Translation Memory (TM) - What is it? How does it work?

In this guide: Understand the benefits of Translation Memory and find out how you can leverage this technology on Redokun.

What is Translation Memory (TM)?

Translation Memory is a bilingual database containing terms, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs that your team has previously translated and confirmed.

For simplicity, we call them “computer-assisted translations” in some of our user guides.

TM is a powerful tool:

• It increases translation quality and consistency.
• In the long term, it can also save you money by reducing the amount of work your translator has to do from scratch.

If you want to learn more about this technology, we wrote a post all about Translation Memory. We have also collected some interesting statistics about TM in the infographic below to help you understand its value.

How can you enjoy the benefits of TM on Redokun?

TM in the Web Editor

Redokun uses TM to suggest previously approved translations that can be used again within the same document and in other documents on your list.

These suggestions are generated based on the degree of similarity between the old and new source segments.

Reusing past translations increases uniformity and saves you from having to translate the same sentences more than once.

Each Redokun account has its own TM.

Pre-translate with TM

TM can also be used to quickly fill up the translation boxes of your document. To learn more, check out how Pre-translate with Translation Memory works.

What happens to your TM when you invite a translator to translate a document?

When you invite a translator to translate a document, Redokun automatically grants them access to your TM for the language pair to which the translator is assigned.

For example, you upload a document with the source language set to English, and you invite a translator to complete the translation in Italian. In this case, Redokun will only grant them access to your English to Italian TM.

Moreover, to protect your data, the translator will not be able to download or export your TM to use it outside of Redokun. They will only have access to the it while using Redokun to translate your document.

What happens to your TM when you are part of a team?

When a new member joins your team, the TMs are merged. The new member will have complete access to the team’s TM, and the team will have access to the new member's TM.

Do you have some old translations to integrate into Redokun?

• Do you have a TMX file? If you have translations saved in a TMX file, visit this user guide to learn how to import them.
• Do you have some documents that you used to exchange translations before? Companies that just started using Redokun would often already have some documents that they have used to translate their content previously. These usually come in the form of a table in a spreadsheet or a word document. If this is your case too, you can import these translations using our template. Check out this user guide to learn how.
• Do you have documents that are already translated? Check out this user guide.

Can I export my TM?

Yes, you can. Follow this user guide to learn how to export your Translation Memories from Redokun.