Happy Scribe vs. Smartcat

Happy Scribe saves us a lot of time in generating transcripts and subtitles. We have used other services, including human transcription, and really find Happy Scribe to be adequate for a starting point. Even human transcription isn't perfect when the transcriptionist isn't familiar with the domain and specific vocabulary used.

Smartcat is well suited for documents longer than 500 words. It is less appropriate for audio-visual translation.

Incentivized

• Machine translation is remarkably accurate, though of course not perfect.
• The entire web app experience is thoughtfully designed and implemented. Using it is a pleasure.
• A sweet feature: the ability to share editable transcripts with guests through a share link.

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

Incentivized

• There's not much to dislike!

• 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.

For our use, Happy Scribe's machine translation is nearly as accurate as the human translation services we used before at considerably lower cost. The web app is better designed than either of the others we tried, though we haven't used those alternatives in the past several years

We also tried Memsource but it was lacking in terms of overall user experience and ease of use. Assigning projects in SmartCAT is a much more intuitive experience, plus it has all these other additional features that are absent from Memsource (like payment solution for freelancers). On top of that, the SmartCAT is absolutely free to use.

• Happy Scribe enables us to make videos and audio accessible to people who prefer not to watch or listen.
• Happy Scribe saves us time and money.
• Happy Scribe just works.

• 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.