from German to Japanese (and vice versa).

2. File Translation

The best enterprise translation software to look for will include a file translation feature. If you come across translation software without this feature, run the other way.

The software tool you choose should be compatible with all the file types your company works with. You should also plan ahead for growth and directional changes. This means keeping in mind the additional types of files your company might need to translate in the future.

Your best enterprise translation software option won’t only translate files, but it will also translate files in batches, speedily.

3. File Formatting Automation

If you plan to translate electronic files with enterprise translation software, be sure to search for a system that will format your files for you automatically.

Many enterprises agree that file formatting automation is hands down one of the best enterprise translation software features you can find. This is because it will encode your layout, image placement, font properties, spacing and paragraph breaks.

Without this feature, you will spend hours reformatting your output files to match the originals you upload.

4. Copy & Paste Translation

In some instances you won’t need to perform high-volume translations. Some days, you’ll simply need to gist an email, instant chat, or a chunk of text from another website. This is where a copy-and-paste translation feature will come in handy.

While shopping for enterprise translation software, make sure it will not only include a file translator, but also the ability to gist translations of copy-and-paste text.

5. Translation Memory

Translation Memory is a necessary component for scaling any company’s translation process. It’s used by every major translation company in the world to reduce costs, preserve time and deliver ongoing translation quality improvements.

This is undoubtedly one of the best enterprise translation software features available to businesses focused on their bottom line.

Translation Memory learns your words and phrases as you translate. As you edit translations within the enterprise translation software, the best translation memory technology works in the background. It stores your translations as segments in a bilingual repository when you edit your translations.

These segments are then used for future translation projects so that you never waste time translating the same segment of text twice. This is particularly useful for enterprises using technical jargon–especially within content that needs to be updated regularly, such as websites and reports.

It’s important to note that human translation efforts are required for your organization to benefit from translation memory.

6. Translation Editing Tool

The best enterprise translation software to choose is a platform that enables you to edit machine translations. This is vital to achieving linguistic accuracy when you’re using translation software.

This is because the software will typically produce a first draft translation for you using machine translation in combination with your translation memory.

Notice that we call it a “first draft.” In most cases, the software will generate a file that is comprised mostly of machine translation. This draft is never going to be as perfect as human translation. The more obscure or technical the text is that you need to translate, the more human post-editing will be required in order to achieve human-quality translations. Think about translating an automobile service repair manual for mechanics from Swedish to English.

You’ll need human translation in some capacity, because the translation requires human expertise in that specific subject matter area and for those languages. Machine translation is nowhere near being adequate for this task.

That being said, the best enterprise translation software platforms are able to improve the initial draft translations with users’ translation edits.

These systems can improve draft translation quality quickly.

7. Translation Memory Development

If your organization needs a leg up with developing your Translation Memories, you should seek enterprise software that offers assistance with this. This will help you accelerate translation quality improvement and automation earlier on in the adoption process.

8. Dynamic Machine Learning

Dynamic Machine Learning will find repetitive segments of text and replace all of them after you edit just one of those repetitive segments. No matter if you work across one file or a batch of files, you only need to edit once and your edit will apply to all matching segments.

9. Web Accessible

Since many enterprises collaborate on translations around the globe, the ideal enterprise translation software would allow you to edit translations from your browser or mobile device. That way, no cumbersome installation needs to disrupt your workday.

10. Integrated Spellcheck

Look for an integrated spellchecker to reduce the tedious task of proofreading. This way, you only spend your time on the human translation component.

11. Enterprise Translation Collaboration

The best enterprise translation software you could choose will support a collaborative team effort. Why? There is rarely ever just one person completing a translation request.

Bilingual employees are often leveraged to produce translations in enterprise companies. This means that you’ll need to be able to easily share translations and request editing from within the translation software interface.

Choose cloud-based enterprise translation software so that you can collaborate with international colleagues. This way, they don’t need to install software on their computers. Everything related to your translation projects will be accessible in one central hub.

12. Tracked Translations

While we’re still on the subject of collaboration, we must note that it’s crucial to track the translations that your colleagues contribute to a translation project.

The best enterprise translation software will display translation edit history for you and your team. The details should be tied to each segment of text that has been edited, including the date and timestamp, the contributor’s name and which words were changed.

13. Voice-Over Translator

If your enterprise produces video and audio for internal purposes such as employee training, find enterprise translation software that generates text-to-speech audio output files. We assure you this will save your company a lot of time and reduce your training costs when scaling your company’s global training initiatives.

Preferably, the software will give you Siri-like quality audio files for an uploaded script, in the target language. This will save your company money because you won’t need to hire professional voice talent. If voice-over translation is important to your company, make sure you define which languages which you need voice-over files.

Check that the most common commercial languages are available.

See also: Best Way to Translate & Record Audio In Another Language

14. Live Human Support

The best enterprise translation software will provide you with priority customer support from a real person, not just a robot. 24/7 live support should be available to you.

Don’t purchase a translation solution from a software company that won’t give you the chance to speak to a human by phone when you need help.

15. API Access

Does your company like to connect its software systems to each other? If so, translation API access is important. Before you purchase enterprise translation software, make sure it gives you the option to access its API token. A best-in-class enterprise translation API will come with more features that just machine translation.

16. Enterprise-Level Security

The best enterprise translation software will have high standards for data security and confidentiality.

Why? Any company that uploads its data into software is at risk of a data breach. Look for encryption, multifactor authentication, SSL certification and PCI-compliant payment processing from a third-party vendor such as Stripe. What’s more, check the Terms of Service and make sure they’re aligned with your company’s privacy policy.

17. Ability to Train Your Machine Translation Engine

The best enterprise translation software will also enable to train your machine translation engine and therefore improve your translation quality over time. This is paramount to saving time and money on translation production. Dynamic Machine Learning and Translation Memory work together to help you train your machine translation engine over time.

Recommended Best Enterprise Translation Software

At Pairaphrase, we developed the all-around best enterprise translation software available on the market. This is because we’re hyper-focused on ease-of-use combined with the powerful technology you need to get smart, safe and fast translation.

With Pairaphrase, there are multiple plans available to support your organization’s needs and growth. Not to mention Pairaphrase includes all of the 17 features we list above.

Schedule a live demo or request a free trial.