Translation memory software: what it does and how to choose
Updated · 5 min read · by the TM Cleaner team at terratra
Translation memory software stores the sentences you have translated and offers them back when the same or a similar sentence comes up again. In practice it is part of a CAT (computer-assisted translation) tool, so choosing TM software means choosing a CAT tool. This guide covers what TM software does, the main tools, what to check before you choose, and the job none of them is built for.
What translation memory software does
- Stores translation units: each source sentence with its translation, plus who made it and when.
- Offers matches while you translate: exact (100%) matches, fuzzy matches for similar sentences, and in some tools context matches, where the surrounding sentences match too (Trados calls it a context match, memoQ a 101% match).
- Concordance search: how was this word or phrase translated before?
- Analysis: how much of a new job the TM already covers, by match band. Many agencies base their prices on it.
- Sharing: a TM on a server or in the cloud lets a team use and update it at the same time.
- Import and export: TMX, the open exchange format, lets a TM move between tools. What is a TMX file?
The main tools
Most TM software falls into two groups. The lists name widely used tools; they are not a ranking.
Desktop CAT tools
Installed on your computer. The TM is a file on your disk or on a server you connect to, which suits freelancers and anyone whose clients don't want their content in someone else's cloud.
- Trados Studio: RWS's desktop tool. TMs are .sdltm files on your computer, or live on a server. Trados Studio TM cleanup.
- memoQ: TMs are local resources, or shared on a memoQ server. memoQ TM cleanup.
- OmegaT: free and open source. Its project memory is a TMX file. OmegaT TM cleanup.
Cloud platforms
They run in the browser, and the TM lives on the platform, shared by everyone on a project. Agencies and companies with many translators tend to work this way.
- Phrase: formerly Memsource. Phrase TM cleanup.
- XTM Cloud. XTM Cloud TM cleanup.
- Smartcat: includes a marketplace of freelance translators. Smartcat TM cleanup.
- Crowdin: made for software and app localization, built around strings rather than documents. Crowdin TM cleanup.
- Matecat: free, and runs in the browser.
What to check before you choose
- Who you work with. If your clients or agencies send work packages from one tool, that tool, or one that opens its packages, will save you trouble.
- TMX export. Make sure you can export the whole TM, with its metadata, to TMX. That keeps the TM yours if you ever switch.
- Matches on your own material. Run a fuzzy search and an analysis on a real job of yours during the trial, including segments with tags and numbers.
- Where the TM lives. A local file stays on your machine; a server or cloud TM is shared. Check what your clients' agreements allow.
- Machine translation. If the tool pre-translates with MT, check that MT units are marked as such in the TM. Unmarked, they become indistinguishable from human translations.
- Price and licence. A one-off licence, a subscription or per-user cloud pricing, and whether a free plan covers your volume.
Where TM Cleaner fits
TM Cleaner is not translation memory software. It doesn't translate and it doesn't offer matches. It works on the TM itself, between your tools: you export the TM as TMX, clean it, and import the result into the same tool or a different one.
TM software is built to use a TM while you translate, and its TM editor is made for finding and fixing individual units. Jobs across a whole TM are easier on the TMX file:
- Keeping one translation per source across hundreds of thousands of units, with a preview of every duplicate group and the winner it keeps. Deduplication
- Removing junk units, and machine translation found by its metadata.
- Merging TMs exported from several tools into one, with duplicates removed across all of them.
- Repairing a TMX that won't import, and fixing its language codes for the tool you are moving to.
- Converting a TMX to Excel for review, or Excel or CSV to TMX.
It is free. Files up to 50 MB need no account, and signing in with an emailed link raises the limit to 2 GB. When you switch tools, cleaning the TM on the way is the easiest moment to do it: how to clean a translation memory.
Questions
Is TM Cleaner translation memory software?+
No. It doesn't translate and it doesn't offer matches. It cleans the TMX file your translation memory software exports, and the cleaned file imports back into any tool that reads TMX.
Is there free translation memory software?+
Yes. OmegaT is a free, open-source desktop CAT tool, and Matecat is free and runs in the browser. Several commercial tools also offer free or trial plans; check their current terms.
Can I move my translation memory to another tool?+
Yes, through TMX: export it from the old tool and import it into the new one. Check the language codes first, because some tools match locales strictly, so en-US is not en. TM Cleaner's import check shows the codes in the file and can rewrite them in the cleaned file.
What is the difference between a CAT tool and a TMS?+
A CAT tool is where a translator works: the editor, the translation memory and the termbase. A translation management system (TMS) adds the work around it, such as projects, vendors and deadlines, and many include a CAT editor that runs in the browser.
Clean your translation memory now
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━━ more guides
- What is a TMX file?A TMX file is a translation memory in an open XML format. What's inside one, how to open it, why it fails to import, and how to clean it.
- How to clean a translation memoryTranslation memory cleanup in five steps: export the TM as TMX, decide what to remove, clean and preview, check the result, and re-import it without losing good matches.