Translation Memory (TM) is a core technology used across the language services sector and it should play a central role in every organisation’s translation strategy. TM is a database which stores all your translations, allowing each translated segment to be re-used in future translation projects. Where content is repeated within a project (for instance in a website translation), the first translation is automatically propogated to all other instances where that content appears.

Translation Memory doesn’t just save you money – up to 50% in many projects – but time as well. In large projects this often allows you to meet tight deadlines for product or market launches which would otherwise be impossible.

TM helps to drive consistency by ensuring that previously translated content is reused rather than translated for a second time. A centralised TM ensures consistency even though you are likely to use different translators over time. For urgent projects, we may use two or more translators at the same time. The Translation Memory means that the work of Translator 1 is instantly available to Translator 2.

The best TM systems feature something called Concordance Search. This helps the translator search the TM and Termbase for individual words or phrases which have been previously translated.

If you’re considering Machine Translation (MT), TM is critical to training a Machine Translation Engine for your unique brand tone of voice and terminology. We use your TM to train a MTE which gets closer to the results you would expect from human translation. So TM is the foundation of high-quality MT!

Our TM, Terminology, Machine Translation and Multilingual SEO solutions work together to provide the foundations for a fully optimised translation strategy.