Fantastic CAT tool for freelancers and small translation teams
Rating: 10 out of 10
IncentivizedUse Cases and Deployment Scope
We've been using ABBYY SmartCAT for the past few years to manage a variety of localization projects with a team of freelance translators. It's been an incredible experience and helped us save a lot of headaches when working on urgent assignments with tough deadlines. Their team collaboration features that allow multiple translators and reviewers to work on a project simultaneously are absolutely outstanding, plus handy statistics help us track the progress of each translator and handle payouts.
Pros
- Project setup is super easy and straightforward. Literally takes seconds to create a project, assign TM and termbases and add team members.
- As a project manager, I need to understand the progress of the project and where everyone on the team is. ABBYY SmartCAT makes it easy to track these things.
- SmartCAT makes it incredibly easy to pay our translators which is much cheaper than handling payments via wire transfers.
- Their CAT tool offers great collaborative features including the ability to assign segments and leave comments on strings so proofreaders could see them.
Cons
- 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.
Likelihood to Recommend
ABBY SmartCAT is truly a universal solution that can fit any type of organization from freelancers flying solo, to small team of translators and large translation agencies.
Anyone who wants to establish themselves as a professional translator can benefit greatly from the CAT tool that SmartCAT offers absolutely free of charge, while teams will surely appreciate the collaborative features that make it possible to work simultaneously with other translators, proofreaders, editors and QA experts on a single project.
Anyone who wants to establish themselves as a professional translator can benefit greatly from the CAT tool that SmartCAT offers absolutely free of charge, while teams will surely appreciate the collaborative features that make it possible to work simultaneously with other translators, proofreaders, editors and QA experts on a single project.