Introducing Trados Studio 2024
16 Jul 2024
7 mins read
Celebrating the 40th birthday of Trados this year, I can't help but feel a little old, having been along for the journey for most of those 40 years! This major milestone naturally makes me nostalgic, and when I look back, I'm amazed at how very far we’ve come.
Originally a language service provider developing technology solutions for its own use, Trados launched its first commercial translation productivity solution just a few years later (MultiTerm, in case you were wondering). Not long after that, we released the product that would eventually evolve into today's Trados Studio.
With these products, technologies that were revolutionary when invented – translation memory and terminology management chief among them – became the foundations of a whole industry. Over 40 years, these foundations have naturally been renovated and rebuilt many times to keep pace with the increasingly fast development of translation technology. And new revolutions – neural machine translation and cloud-based working among the more recent – have continued to reshape the translation industry in profound ways.
GenAI: the next revolution
Which brings us to Studio 2024. One of the most exciting areas of development in this release is the addition of several new AI capabilities, specifically leveraging the linguistic fluency of large language models (LLMs) and their ability to be prompted. First introduced to the world in November 2022 as the power behind ChatGPT, LLMs are carving their way to be the next transformative revolution for our industry.
We have already discovered so many ways in which they can be used to help the entire translation supply chain, and we're continuously innovating to find more. For example, you can combine the power of an LLM with your trusted linguistic resources (translation memories, termbases and machine translation providers) to receive high-quality translation results from the start - we’re calling this Generative Translation, and it has real potential to transform your translation processes. I’ll explain how you can access this capability shortly.
LLM’s can also be leveraged to deliver virtual assistants. Ours is called Trados Copilot and it’s available across the entire Trados platform. With Studio 2024 you can access three new Trados Copilot capabilities: AI Assistant, Smart Help and Smart Review. Let’s look at each of these in turn:
AI Assistant for terminology-aware translation and more
I'm especially excited about Trados Copilot – AI Assistant, because this is one of the ways you can access Generative Translation capabilities when working in the Trados Studio desktop environment. In particular, AI Assistant can be used to automatically apply all approved terminology during translation.
This is one of the most common frustrations when using machine translation (MT) – it cannot handle terminology reliably. MT can really struggle with terminology consistency and specialist terms, and even if I have a termbase or glossary that specifies what terms to use in specific contexts, it won’t make a difference as the MT provider doesn’t have access to it. Of course, Studio makes it as convenient as possible for me to find the words that exist in my termbase and replace them with the correct translation manually. But wouldn't it be great if we could automate this? That's what we can now do with AI Assistant, available out-of-the-box in Studio 2024.
You can utilize this ‘terminology-aware translation’ option in a few different scenarios, directing the LLM to use your terminology when generating translations. And because of the linguistic fluency of the LLM, you can expect the language around your preferred terms to be adapted for fluency, improving the odds of getting a correct and natural result. I just love this development and have high hopes for its impact on translation productivity.
But back to how you can access these terminology-aware translation results - firstly you can deploy the LLM as a translation provider for initial translation. All translation results will have any known terms and any prompts you have set applied, and you can edit the translation results as usual. Alternatively, you can use the LLM as a post-editing assistant, where you can prompt it for translation alternatives as you work through the document. If used this way, you can apply the prompt to MT output, your own translations, TM-matched segments or the LLM’s own output, and any known terminology will be taken into consideration during this process too.
I've written a separate blog on AI Assistant if you want to know more about the different ways to use it. But the key takeaway is we want to democratize access to generative translation for the entire supply chain. While AI Assistant supports the leading two LLM providers for now (you need your own subscription), this will grow. Trados Studio will become your hub for accessing LLMs, just as it already is for MT providers (with more than 50 available to download from the RWS AppStore). As this AI technology evolves, we'll be helping you to make the most of it.
Smart Help for intelligent assistance in the cloud
The second Copilot capability is Smart Help, which is available when working in our cloud platform. It’s an AI-powered virtual assistant which uses our own secure LLM to offer intelligent assistance at the click of a button. It can answer any question you put to it, based on our product documentation. Simply type a question into the Copilot window and the AI chatbot will answer it directly and give you links to the relevant parts of the product documentation. It really is that simple! No more flipping through hundreds of pages of documentation or navigating away to separate tabs; the answers are now just a chat away.
Smart Review for AI-enabled quality assessment
And last but not least, we have Smart Review which serves as a linguistic reviewer. It can evaluate the translation quality of any segment, whatever the source of the translation - whether you have manually translated it, received a match from a TM or used an MT or LLM provider for automatic translation - and give it a score between 0 and 100 together with a rationale for why it has scored it that way. This allows you to interactively review translation quality as you work – letting you be smarter about where to focus your post-editing efforts, with the score helping you decide if you should review the output or can safely accept it without review.
Even better, as you review, approve and adapt translations, your input can be used to help Smart Review improve in the future. The more you use it, the more you can trust the scores, saving you even more time!
Smart Review is currently available in beta and can be leveraged if you have the Smart Review entitlement in your cloud account. If enabled, you can work with Smart Review natively in the online editor, or in the desktop editor by using the Trados Copilot–Smart Review app.
Better accessibility and new integrations
Besides GenAI, the recent changes to Studio that I'm most excited about are the developments that improve accessibility. In fact, many of these developments are the result of an RWS Foundation initiative to enable over 1,000 blind translators to work independently with Trados. A team of subject matter experts (SMEs) are working closely with our development and QA teams to ensure that the user experience is as seamless, intuitive, and empowering as possible for visually impaired translators. We are well on our way to delivering this, making Trados Studio 2024 the most accessible, feature-rich CAT tool available. Having said that, there is still more we can do, so we pledge to continue making strides in this area.
Here are some of the exciting new accessibility capabilities available in Studio 2024:
- Support for screen readers: We've done a lot of work under the hood of our desktop application to make it accessible to screen readers. This means you can now use a screen reader for every stage in the project workflow, from creating and managing the project to translating and delivering final files.
- Integrate with third-party apps: This modernization of the Studio desktop application has also led to some other interesting benefits for all users. For example, the desktop application can now integrate with many third-party apps, one of these being Grammarly. Grammarly is now available directly in the desktop editor, significantly enhancing the user experience.
- Dictation capabilities in the online editor: We’ve also released an important accessibility capability to the online editor – the ability to transcribe text and execute more than 130 actions through voice input or command. This is currently available in nine languages to date, allowing users to complete a plethora of tasks simply by using their voice.
Accessibility is a big focus for us now, and we really want to hear from you on this subject. Tell us what you're finding helpful or not, what you wish you could do with Studio, or anything else you think we need to know.
Strengthening our cloud and desktop integration
The Manager view: With both a cloud and desktop environment, Trados Studio users can move between translation environments with the click of a button. We’re continuously looking for new, better ways to align the two, to ensure your transition is as seamless as possible. One of the more recent enhancements we’ve made in this area is the Manager view.
We originally launched the Manager view as a beta release with Studio 2022 while we gathered feedback on its use and developed it into the powerful tool it is today. In Studio 2024, it's now out of beta and fully available in the desktop application. So, what exactly is it? I’m sure you’re wondering…
The Manager view offers you a whole new way of working with projects, files and reports. Its UI is inspired by the Trados cloud platform, enabling you to work with both projects and files in a single window. It doesn't matter where the files and projects have been created or stored (cloud platform, shared server or local machine), you can view them in one place along with key analytics and reports. Plus, multi-window and multi-monitor support make it easy to work on and compare multiple projects at once. You can still also use the separate files and projects views too (we’ve taken nothing away!), so the choice is yours.
Cloud resources for batch processing in the desktop: Another key advancement available in Studio 2024 is the ability to use cloud resources for batch processing in local Studio projects. This is a breakthrough improvement and was highly requested by project managers with a subscription to Trados Team, Accelerate or Enterprise who utilize the hybrid way of working (leveraging both the browser and desktop application), so it's fantastic to be able to make it happen.
Users can now take advantage of both environments when working with cloud projects, enabling them to maximize their productivity and have a much more flexible workflow overall.
These are just some of the many ways we’re working to create a more seamless experience for all Studio users. We’ve also made more than 100 improvements to the online editor and cloud terminology – including adding smart actions, new real-time previews, a document structure information (DSI) panel and terminology management enhancements.
Learn more
As usual with these launch summaries, I can't cover everything. I've not talked about the fact that Trados Studio now offers native support for Language Weaver machine translation quality evaluation (MTQE) in the online and desktop editors, or about our improvements to file-handling and progress tracking. If you’d like to learn about everything we have delivered, read our what’s new brochure and release notes.
Alternatively, if you’re ready to make the move to Studio 2024 you can buy now! Freelance translators can purchase via our pricing page, while corporations and language service providers should contact their account manager or reach out to us directly.
Daniel Brockmann
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