World Server vs. Translations.com plugin - Pros/Cons?

Question

@Community - Seeing if anyone has experience in both World Server and Translations.com - strictly from a technical implementation and/or support scenario.

I am looking down the road at anything that is outlined in yellow tape with choosing one translation vendor over the other.

For example,

• SDL ships with translation and is not an after market product like t.com
• Seamless upgrades
• World Server is able to leverage appdata
• The UI is consistent with the SDL's Content Manager

Although, that probably seems like enough (ha) Does anyone have any indepth experience with translations.com's plug-in and setup?

Possibly give any examnple(s) into what you cannot do with t.com vs. what you can do with SDL WS?

Answer 1

Any third parties will have the potential to benefit from Translation Manager improvements (e.g. ability to send minor versions within workflow), but like Nuno pointed out Translation Review is only available with TMS and WorldServer.

At least compared to others CMS's, things unique to SDL's connector include:

• Better batch handling of translation jobs and their items. Nuno and I have heard how prospects and customers complain that some systems are too visually oriented where each page gets sent to translation and are managed individually. Batch jobs and filterable lists beat thumbnails in this case!
• Job status. Translation Manager shows how the status of jobs within the Content Manager Explorer in the "external" translation system. It seems translations.com offers something similar, at least through email notifications.

In Common

I haven't used tranlations.com's GlobalLink® Project Director Adaptor for Tridion, but based on their advertised features, these are in common with the Translation Manager "connector:"

• Browse and submit components, pages, and metadata for translation using the Tridion content management interface.
• Export content for translation from Tridion with no manual conversion or IT dependencies.
• Automatically import translations back into target publications.

Difference

We have email notification on job sends along with the status visible on jobs, but no notification on status changes (yet). Note we're able to see these statuses because of TMS and WorldServer's APIs.

The biggest difference will be in your "after market" point. We can plan, request, and discuss product changes for both content and language internally, share code and design elements more easily, and have access to customers on both sides.

But especially in the enterprise space, it's still great to have options to connect systems from different vendors (WorldServer and TMS have connectors with several Content Management Systems and vice versa). Read Nuno's post for some change leadership and a hint at what's next.

Follow-up

For the rest of the question, I'd recommend reaching out to translations.com for details (RFP, demo, etc.) and maybe sharing some insights with the community if they allow (we'd love to know!).

Things to ask:

• Version support and how long after a Tridion release before translations.com releases a GUI extension update
• DTAP support and practices
• References or background on how/why they created the connection
• Maybe a video for your next blog post :-)

And of course a comparison of the translation systems themselves (translation memory, costs, etc.).

Answer 2

The translations.com extension provides the following features

1. Compatibility with all versions of Tridion from 2011 till Web8
2. Support for translation of Structure Groups, Pages, Components, Multimedia Components, Categories and Keywords and Bundles

3. Ability to customize notifications and integrate with workflows

4. Built-in change management, to be able to send all new and changed content from a particular publication without having to track this information separately

5. Fully automated and scheduled service for submission and retrieval of translation requests
6. Integrated into the Tridion Content Editor - giving a seamless user experience
7. Leverages tridion user groups for access control - to only grant access to specific translation related features
8. Ability to do in-context previews
9. Granular control to define a list of schemas that should be translated
10. Ability to define fields within each schema that should be translated