Smartling Reviews

This is a great product if you're trying to do a 1-1 translation of your website, either for a different language in your country, or a different language in a different country.

The product is far from ideal if you're trying to manage websites that are at all dissimilar. If you want to serve up certain pages in only certain countries, or change things like global CSS or fonts, you have to either manage that in individual components or using javascript in your code - neither solution is ideal.

DON'T use smartling for anything besides simple text changes and minimal interface changes.

Serving up US, Canadian, and Australian website. Smartling has allowed us to launch these websites in a fraction of the time that it would have taken us to do a full-on development of the additional sites.

Smartling allows us to reach customers all over the world by customizing our content to better communicate with them

Translating web content is great, but sometimes information can get miscommunicated when translating to another lamguage

I'm still in the evaluation phase, but all seems well so far

Reach a broader range of customers all over the world

It provides a platform where we can get translated strings for our apps. It has web apis for us to upload strings and fetch them back down in a particular format.

I haven't found anything that I dislike yet. I usually upload strings to smartling and another team handles the interaction with smartling.

This helps us internationalize our product.

Smartling makes it easy to get your web or mobile product translated into any language by real people

The UI can be a bit confusing and difficult to navigate and keeping track translations can still be challenging

Translating our website and mobile apps. Translating our products into over 9 different languages!

The best thing is the ability to go back and forth with a translator on a single string all from within the application. The software is a huge plus, they continue to amaze me with new integrations and development of new features that make it easy to support multiple languages.

The most difficult part about Smartling today is the lack of ability to invoice for a bundle of translations. The monthly translation invoice is great for our business-as-usual costs, but when we bring a new language online, we would prefer to pay for that whole bundle as a single lump sum.

We were able to cut our translation time in half and maintain accuracy while improving our collaboration with translators and internal reviewers.

Smartling has been a great choice as our translation service management platform because of their flexibility and ease of use. Smartling's APIs allow us to automatically pull/push translations into our software, making translation management simple and contained. Additionally, the Smartling Translation Services team does an excellent job providing fast, high-quality translations and great support, simplifying the translation management process for our team.

I wish that Smartling allowed for more on-page customization so we could translate different marketing pages in specific pages. That said, it is a great platform overall, and I know the team is working on this type of functionality.

Smartling has allowed our team to translate our product into 5 languages quickly and easily, giving us the ability to expand our user base to global, non-English speaking users.

The people who are there to support me in the Smartling tool. They are always there and always helpful with us. I like the tool as well, but as a person who does not spend every day in it, it can get confusing. Luckily the support is there for us.

The clarification questions which I need to answer on a daily and weekly basis.

While the tool is great and has a lot of functionality, it isn't always built for my needs. There are some additional features which I would like.

Allow Smartling to demo it for you. A demo is needed to see all functionality.

We are able to translate our whole site into 32 languages with ease. We see the many benefits including the great visibility into the status of the translations. It also takes a lot of the manual pain away from us.

Smartling has a great customer service, they are highly responsive and willing to help your company gain efficiency in translation and localization processes.

As a relatively new TMS, there are still some feature limitations but as Smartling is very open to hear their customers and take into consideration their needs, they have a very extensive road-map which covers most of them.

Provide a better performance in China (Great Firewall)

With the help of Smartling we are streamlining translation processes more efficiently, saving time and money as well as ensuring a consistent messaging around the globe.

Smartling works well to set up a workflow to input strings from an Android app or iOS app, get them translated via the Smartling marketplace, and export back into the apps. It's made our localization process more streamlined and straightforward.

Some confusing interfaces make it hard to find strings by file vs app vs something that matched a previously translated string.

We localize our apps into 20 languages. After the initial implementation, it's quite easy to localize any new features.

I like the possibility to see at a glance how much content I have in each workflow we created, and in each step. It is also very practical for me to receive alerts each time new content enters the platform or when translated content is moved from one step to another. The customer service provided is very fast and efficient.

I found the fact that our translators have to add the tags in their translation a bit cumbersome for them. Also some characters, as exponents, are not accept by the system.

Do not hesitate to share your translation strategy with your Smartling technician as he will be able to help you to build Workflows that will suits your needs. Also, tell your Smartling technician which kind of improvements you would like to see in the platform as eh will pass the information towards the product development team.

We previously experienced several difficulties as we translated a first part of the company's website and our process was too time consuming. Smartling helped us a lot to ease this process and make it a lot faster.

We use GDN and Business Docs, and I like that I don't need a whole web team for our localized sites/collateral. I can pretty much play localization manager for web and print content, and Smartling is a convenient tool for project management, content storage, and translations wrapped up in one neat little package. Oh, and love that it integrates with Marketo!

I've had quite a few Customer Success/Account Managers over the years. I realize that's inevitable, and there has always been coverage for support, but it'd be nice to have a bit more stability in my points of contact.

Benefits: Less headcount, less need for site maintenance, I have a handy place to find/filter all translated content, translators/editors can communicate without me playing middle-woman, I don't have to copy and paste translations in/out of a CMS/spreadsheet.

Very easy to setup and use, helped us manage all international versions of our service and made it really easy to work with translators. We added support for 15 languages in months of deploying.

As our app grows, it can be challenging to review and edit very high volumes of strings (responding to questions, bulk approving, etc...).

Ability to serve our international customers without needing to scale our engineering and PM teams.

Ease of use of the tool, uncomplicated set up and integration. Ongoing development of the platform with willingness to listen to customer needs. And the client service rocks! Like having a highly responsive co-worker.

The simplicity of the tool sometimes has limitations. If translation agencies would be more familiar with Smartling, introduction of the tool would be easier.

Make sure your existing translation vendors understand that Smartling (or any other TMS) are part of the corporate translation strategy and compliance is required.

Simplification and centralization of translation processes allowing for time and cost savings.

User and task management

CAT tool

Image context

Instant WYSIWYG mode not implemented for non GDN projects

Consistency on copy

Velocity on get content ready

Ease to use from e2e

- Ease of integration with CMS and Marketing Automation platforms

- Translator Experience can be improved

Continuous localization of international websites and email nurtures

Very easy to use and super customer service

i don't really like the new interface : opens another page to enter the translations and need to refesh the previous page...the old version was better (same page)

go for it

translate all the content for our mobile app (iPhone and Android), website, FAQ and other communications content.

Ability for our in country reviewers to see translations in context.

Over the last couple years, the company has grown and it is harder to get issues quickly resolved.

Stop import/export of translation files, stop version control issues, allow for better context for in country reviewers

The Smartling team has been extremely easy and always pleasant to work with - every process that we've conducted with them has been seamless and simple, and the partnership with them has been great. The services that they offer align with many of the practices that we already implement, so it makes the process that much easier to integrate into what we do. The team is organized and makes sure to get everything completed in a timely manner, and they are always willing to go the extra mile to make our lives easier!

Nothing - the Smartling team and their services have been wonderful!

Website translations; exploring more translation options on packaging and email marketing

- In general, Smartling enables my team of 2 (including me) to 'punch above our weight' in terms of what we are able to deliver.

- Our organisation's translation and internationalisation needs have grown exponentially over the last two years and Smartling has been able to scale to support these evolving requirements.

- The SmartMatch technology enables us to re-use or adapt translations we've already had done, where they exist – a huge time- and money-saver.

- When things go wrong as they inevitably do, customer support is good overall – responses are prompt and generally resolve issues to my satisfaction.

- The support I receive from my account manager is second-to-none. They are a huge asset to Smartling and, in turn, to me.

- Still not easy enough for other stakeholders to capture context for their translations – they report to me that it's too time consuming. More automated solutions would be appreciated.

- Some stakeholders report to me that the UI is difficult to understand / they perceive that it has a steep learning curve. However, support from Smartling that mitigates this is available.

- Roll out of the new CAT tool could have been better managed. This was seen as a key release by Smartling, but for some users, the disadvantages outweighed the advantages and some important features (in the initial release at least) were missing.

- The upgrade of the Smartling API from v1 to v2 was badly mishandled. Initially we were advised that a hard end date was attached to this, we devoted (expensive) development resource to migrating to v2 and then found out – we weren't told directly, rather the information dribbled out of Smartling – that the hard end date for the v1 API had been indefinitely postponed.

Smartling has enabled me to continue to meet a diverse set of growing translation and internationalisation requirements at my current organisation. Moreover, it has effectively paid for itself by enabling the re-use/adaptation of existing translations through its SmartMatch technology. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it.

Smartling enables a two-person translation team to manage the diverse localisation needs of an organisation with ambitious international expansion plans. Smartling's SmartMatch technology is saving OpenTable tens of thousands of dollars a year in translation costs.

Platform offers an intuitive and friendly interface for account managers. The people at Smartling who support my team are proactive and responsive.

The link provided in Issue emails is a little disorienting. Clicking on it takes you to a pop up in the platform with a specific string and the translators question. Given this 'zoomed in' view and the amount of content we send to translation, I often have very little context for the string in question. I find myself backing out to see the rest of the content sent with the offending string's associated URL to better orient myself to answer the translator's question.

Engage Smartling for their translation services in addition to their platform. Having a single source of contact for both the platform and translation services helps immensely.

We are translating a global ecommerce platform to 3 languages. We have realized unified, synchronized global product launches with the help of Smartling.

- Process automation and flexibility of workflows

- Access to advanced analytics for improved decision making

- Transparency and visibility into the translation process for better decision making

I wish we could switch back and forth between the classic CAT tool and the new CAT tool that just released depending on each user's preference.

We're being able to see how long it takes our internal translators to get jobs completed and which languages are lacking.

Smartling is very easy to use. The fact that there is Glossary feature, it helps saves so much time if I have to replace any single word used at multiple instances!

Some times search does not work accurately.

Helps localize our two mobile apps in 6 languages (French, German, Spanish, Korean, Chinese Traditional and Chinese Simplified). With supporting so many languages we have reached to larger audience across globe.

I like the straightforward UI, which helps me to stay on the track while doing lots of assignments on Smartling.

Maybe the the design of the whole panel is a bit outdated and the team should give it some refreshment in the future.

I think that Smartling can dramatically streamline the whole process of translation/localization in your company. Finally it will pay off with satisfaction of your colleagues and improvements in performance of your whole team.

I work for a part of my clients directly via Smartling. It helps me to increase my revenue as a solopreneur. I also learned about some nice features, which are present in Smartling.

Smartling has helped AdRoll reach new markets quickly with quality translations for several years now. Smartling has allowed for hands-free translation management between our various content platforms. We currently utilize several integrations including; Drupal, Zendesk, Github, SendWithUs to name a few. We utilize customizable workflows to ensure that our content is appropriately reviewed and vetted before publishing. Smartling’s quality confidence score provides insights around translation quality and allows us to take a data driven approach to quality management.

Using Smartling's Platinum Support services has helped alleviate the burden of localization project management on the AdRoll marketing team, giving time back to focus on marketing related tasks.

Not a lot to report so far! It's intuitive, practical and comes with great support

You can't fault it

Recently, we were able to quickly launch our new AdRoll group website into 7 languages within just two weeks! Smartling Platinum Support team acts as our localization manager coordinating translation deliveries, and communicating with vendors. Prior to using Smartling Platinum Support, our marketing team were spending approx. 25% of their work-week managing localization projects; now this is down to approx. 5%.

The use of term bases and translation memories

The fact that only 100 strings per page are shown.

The main benefit is the ability to translate everywhere without depending on installing a specific software.

That it's so easy to use - it's highly user friendly, and you can keep track of several projects simultaneously as well as keeping track of the word count in general.

I honestly can't think of anything that I dislike.

If you're considering using Smartling, there's really nothing to think about - just go ahead and choose Smartling! You will not regret it.

The business problems that Smartling solves for me is that I don't have to worry about spending lots of money on expensive CAT tools that are sometimes difficult to use. Smartling provides me with a user friendly platform that enables me to work on several projects simultaneously, without ever losing track of anything.

Awesome tool. Easy to set-up and use. The most extensive API docs that I've seen for translation tools. Internal reviewers love the tool, particularly the visual context provided to show how the translations will appear once live.

Nothing major has come up. On-boarding was very smooth. Translation quality is much improved compared to our previous tool/process.

We initially used another lighter weight translation tool but had to switch to Smartling after 6 months. We didn't appropriately anticipate the features/functionality required to provide high quality translations in a hands-free manner. My advice to users considering translation tools is to thoroughly think through your requirements and related features required.

Translation just happens! After initial configuration, there's very little work to be done in terms of on-going maintenance (from an engineering point of view).

It was super easy to get started. We had a dedicated Customer Success Manager (who was awesome by the way!) who helped us get trained on the platform and start translating quickly. The ability to set up customized workflows and the visual-context provided to our translators is a huge pro - both of these things have had a big impact on quality. Our previous translation process was manual and took weeks in some cases. Smartling has streamlined these processes and cut down our time to market to days.

Not much to dislike with this platform. I’m looking forward to seeing how the Quality Confidence Score feature continues to develop.

Smartling enables us to be in global markets, at ease and with speed. Our addressable market has been significantly increased as a result of translating our assets. Finally, our time to market has been reduced which allows us to move faster and iterate/test quickly as needed.

The platform is easy to use. The team is nice and the communication with them is great. Payments are punctual and precise. They offer free trainings and a certification attesting level of skills in using the platform.

The amount of work is sometimes really low. It would be ideal to receive more translations, but I can already see a big improvement.

I highly recommend to use this platform.

Smartling provides localisation mainly for apps. I have collaborated with them localising content in Italian.

- Extensive APIs

- Connectors that work (we use Marketo, Zendesk and AEM)

- Visual Context

- There's a lot in the platform; navigation to some areas of the product can take quite a few clicks

Problems

- Localization of emails, website, support centre and content

Benefits

- Hands-off localization processes and good translation quality

Handy and useful functionalities have been recently added and translation productivity has significatly increased.

Management of queries and questions sent to end client reviewers/project managers. Most of the times translation queries are answered or solved when the project is complete, which seems quite unuseless.

I can use Smartling at any time, at any moment. I only need a good Internet connection, no need to use a PC and to install any software. That provides me with a lot of flexibility and improve my internal organization.

It's a very user-friendly tool, nice to use.

I preferred the older version, the new editor interface is a bit time-consuming

Translating is easier and quicker

Perfect tool for translators. Highly intuitive and easy to use. Spellcheck function works perfectly. Working without installing software is something great. You can start being productive right away, wherever you are.

Nothing so far. After getting used to shortcuts, all run smoothly. Product words perfectly. No glitches.

Perfect tool for translator and editors. Everybody should consider buying it. A great performance aid for all.

We don't need to install complicated software. Everything is handy. We can achieve a higher productivity.

Smartling makes my life easy. I haven't been a customer all that long, but we were literally up and running with our first site in two weeks. The support from our account manager and development is first-rate, and because we also use Smartling's translation services (although you can use your own), we really can't fail with the platform.

I'm still learning the ins and outs of the platform, but I haven't found anything I don't like yet.

Ask questions, learn all you can, and if possible, connect with other customers to make implementation as easy as possible.

With Smartling, we're making our website a truly global presence, and localizing in six languages, with the probability of more languages soon. Having localized websites gives our sales team so much more leverage and we expect to exponentially increase sales using Smartling.

We use Wordpress for our corporate sites and Smartling integrates beautifully with the tool.

The fact that it's easy-to-use is the main reason why I would recommand Smartling. I love the new interface, it's really more intuitive now!

The glossary feature is not the best I know, and it would be great if we could share easily the glossaries from an account to another when we work on similar contents.

We can translate any document and content with the same tool. We don't have to waste time to convert files/send zip files etc., the agency prepares the files on Smartling for us, and we just have to connect on the platform and start to translate.

It provides easy access, a friendly interface. It's safe to use, meaning that when you are idle for some time, a dialogue asks you to login back again, but without losing any of you unsaved work.

I wish it had keyboard shortcuts for passing to the next segment and saving and also for doing concordance searches, for example, to open up a window and typing in what you want to search.

Real time collaboration, the possibility to have translators working on a project without using a particular software.

How the product is always moving forward, and how responsive our dedicated support representatives are. Whenever I have issues, they're addressed IMMEDIATELY. In addition, with the right team building it, integrations with other applications are seamless and robust. Couple that with an A1 help center (documentation) and impeccable customer service, you'll love this product.

Sometimes, our individual needs/desires for the product aren't met; certain enhancements seem to be put on the roadmap and never really addressed. Although this is expected with a large client base, being that we are a large company of our own, it would be nice to be able to personalize the application a bit more (without altering other client's products).

With any application, it's going to take some work and time to master. With that said, the Smartling team supports you the entire way. The documentation that they have available is always helpful, and personally, our "Team Leads" (aka Account Execs) are knowledgeable, responsive, and incredibly helpful. Make sure that you develop good relationships with your customer success executives, and I guarantee you'll find this product beneficial (and a lot easier to master).

Note: I was not a part of the company when the initial implementation was done.

Decreasing bounce rates and increasing revenue by providing quality translated and localized content. We've seen a tremendous amount of savings as we've built up our Translation Memory. In addition, we've been able to hold our outside vendors and internal project managers accountable as a "history" of each string is kept.

That multiple translators can work on the same file at the same time. And context!

The help docs are not very comprehensive. I would like to see more help videos as well.

I don't have to send files back and forth anymore.

- Smartling has a powerful API which allows us to integrate localization into our workflow in a totally bespoke way, making the process seamless, so it doesn't slow down product development

- We can easily customize our localization workflow to be most appropriate for the content - for example using machine translation where that makes sense, or skipping manual review for content where accuracy is less crucial

Smartling could be even better if it had a ready-made Git or GitHub integration that met our needs, enabling us to support our continuous release process. We've got a tonne of flexibility from building our own, but off the shelf is even better if it works.

We're using Smartling to translate a SaaS product into 10 languages - and lots more to come. Soon, we'll be extending this to translate content (e.g. Blog posts and support articles) from across our business in an automated way.

All in all, Smartling has enabled us to make our product available in our users' native languages with minimal manual work within our business (e.g. for developers or product managers) and little delay to our "continuous release" approach.

The history tab lets you track changes. No changes are lost so you can always review what it was previously done and the person that updated it.

Lack of glossary updates notifications. Our translators not always review the glossary so notifications would be a great update when a specific word in the glossary comes up and has been updates.

It makes it easier to follow up on multiple jobs & languages. Creating issues to communicate with translators is also easy to continue communication.

I like most that the process is streamlined, being able to review content in context and the TM function

Sometimes slow with the CAT tool

Some processes are taking too long / too many steps

Translations :-)

It’s the same process for all the languages, and also being able to see content in context is really great

The trust and relationship with the team

Nothing, I love to work with Smartling, honestly I can't say anything I dislike about them.

No recommendation, you can rest assured that you're taking the right decision.

Smartling is a great platform to translate documents and manage my work. It makes my life so much easier, and the business demand they redirect to me is also very good. In addition, their staff is extremely professional and quality-oriented. It's a pleasure working with them and I recommend it to everyone.

I really appreciate the simplicity, easy and intuitive navigation, TM and concordance search, etc. Always a pleasure working in Smartling.

I wish there was an easier way to add glossary terms and more accessible shortcuts for German quotation marks. I would also appreciate the opportunity to export TMs.

One-stop solution, no need to invoice projects individually or apply discount grid manually.

It's an easy way to get text strings translated with high precisión and excellent order.

The login process sometimes sends me error messages and sends me back to the land page.

It's a good way to get documents and other materials translated into multiple languages

Translation Work is faster and more precise with Smartling

Smartling have been terrific to work with; the platform works really well. Very streamlined in terms of process management. Powerful visualization of end product. Great customer service. Comprehensive APIs which really make a difference. In-context translation is much better than the previous tool we utilized and the project management functionality is the best I’ve seen on the market. Our translation processes were previously a major headache and this has all massively changed thanks to Smartling!

Nothing that I can think of. just try it for yourself

We’re currently in 5 new language markets, all powered by Smartling. >60% of our revenue comes from non-English speaking markets.

Translation memory reminder shows clearly.

No weakness and error found at the moment

use it for ease of your work

As translator, I do not need to download heavy files then opening in any format, which are sometimes complicated. I am saving time and space in my computer.

I work everytime and everywhere...it is also a great convenience to have practical keyboard options.

I wish it had a more comprehensive QA checker...

I would definitely recommend, a very useful and practical program :)

Thanks to smartling I have learned a program more practically, I can easily make translations.

Easy to use, online so no software installation, works on any computer, and great graphics!

Characters like ! ? ( ) don't work in target text strings, I have to copy and paste them from the source text.

I use Smartling as required by one of my clients. It's a great tool as I can translate high volumes of words in short amounts of time.

Not only has this service streamlined our product artwork production, the people at Smartling are wonderful to work with.

The online platform can be a little difficult to navigate.

Correct language translation has made our hair product directions easier for our consumers to understand.

Using Smartling has helped saved time on my projects. I don't know about the rest of you, but projects just pop up and we're due yesterday. Smartling has helped me put all my projects in one location and complete them in a speedy time frame.

The website platform is really hard to navigate. For someone who is not in the tech business it would be nice to simplify it. If it was not for Tyler I would have been very lost.

Don’t think about it, just do it. Smartling is the way to go for translations

We have to translate many languages for legal/regulatory reasons. Smartling has helped streamline this issue for us.