Open source translation management system (translate5)
Thread poster: Daniel McCosh
Daniel McCosh
Daniel McCosh
Germany
Local time: 13:40
German to English
Aug 11, 2016

Over the past few years I have been hoping to see the development of a truly open source translation management system (TMS) which allows translators/reviewers and co-ordinators to collaborate online and share resources and every now and then I've noticed the odd thread or two with people looking for the same thing. In the meantime, I've seen small teams collaborating effectively and sharing TMs with open source software such as OmegaT but a complete open TMS is still missing to the best of my k... See more
Over the past few years I have been hoping to see the development of a truly open source translation management system (TMS) which allows translators/reviewers and co-ordinators to collaborate online and share resources and every now and then I've noticed the odd thread or two with people looking for the same thing. In the meantime, I've seen small teams collaborating effectively and sharing TMs with open source software such as OmegaT but a complete open TMS is still missing to the best of my knowledge.
For people like myself who own small businesses and are working with teams of translators and reviewers in constantly changing configurations, we are in a bit of a niche between the limitation of small freelance team collaboration offerings such as Kilgray's Language Terminal or a full-blown TMS such as Groupshare, MemoQ Server and the like which may not be customizable in the way we want, or we may not always be able to influence the path of development in the way we want - which is why I think that a truly open source translation platform is important where the community really has a chance to support the development of the features they need.
Increasingly, collaboration services and TMS offerings are being provided as a service in the cloud, which I am not against in principle but an open source solution which can be self-hosted and that is designed in such a way that features can be activated and deactivated as needed thanks to a plug-in architecture is preferable to me than a service which is operated by another company.
For over a year now, I've been using the open source tool translate5 (www.translate5.net) for collaborating online with reviewers and recent developments in the translate5 project such as the integration of various sources for translation matches including transation memories, machine translation and the groundwork for extending this feature to integration with openTM2, SDL Groupshare, Slate and other providers are really moving towards to the development of an open translation management system. An open translation management system is something I believe would benefit many in the translation community and perhaps specifically public sector organizations (for example universities) who have large translation requirements, complex custom workflows and a large user base over many offices (which makes licensing and client installation complicated).
If you, like myself, have been looking for an open system for some time, I fully recommend finding out more about the translate5 project or getting involved directly. At the moment the project is in its second phase of crowdfunding and has already proven what can be achieved when the community gets together to solve its challenges together. I have written this post with the intention of attracting discussion from like-minded colleagues who have also looked into such systems and who are interested in sharing their experiences and may be interested in joining me and others in supporting the project.
Best regards,
Daniel McCosh
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Open source translation management system (translate5)






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