Update a project

Sometimes, once a project has already started, clients might come back with either additional files or updated files. Smartcat has built-in features to help you in both cases. (Important note: this update feature only works on specific types of files. Notably, .docx files are not able to use this feature.) To add or update files in the project, go to the main workspace of the project page and click on the down arrow next to the Upload button above the documents:

The drop-down list will offer three options:

Let's say we want to select Upload documents. This will take you to the file section page similar to the one at the beginning of the project creation process:

Note: Even if you have selected the wrong option in the drop-down menu, you can still navigate to the correct tab on this page.

To move on, select the documents that you want to add to the project. If this is a new document, you will need to confirm the project information (languages) and also select options that will vary depending on the file format (see the article about File formats). By the way, you may upload the file only for one target languages if you don't need it to be translated into other languages of a project.

Then hit the Finish button, and the document will be added to the project and processed using the linguistic assets of that project accordingly.

If you have selected a document that is already part of the project (same name), you will be given two options before the file is processed:

Update — The existing document will be replaced by the new one. All the translation work done up to date on this file will automatically be transferred to the new file(extracted from the translation memory applied on writing), so no work will get lost. Yet task assignments will be canceled, so you will need to re-assign the tasks to linguists.

Smartcat allows for some formats like PO(Serge) or XML to avoid assignment cancellation and update segments by ID.

Upload — The document will be added to the project and a number will be added to the file name to distinguish it from the other file with the same name, which was previously uploaded. The document will be processed using language assets applied to the project.

Once files have been added to the project, you will need to update the project statistics.

Note: Both actions utilize Smartwords for the retranslation of your documents.

You can add additional target languages to a project at any time, even after files have been uploaded.

1. Go to Project overview → Settings → Settings (cog icon)

2. Under Target Languages, add the new language (e.g., Croatian)

3. Before clicking Save, complete these important steps:

   • Click Set up MT and select the relevant custom engine for your content type (e.g., for motorcycle content, select the appropriate custom engine like "Motorcycle (Claude 4.5 Sonnet)")

   • Enable Apply new languages to all documents upon save so the new language is applied to existing files

4. Click Save

Important notes:

• If you skip the Apply new languages to all documents upon save option, the new language will only apply to files uploaded after the change

• Make sure to configure the appropriate MT engine for the new language to ensure translation quality matches your project requirements