Smartcat vs Smartling: The Ultimate Comparison 2024

Smartcat vs Smartling? Aren’t they the same thing? Actually, no. Smartcat and Smartling are both translation management systems (TMS) with localization software designed for organizational use. While their names might look similar, they’re two completely separate companies with significant differences in their platforms, features, and capabilities.

In this detailed comparison, we’ll show you the difference between Smartling vs Smartcat and why Smartcat is the best translation management software for global enterprises.

Translation management software enables businesses and organizations that operate globally to manage the translation process efficiently. A TMS typically includes features such as project management, translation memory, AI translation, machine translation, and quality assurance. These features help streamline the translation process, reduce costs, and improve the quality of translated content.

Many translation management software solutions also offer integrations with popular content management systems, making it easy to manage and translate content across multiple platforms.

With the increasing demand for multilingual content, translation management software has become essential for companies looking to expand their global reach.

Smartcat is an end-to-end AI translation platform that includes AI sourcing of human linguists without onboarding. You can integrate it with your enterprise content management system (CMS) or learning management system (LMS) to localize all your text and audiovisual content into any language.

Smartling is a translation management system and translation agency. Like Smartcat, its integrated platform incorporates AI translation, to enable its users to generate automated translations from inside the platform.

The comparison table below shows the main differences between Smartcat and Smartling translation management software. Scroll down for more details about th eir localization features.

AI-powered translation is more than just machine translation. AI is behind all the best translation software because it harnesses large language models (LLMs) based on neural networks and proprietary algorithms to produce high-quality translations.

Smartcat and Smartling each have their own AI translation tool that lever ages the content in your translation memories and glossaries to produce an initial translation of your content.

Their systems are far more effective than running your content through Google Translate machine translation or ChatGPT because they use your past translations to help improve the initial translation quality score. This will reduce the need for human review and generate cost savings. You can also create custom prompts to better control translation style, such as sentence length or tone of voice.

Smartcat’s AI translation software stands out because it chooses the best algorithm for your language pair, learns from your edits, and improves the more you use it. Additionally, it has a very clean user interface and makes it easy for you to assign linguists directly from its marketplace to review the translation.

As high-quality translation management systems, both Smartcat and Smartlin g translate documents. Smartcat can handle over 50 file formats, while Smartling can ma nage 32 file types.

Where document translation is concerned, scanned PDFs are one of the most challenging file types. This is where an important difference between the two platforms comes in.

Smartcat analyzes your PDF file using advanced optical character recognition technology (OCR). It quickly extracts editable texts for automatic translation. You can edit source and target text in the Smartcat editor.

Smartling converts PDFs to Word. If you want to edit the converted PDF, you have to download it and check the Word document outside the platform, which is more time-consuming.

If you need an image translator, Smartcat uses the same advanced OCR mentioned above to produce high-quality translations of e mbedded images with intact formatting.

Smartling can only work with images that use text overlay, which means Smartcat is the more powerful choice for image translation.

Smartcat far outweighs Smartling in terms of functionality when it come s to video translation. It produces an AI transcription of your video that you can re fine and translate directly in its editor. You can produce burned-in subtitles and even get AI dubbing, all before you download the finished video. This will save you a lot of time when you translate your learning and marketing content, for example.

Smartling acts like a traditional CAT tool: You upload subtitle files (.srt or.vtt) and translate them. If you want to add the video for context, you have to upload it as a separate file. This is very cumbersome.

Smartcat is one of the best website translation tools on the market. It has a range of plugins and can seamlessly integrate with any website CMS to pass source text and translations between your website and the Smartcat translation platform.

Use the Smartcat AI website translator to produce a high-quality first draft. Then, linguists from the marketplace can easily be sourced to make any necessary edits in the translation edito r.

For website translation, Smartling has now also added CMS integrations. This is an improvement on its formal global delivery network, which was complicated and inefficient.

Translation memories (TM) are databases that hold all your past translations. When you do a new translation, you can leverage the content in your TMs to take advantage of all your previous content.

Translation glossaries are bilingual word lists. While a TM contains all the content you ever translated, glossaries are customized lists of preferred translations for specific terms.

You can program the AI to use pre-approved translations from your memories and glossaries when you use AI translation. This means you get a higher-quality AI translation the first time and can save on human review.

TMs and glossaries are also important ways to maintain the quality and consistency of brand voice and terminology over time and across a team.

Both Smartcat and Smartling offer similar functionality in terms of translation memories. The big difference is how much easier it is to create and manage glossaries in Smartcat.

• With Smartcat, you can create and edit your glossary inside the platform. You can upload pre-existing external glossaries, but you don't have to keep downloading and uploading to make changes.

• In Smartling, you create your glossary on the platform and then export it as a weighty spreadsheet. You then have to fill in the spreadsheet on your desktop before uploading it back to the platform. Then, if you want to update the glossary, you have to go through the whole cumbersome process again.

Check out how easy it is to build a glossary in Smartcat with our interactive create a glossary demo.

When it comes to workflow automation, Smartcat and Smartling operate differently. These differences can be real game-changers for your organization.

Smartcat uses AI-driven workflows, while Smartling still opts for traditional workflows. This significantly impacts your speed, agility, and efficiency when managing your translation projects.

Part of Smartling's business model is offering the services of a traditional translation agency. You can use Smartling as an intermediary to manage your translation projects through its TMS. This is convenient, but it also leads to higher translation costs owing to the intermediary fees that stand between you and the freelance linguist.

Smartcat offers you an enterprise-compliant procurement platform thro ugh its linguist marketplace. It has the first AI-matching algorithm in the industry to h elp you match the linguists (translators, editors, and proofreaders) in its enormous marketplace with your projects. No intermediaries are involved. You choose your vendors, and they're automatically offered the project.

What's more, our linguists worldwide all use a single invoicing system. This means that once the job is complete, Smartcat organizes payment. In short, you get all the advantages of working directly with freelance translators but without the burden of onboarding.

Smartling has a dashboard that lets you see the progress of your translation projects in real time. You also get alerts when content is ready for translation or review and standard quality checks with real-time error monitoring.

Smartcat offers all this but goes one step further by adding AI-based proactive project monitoring. If its system detects any problems related to quality, turnaround time, or price, it can intervene and reassign linguistic resources.

Both Smartcat and Smartling use scoring systems to assess translation quality. However, the two systems are very different.

Smartling displays the Quality Confidence Score on a graph. You interpret the quality based on what they call the seven key drivers: glossary terms, TM leverage, visual context, string length, quality check errors, workflow steps, and a vague category called “issues”. There’s no AI scoring.

This information is useful for localization professionals but requires interpretation and a specialist understanding of the translation process.

Smartcat ’s Translation Quality Score (TQS) is produced using AI. It's easy to understand because it’s reflected on a clear dial chart as a single number between 1 and 100. It’s available for each file, but it also works in the translation editor down to sentence and even word level.

While the Smartcat TQS chart may look simple, the AI that goes into producing the score is complex. It performs a real-time analysis of each sentence and phrase in the AI and human translations. Your content team can set the desired quality threshold they want to achieve. This can save your review team hours of work.

Smartcat allows you to cut out the intermediary and source linguists directly from its linguist marketplace. This delivers editing at a fraction of the cost of traditional outsourcing. Not only this, but Smartcat takes care of the entire vendor procurement process. You don’t have to do any onboarding. Your freelance linguists invoice Smartcat and get paid through our systems.

Another great feature of Smartcat is its AI-powered linguist matching. This streamlines the hiring process by analyzing translation content to identify the best linguist matches using factors like language combination, subject matter expertise, reviews, prices, and availability. With this feature, you’ll see a boost in productivity and translation quality.

Smartling, by contrast, acts as a language service provider. The company has a limited supply of contracted translators and editors to review content, but it can’t scale these resources efficiently. As the end user, you won't be able to contact or work directly with internal or external linguists.

As far as integrations are concerned, both Smartcat and Smartling offer a range of options to automate workflow between your tech stack and their platforms. Examples include WordPress plug-ins to enable you to translate and update your website content from the localization platform.

Smartling offers a more limited range of marketing workflows and integrations than Smartcat, which can also develop custom integrations for you. With Smartcat you have greater versatility and flexibility, especially if you work with a less common or custom system.

Compare the above user interfaces. Which looks easier to use?

Smartcat is considered one of the most user-friendly translation software platforms for enterprises. In G2 reviews, it scores 9.6 for ease of set-up and 9.3 for ease of use (compared with Smartling’s 8.0 and 8.4, respectively).

The Smartcat pricing model includes a free trial, a small-team option, and a customized enterprise option. It offers a transparent consumption-based subscription model based on two factors: translation volume and translation procurement (if you use it). For enterprises, it offers efficient and cost-effective integration development options.

The Smartling pricing model is more complex and harder to understand. It’s based on per-user fees and the volume of translated content, with additional costs for add-ons.

A further big differentiator in translation costs is that Smartling charges per user, while Smartcat offers an unlimited seat model at no extra cost. This means that, with Smartcat, you can involve every subject matter expert in your organization in your localization project. This can be essential in achieving success in new markets.

Both Smartcat and Smartling offer a ran ge of customer service op tions and resources.

Smartcat provides:

• A regularly updated set of learning resources through the Smartcat Academy. A wide range of step-by-step guides in the Help Center .

• A customer support team for technical and platform queries. This is as simple as submitting a support ticket, with different service level agreements available to clients.

Smartling has a similar support range. One observable difference is that you might find the help content harder to navigate due to its user interface.

While both Smartcat and Smartling supply a range of organization types, each of them has its area of specialization.

Smartcat is the best choice for enterprises and organizations that want to reduce costs by cutting out translation agencies. It's an excellent platform for marketing managers who want to translate all their materials and videos quickly. The Smartcat TMS is also popular among localization managers, such as in software localization, because it simplifies linguistic resource management through a single contract and invoice.

Smartling also serves localization managers in different industries, but one of its main customer groups is language service suppliers who manage their own teams of translators and run their projects inside Smartling.

Smartcat is particularly strong in eLearning and course creation. It seamlessly integrates with your learning platform and makes it very fast for you to translate and update a wide range of file types, including audiovisual content.

“Before Smartcat, it took us about a year to get an Articulate course translated into three languages,” Christopher Goodsell, AMPP.

If you’re still weighing up whether to choose Smartcat or Smartling as your translation management software, here's a quick list of the main reasons to choose Smartcat:

1. High-quality (95%+) AI-powered translation leverages your past content and learns from your edits to get even better over time.

2. AI linguist sourcing and project monitoring help you get higher quality and ensure turnaround.

3. Linguist marketplace to source linguists without onboarding (Smartcat handles vendor payments).

4. Faster and more intuitive glossary creation and updating.

5. Translates texts in images with advanced OCR recognition.

6. End-to-end video translation with AI voiceover.

7. A wide range of integrations with different CMSs and LMSs.

8. Clean and intuitive user interface.

9. Transparent pricing with unlimited seat model.

10. Excellent user support and training resources.

11. Ideal for eLearning platforms, marketing translation, and localization projects.

Seeing is believing. Try all the benefits of Smartcat for your translation projects today. Book your free demo now.