Trados Studio Reviews - Pros & Cons, Ratings & more

Crowdin

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Phrase Localization Platform

Smartcat

Trados Studio offers translators an extensive CAT tool for can editing, reviewing, and managing their translation projects.

Trados Studio

Web-based

Windows

Swahili Translator

I can reuse my TMs on any project i am working on, a very good feature. Navigation through the panels is easy and self-explanatory, saving projects and locating them is super easy.

Freelance Translator

The interface is easy to understand and many useful features are included to help translators doing a good job.

Freelance translator

It helps save a huge amount of time. Once you completely master it's use, the advantage is undeniable, especially if you're a freelancer.

Business Administrator

This is one of the best and most important CAT tools on the market that I use in my freelance translation work.

Translator

Excellent compatibility, easy to use after learning, used and accepted by almost every provider.

Managing Director

It is powerful and I still have to come across a file type which Studio could not process. The SDL App Store is also a huge benefit and the integration of plug-ins just makes our work even faster.

Technical translator

Trados is a powerfull tool with huge capabilities and powerfull functionnalities that allow you to take on any big translation project as a team or individual.

Problematic; I had to struggle with font errors.

Junior programmer

Translation is imperfect, as in any other automated translation system.

Lecturer

Rich in features and functionalities. The support for community-made add-ons that solve various problems or improve (facilitate) functionality.

Founder

This tools suffers from an abundance of features that only a small fraction of users actually need or use.

My favorite part is being able to keep the same format as the original file without having to add extra effort on my side.

Freelance Translator (French-English)

Worth the money if you are translating full time.

Nothing I can think of the moment other than the cost - sometimes freelancers have a very limited budget.

After years translating with SDL Trados, it's impossible to imagine my rountine without a CAT Tool like this. The downside is that it may freeze at sometimes for no apparent reason.

Most of the time, when you know a technical issue with Trados, most of translation agencies of the world already know how to solve them. Also, the support team is super available and helful.

Its translation memory was difficult to set up at first, but I was finally able to get the hang of it after watching some Youtube tutorials.

Project Manager

It covers all the standard bases as well for a modern CAT tool, and is usually the only CAT tool you'll see fully integrated in other translation project management tools or TMSs.

I'll summarise it short - experience is really good. If there's anything bad, then it depends only on our, translators, mood :)

popularity costs money

Be prepared to spend a long time getting used to the interface. Ask many questions if you get the introductory sessions. Mastering the system takes a while. Take time to master the basics (translation and alignment), and then move to the more complex operations (glossary importation). The explanation videos, support team and online resources are very helpful. Allow for plenty of RAM for the system to work at full capacity.
My department is implementing Trados to automatize our processes, accelerate the translations of template documents, archive translations and improve terminological consistency. Benefits will include time and cost savings, when implementation is completed.





Industry Leading Translation & Terminology Software

Our overall experience with Trados Studio is that it is a tool that is hard to master. We think that at some stage no love was put any longer into this tool.

From work horse to elephant, from elephant to dinosaur

I think it is the best CAT tool. It might seem difficult to use at first, but it is a true powerhouse with so many features... 

The best CAT tool out there

I have been using SDL Trados for a bit more than one year and it has showed useful in various occasions, however, it required a few hours to get acquainted with the main features. Overall a good product, but its price don't make it the first option for most of independent workers.

Great translation management tool

It is a good product. It changed my life. I increased my productivity. It has a lot of settings allowing to adjust it perfectly to my needs.

It's a great product but pricy.

I need to work with Trados because some of my clients work with it and we need to keep the same format of files. The tool itself is pretty great except for some features that feel like overkill.

A leader on the market that could use some improvement in UI

Probably the most used translation software

I do freelance translation. I typically work with manually scanned documents and faxes, where something like Trados or another CAT tool is not helpful. However, a larger company asked me to consider Trados in order to complete a specialized project with them, and I agreed. After spending many frustrating hours trying to successfully complete operations within Trados, I gave up and cancelled the contract with the company. Perhaps in the future, while working with someone who knows Trados well, I might have some success with it. But, as it is, I wasn't able to get any useful work out of it.

Wasn't able to Successfully Implement It

Tool so usefulness for  translations

Expensive, but it does its job

It's a great and necessary tool for professional translators.
However, it's expensive and still has some minor bugs that simply shouldn't be there, given the fact we are talking about a leader from its industry with so many years of expertise involved.

A must-have if you are a professional translator. But it has small bugs and could be easier to use.

It is an essential tool in my day-to-day workflow, and I choose it over other CAT tools because it is a golden standard within the industry, although there are many ways it could be improved.

One of the Leading CAT Tools on the Market

I have been using Trados since 2007 and definitely think that one can't be in this industry without it.

A staple in the translation industry

The use of this software shoul be taught in every translation school !

An essential software for every translator

I handle translations and am able to save a translation memory that is useful for further work, making my work faster

Translators assistant

A tremendous improvement in my cross-file consistency, and to be able to work with clients needs.

Best CAT tool ever

I wanted to learn how to use any CAT software and everyone kept mentioning this program, so I decided to gibe it a shot. The truth is I can get much more work done, but I also have to be extra careful when it comes to using specific terms in specific content. When you translate from English to Spanish there are way too many words in English that might have very different meanings in Spanish. So the time you save translating is sometimes spent editing and proofreading. 

Not as translatable as it should

Really good for working with/for other companies, sharing TMs and making accurate budgets or calculating estimates because you can see how much you work and how many words or segments were new. 

The perfect tool for working with other translators and translation companies.

One of the flagships of translation/localisation industry coming at quite a cost

Trados: it's worth it.

Free trial as a freelance writer/editor, proofreader, and translator.

Worth the money if you are translating full time

One of the main characteristics a good translator needs is consistency in terminology. This tool allows me to be very consistent in my translations.

Easy-to-use tool that helps you to speed up your work!

I used it to translate technical texts. It simplifies the translation process through translation memories.

SDL Trados Studio

Veit G.:                                               Hi, my name is Veit. I'm the manager of a translation company. We do technical translations for companies, and I'm here to review Trados Studio. And I would give this software three stars out of five.
                                                       For translation, we use around, I would say, 15 products. It's mostly because our clients ask us to use these tools. It's not because we choose them. So we use, for example, XTM, we use Memsource, we use memoQ, we use Smartling. So these are the big tools. And then there are lots of proprietary tools which maybe our clients develop themselves.
                                                       The biggest positive point about Trados Studio is that if you have Trados Studio, it's a tool our customers like, and it's likely that you get revenue from using this tool. So the tool has been on the market for over 30 years, and they have quite a big market share. And the tool is also quite sticky in terms of operational processes. So once a company, once a client has set up a process using Trados, they're unlikely to change that process. And so if the whole translation community is built around that tool, Trados Studio, if you have that tool, it's likely you can get a lot of business.
                                                       The tool has been around for 30 years, and sometimes it feels like the tool hasn't gotten any cleverer; it just has only gotten bigger. It sometimes feels an accumulation of features. So I think the learning curve is quite steep, even more so for people that come from the language side. So translators, I think they're having quite a hard time. We work a lot with freelance translators, and judging from the questions we get, people are not reading actually the online help or using educational videos on YouTube to get acquainted with the tool.
                                                       The biggest thing you should consider is the return of investment, really. You should consider, "Should I pay for the tool, which at the moment costs between €450 and €750?" And you should consider very, very closely whether you can make back this money from working for your customers. And you should also be ready to invest quite a lot of time in getting acquainted with a tool. So these are the two big questions.

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