Book a demo

Sign up free

← Back to Help Center

Project management

37 articles

Create a project in Smartcat

Custom project creation | Smartcat Help Center This article will walk you through the typical steps involved in creating projects. Here’s how it works: Open Smartcat and log in with your credentials.On your workspace's home page, select Create a projectin the templates section under your workspace’s name. This will open Smartcat’s project creation workflow. Select a template (not required). To use a premade template, either created by yourself or one of Smartcat’s default templates, or to create a new one, click the Change template button at the top right of the workflow. Enter your name and deadline. These fields are not mandatory. The “project name” field is empty by defaultIf you don’t provide a name and don’t upload any files, it will automatically be named “New project” after clicking on “Create a project”. If that name is already taken, a number will be added.If you don't provide a name but upload some files, Smartcat will automatically name it “Project: name of the first file without extension” after clicking “Create a project”. If that name is already taken, a number will be added.If you provide a name already taken, a number will be added next to it. Select source and target languages. Choose from a list of all languages, dialects, and previously selected languages. Languages that are not supported by AI translation are shown in gray. Upload files (not required). In this section, you can upload files to be translated. Note that you can still add files at later stages in the project. Additional settings. Open this menu to customize your project workflow. You can set a simple AI translation, AI translation with human review (the default setting), manual translation, and manual translation + editing. Click Create project at the bottom of the workflow. Once your project is created, you can upload linguistic resources, assign tasks to team members and freelancers, and control other settings. FAQ Can I delete one language from a multilingual project? You can only delete languages for translation (target languages from the project settings. There you can delete languages that you don’t need. In the project creation workflow we described above, you will need to ensure that you have not assigned any tasks for the language pairs you don’t require. What is the maximum size of files that Smartcat can process? Smartcat can process files up to 512 MB.

Add team members to your Smartcat workspace

Workspace user management | Smartcat Help Center Learn the steps necessary to quickly and easily add members to your Smartcat team. On your Smartcat account, you can add as many team members as you like – Smartcat has unlimited seats meaning you have an unlimited amount of users you can add under one account or subscription plan. Members can be as followed, including information about their access rights: administrators - full access and administration, including projects, team member level of access, and payments project managers - team management, projects, linguistic resource/assets, suppliers, and payments resource managers - management of translation memories and glossarieslinguists - access to assigned tasks in the editor Adding new members From your Smartcat workspace, click on Team or on the Invite button directly that is found right on that Team shortcut. (Discover all the things you can do in the Smartcat Workspace ) Then, click Invite, which will bring you to the following screen, where you can send the invite via: email addressa link that you copy and then paste directly into your chat with that team member (perhaps on Slack, Teams, or whichever tool you use). The link remains active for 30 days.  Also, specify the role that this person should have, as mentioned earlier. As an administrator, you can change their access right at any time. Once you send it via email, you will know that it's been sent via a pop up. You can also send them an email right from Smartcat that comes pre-written for you. It explains that you want them to join to collaborate on translations with you. You can tweak this message. Managing your team members overview Once you have invited a new team member, you can manage them in your team overview, where you can see your team and linguists as well as see who has been invited and hasn't yet accepted your invite. There you can also see their activity, workload (their assigned tasks), availability based on their profile, ratings, and any notes that may have been left about the person in question. FAQ Can I invite my clients to my account to view progress? Using the User access levels features from the Settings menu, it is possible to create a new profile giving view access to a specific customer project. Simply add the client's contacts to My Team and assign them the custom profile created.

Smartcat integration 101: Basic scenario for content exchange

Integration for content exchange | Smartcat Help Center Developer documentation has been migrated to the dedicated resource developers.smartcat.com. This page is deprecated but will temporarily remain available for your convenience. First of all, make sure you have read the Getting started guide (it’s short!) and chek out our educational video. Some terms to start with This scenario addresses two main entities: a project and a document. A project is where you store your files, define source and target languages (yes, we support multilingual projects), set deadlines, attach linguistic assets, and connect AI translation. A document is a file imported to Smartcat which can have import settings and one or more target languages. By default, an imported document has all target languages of the project. The document cannot have a deadline (but document assignments can). You can upload new documents to Smartcat or update existing ones. Each project and each document have unique identifiers. Create a project and import a document Let's start with the POST project/create method. Create a project with the most basic data: name and source/target languages. You can experiment with other parameters later. Please keep in mind that a parameter “assignToVendor” is required to request the method successfully. If you are testing the API in Swagger, do not include Content-Disposition, Content-Type, and Boundary to the body of your request. See our project/create example You can upload a document while creating a project using the documentProperties model. Alternatively, you can create an empty project and skip the documentProperties model. To import a file into an existing project, use the POST project/document method. Most parameters are optional for the basic scenario, so don’t dig deep in the beginning. See our project/document example Update a document If you have a newer document version (which is quite usual for a continuous scenario), you can update it in your project using the PUT document/update method and the document ID. The corresponding document will be overwritten in Smartcat. All translations that have already been done will be inserted in the new document through pretranslation. See our document/update example Calculate statistics In some cases, you will need to calculate how many words your document has and how many of them are translation memory matches. To do this, call GET project/{projectid}/statistics. See our project/{projectId}/statistics example Note that the statistics will be calculated for all documents in the project. If you need statistics for a specific document, use GET document/statistics. See our document/statistics example If you only need the overall word count, without translation memory matches, you can simply use the wordsCount parameter returned by the GET document method. See our document example Track translation status You can get information about your document at any time: progress for each workflow stage, task status, assignments, etc. To get this information for a specific document, use GET document with the corresponding document ID. The example would be the same as the one above. To get information about the progress and statuses of all your documents at once and the overall project status and progress, use GET project/{projectid} with the corresponding project ID. See our project/{projectId} example You can set up callbacks to track translation statuses. Export the translation To export a translated document, use a POST document/export request. This requests Smartcat to render the final document. For smaller documents, you’ll receive the task ID in the response. For larger ones, rendering the target file will take some time depending on the document size and server load. In this case, Smartcat will send you a callback with the task ID to /document/exportRequestCompleted once the exported document is ready. See our document/export example PS: The parameter “stageNumber” defines a number of a stage in your project workflow. For example, 1 is for “Translation” if it’s the first stage, 2 is for “Editing”, and so on. By the way, you can also export unfinished translations if you’re feeling impatient. Once you have the task ID, you can download the resulting file with GET document/export/{taskid}. See our document/export/{taskid} example

Understanding Personal Spaces for All Users

How to use personal spaces in Smartcat Smartcat personal spaces allow all users to manage their personal workspace and personalize it to their work preferences.  Centralized management via the left sidebar The left sidebar is the main place for client management, with all settings in one place and accessible from any page of the Smartcat platform.Capabiltiies via the left sidebar:manage account and go to settingschange the regionquickly go to the page with tasksview incoming messages and go to chatmanage and go to other organizations and workspacesnavigate within each workspace Personal spaces All the necessary personal work management tools are also at hand via the left sidebar.The left sidebar is the centralized location for users to manage their personal settings. Depending on the role, the contents of this panel may change.Users can quickly and effectively:go straight to the main area of work where all tasks are locatedmove between regionsmanage paymentscontrol correspondence For linguists, all tools are always be on the left sidebar menu. This menu is always available on every page. Workspaces and organizations In the left sidebar, users can see the selected organization and all workspaces related to it. Inside each workspace, the user can see the navigation related to it for all pages. This means that they can go to another section of the menu directly from the home page by simply selecting it in the left sidebar.If they want to go to another organization and select a workspace in it, they can do so via the dropdown options. In the dropdown itself, there is a search line that simplifies the search for the workspace that a user needs if there is a large number of workspaces.When selecting a workspace, users can immediately manage visibility settings. This function has become closer and now users can adjust the woekspace that they want to see without going to the settings page. When hovering over a workspace panel, users can immediately see their privacy. They can understand which workspaces are paid and which are closed. If a user wants to go to a workspace that is closed to them, they can do so simply by clicking on it. They see a window through which they can send a request for access to the workspace and an increase in access rights. This works for all linguists. Administrators of this workspace will get an email with a role update request. Via the link, the administrator goes to the user profile where they can update the role. After gaining access to a previously closed workspace, the user will see a message about this next to the workspace. If a user switches to another organization, the message that they received an invitation will be displayed in the panel. If a user is invited to several workspaces at once, they can see this in the window displaying all these workspaces and also familiarize themselves with the basic information about these workspaces. Set an icon for your organization Now you can choose an icon for your organization. Go to the Manage Organisation page via the Organization and workspaces dropdown. On the this page click on the organization icon and choose a picture for this organization. More personalized workspaces Users can now quickly change the name of a workspace, add a description to give colleagues an understanding of it, and also set an image – all without having to go into settings.

Manage repetitions in Smartcat projects

Repetition management | Smartcat Help Center During the project word count analysis, Smartcat identifies segments that are repeated both inside individual documents but also across all the documents in a project. Smartcat offers multiple options to deal with these repetitions. These options can be selected by the project manager in which case they will apply to all project participants. If no option is selected by the PM, the translation team will be free to choose how to deal with the repetitions individually. That last option might not be ideal as it might lead to uneven workloads since some users might choose not to share repetitions with the rest of the team. The project manager can choose the repetition options in the Settings tab of the project page: This will bring up the following dialog box: Allow auto-propagation: this main option will tell Smartcat that repeated segments are to be propagated automatically throughout the project when checked. Propogate to segments with different case: indicates how to deal with repetitions are using a different case (lower or upper):Use the original case - When inserting the repetition, Smartcat will match the case of the new segment. For example if the previous segment was "continued" but the new segment is "Continued", the text will be replaced automatically because it's a text repetition, but the translation will start with an upper case letter to match the new segment.Use the match case - Smartcat will ignore the capitalization of the new segment and use what was used in the segment that was previously translated. In our last example, the translation would now start with a lower case letter. Propogate to confirmed segments: instructs Smartcat to propagate translation to segments even if they have been confirmed already. This is helpful if for example the translators goes back to a repeated segments and makes a change. Confirm auto-propogated segments: instructs Smartcat to apply the status of the current segment to all the other repeated segments. So once the translator marks the segment confirmed for one stage, all other repetitions will be confirmed as well for that stage. In the editor, the translation team can change the auto-propagation options if the PM has not selected any. Inside the editor, there is also an option to exclude segments from repetitions. Repetitions are indicated by a down arrow under the segment number. By clicking on the arrow, we can mark the segment as being excluded from repetitions. This can be useful when dealing with titles or picture caption where sentence can be cut in half and we don't want these segments to be repeated.

Assignments configuration overview and how-to guide

How to use assignments configuration in Smartcat Assignments Configuration is designed to simplify project management, reduce manual effort, and enhance the overall efficiency of your workflow. Here’s a breakdown of the key functionalities that this feature offers: Project Auto-launch: This feature allows you to trigger assignments automatically whenever new scope is added to a project. AI Assignments: Our AI-driven assignments automatically place translation tasks with marketplace freelancers based on machine learning suggestions. This saves you time and also ensures you get the best-suited talent for your project. Revamped Assignment Templates (Now - Template Assignments): We’ve completely reimagined the assignment template user flow, making it more intuitive and user-friendly. Creating assignment templates has never been easier. Project Templates Integration: This integration allows you to launch assignments at the beginning of a project, considering preselected assignment settings and sources. It streamlines the project setup process and ensures consistency. How It Works Our new feature is seamlessly integrated into your workflow. Users can access it by clicking on the “Assignment Configuration” button, which opens a side panel containing assignment sources. Within this side panel, you’ll find a convenient tile with assignment sources. Users can toggle between AI assignments and Template assignments, but only one source can be selected at a time. Please note that some options are bound to specific subscription tiers, so be sure to check the availability conditions for your plan. AI Assignments AI assignment selects a suitable supplier for each task based on overall supplier performance and their experience with similar translation tasks. If the selected supplier declines the invitation or fails to accept it within 24 hours, the invitation is automatically sent to the next 10 best suppliers for each task in the project. After an assignment is fulfilled, AI assignment calculates the task’s deadline and populates it automatically, reducing manual effort. Template Assignments Users now gain more visibility and control over the assignment configuration process. The most notable change is the ability to create a hierarchical structure of assignment templates from the assignment templates configuration UI. The new user interface provides comprehensive insights into Assignment Templates contents, including translators / language service providers, tasks coverage, and a flexible HUD. Project Auto-launch Whenever the new scope (files, segments) is added to a project, new task assignments are dispatched.Auto-launch could work with both AI and Template assignment sources: just select a preferable source from the side panel.You can toggle between different assignment sources at any time: the system will prompt you with a confirmation pop-up for changes to the assignment source during the automation runtime. How to invite multiple suppliers Smartcat lets you invite multiple suppliers to a single task simultaneously and choose how the work is distributed among them. Invite multiple suppliers Go to Projects and open the relevant projectGo to the Tasks page and locate the task (for example, Translation or Editing)Click Invite next to the taskIn the supplier suggestion window, select your invitation mode in the bottom left corner (see the table below). You can also select the invitation mode next to the Invite button. Search for suppliers by name or email, or select from your vendor listCheck the boxes next to all suppliers you want to inviteClick Send InvitationsEach selected supplier receives an invitation notification and can accept or decline. Choose your invitation mode ModeHow it worksFirst to acceptMultiple suppliers are invited, but the task is assigned only to the first one who acceptsEveryone who acceptedAll suppliers who accept receive access to the task Use the Split workload function to divide the work among the suppliers in advance. Add more suppliers after an initial invitation If you use the Everyone who accepted mode, you can add more suppliers by clicking Invite more. If you use the First to accept mode and you have already invited one supplier, they accepted, and want to add more, you cannot update the current assignment directly. You must cancel it and reinvite. If a supplier has not accepted yet, you can invite more suppliers.Cancel the current assignmentRe-invite all suppliers, and select the mode appropriate to your workflow.Select all suppliers and click Send InvitationsAll suppliers who accept receive a portion of the task.⚠️ Cancelling an assignment does not delete completed work. Smartcat calculates the cost of work completed to that point, and the supplier is compensated accordingly. The linguist temporarily loses access to the file and must accept the new invitation to regain access. A new cost calculation begins for remaining work once they re-accept. Why is the invite button grayed out? If the Invite button is grayed out or unavailable when assigning a supplier to a task, this is almost always caused by one of two things.Cause 1: The file is still being processedAfter uploading a document, Smartcat needs time to parse the file and extract the translatable content. While processing is underway, supplier invitation is temporarily unavailable and the Invite button appears inactive.Resolve it:Wait until file processing is fully complete, then try again. The Invite button becomes active automatically once the file is ready.Result: The Invite button is active and supplier assignment can proceed.Cause 2: Task volume has not been addedFor file types that cannot be automatically parsed, or if you select Do not parse when uploading a file, Smartcat cannot calculate the task volume. Supplier invitation remains disabled until a volume is entered manually. This also occurs if you select Do not parse when uploading a fileResolve it:Open the projectGo to the Tasks pageLook for an alert requesting volume inputEnter the required number of words or pagesClick SaveThe Invite button becomes active and supplier assignment can proceed. FAQs Which invitation mode should I use if I only need one supplier? Use First to accept. The task is assigned to the first supplier who responds, and remaining invitations are cancelled automatically. Will the supplier lose their completed work if I cancel the assignment to add more people? No. Completed work is preserved and the supplier is compensated for it. They will need to accept the new invitation to continue working. Can I see which suppliers accepted and which declined? If you enable Response to invitation received notifications (disabled by default), you receive notifications for suppliers who accept or decline the invite. I waited for processing to complete but the Invite button is still grayed out. What should I do? Check the Tasks page for a volume input alert. If no alert is shown and the button remains unavailable, contact support@smartcat.ai with the project name, a screenshot of the Tasks page, and a description of what you are seeing.

Conduct concordance searches

Conducting concordance searches | Smartcat Help Center As you move from one segment to the next, the system offers you translation matches from the TM. However, you might be seeking the translation of a single word or phrase rather than the entire segment. In such cases, you can use the concordance search by searching the TM for matches containing the word or phrase. Select the word in the Source or Target field and press the button in the toolbar or Ctrl+K.  The word will be copied to the concordance search field, and the Concordance Search tab will display matches from translation memories applied to the project and containing the keyword. Alternatively, you can also type in the word in the Concordance Search tab, select Source or Target, and hit the Search button. One of the advantages of a tool like Smartcat where the data is centralized is that concordance searches will look in the entire TM, not its local subset. This results in more relevant matches. To find translations of a word or phrase in any available TMs that are not enabled on the project, use the Global Search tab under Linguistic assets in the main workspace. Then hit Global concordance and type in a keyword. To figure out a translation memory where the keyword is found, hit the downward arrow to the right of the keyword.

Manage translations of non-CAT files

Managing non-CAT translations | Smartcat Help Center There are orders placed with pretty exotic file formats or non-text files that practically cannot be parsed by the system and opened in the Editor. The option to upload files without processing have cropped up exactly from such cases and for dealing with such files in a single loop with more common formats. Thus, it allows you to integrate work with non-text files into the general project management system and assign tasks, for example, translation of video and audio materials, to freelancers from the Smartcat Marketplace. The only thing left is to figure out how to work with such files in Smartcat. Uploading files into a project Almost all formats can get uploaded into Smartcat except for executable files from this list. You can also skip processing files in the text formats available for parsing if you click on the file icon on the first step of project creation and mark the Do not parse checkbox. If a project contains only files uploaded without parsing, the Statistics, Pretranslate, and Linguistic Assets tabs won't appear, at least until some text files get loaded and processed into that project. Estimating the amount of work Considering that Smartcat hasn't processed non-CAT files, it is required to estimate the amount of work on the assignments page. All workflow stages besides Source layout check and DTP are calculated in words while the layout stages in pages. The cost is the rate per unit for a service taken from a freelancer's profile. That said, a freelancer that has the rate of $0.5 per word for the Translation service with the amount of work as 100 words will receive $50. Indeed, the system won't analyze discounts for fuzzy and context matches since files aren't parsed. Assignment You can assign freelancers if they have a service in the profile that matches the project workflow stage. The team hasn't yet added workflow stages that support other types of units, such as minute, hour, or document. Therefore, when assigning a video or audio file, as a workaround, you have to set the estimate in words for calculating the cost. For example, if you've agreed in the Chat with a freelancer that the cost of Transcription will be $100, then set the freelancer's rate as $1 for Translation and the amount of work as 100 words before the assignment. The assignment process itself does not differ much from the standard one. Once assigned, a freelancer will be able to download the source file and upload the resulting file back to the system after completing the task in the original or another format. When you change the document status to Completed, the corresponding job will appear in the Payment section. It's not a big deal If a freelancer's uploaded an incorrect file by mistake, and the document is already completed since you can always restart the task and reassign it. Issuing a quote Another useful feature when working with non-CAT files in Smartcat is the option to calculate the quote and issue the invoice for a client. You can learn more about forming quotes and invoices in the Client Management section.

Perform layout checks

Layout checks for precision | Smartcat Help Center Sometimes when you upload a file to Smartcat, you may want to check it for proper formatting before proceeding to translation. Did you process the file with OCR and aren't sure about the results? Or maybe you want to make sure that the resulting file's formatting isn't all over the place? Whatever the reason is, adding the layout check as an additional step in the project will let you change the document layout after it's been uploaded to Smartcat. In fact, there are two options: the source layout check to be used before actually starting your work in the Editor, and the layout check/DTP for the resulting document. This workflow step is only available for company profiles. If you are a freelancer and need to check the layout of a document processed with OCR, here’s what you can do: Upload the file and process it with OCR.Download the resulting file, it will be in the .docx format. If there was no translation, it will just be the source text.Correct it if needed and upload it back to Smartcat. Source layout check As mentioned above, the source layout check often goes with OCR. Text extraction doesn't always work perfectly, so checking the document first can be a good idea, specifically for graphic file formats with poor image quality. You can add the layout check when creating a project, just like any other workflow step, although it belongs to its own "Pre-processing" category. The source layout check can be added after a project has been created, too, as long as the project still has the Created status. The source layout check can only be done before the work on other workflow stages, like translation, begins. Both an assignee and a manager can export the source document, check and correct it, and upload it back. Please note that Smartcat will not apply any of the linguistic assets (translation memories or AI translation) to the files selected for the layout check until the process is completed. Any statistics generated at that point will not include the word count from the files still at this stage. To conduct a source layout check, click Open and select the Source layout check option from the context menu. The Layout check page will appear. Here you can download the source document, then upload it back after checking and correcting it if needed. Once the layout check is finished, you will be able to apply linguistic resources to it and include it in the statistics. If you have used OCR, you can download the extracted.docx file, or use it as the resulting file for the layout check right away. Once you are sure that the file is good to go, click Complete task to finish the source layout check. If you find that there's something left to be done, you can restart the process as long as the work on the next stage hasn't started yet. Layout check/DTP This option is here to make sure that the final document looks just as good as the original. This is specifically relevant for optically recognized texts but can apply to other files as well. Sometimes the translated text is just longer or shorter than the source document, which can be a hurdle when working with complex files with many elements. Unlike the source layout check, the layout check/DTP can be added at any point in the project settings. To start the layout check/DTP, select the option in the context menu. Please note that it can only be done once all the previous tasks have been finished. For the layout check/DTP, both the source and the resulting files are available for check and comparison. Download the translation and the source file for further adjustment, upload the result of your work or click Deliver unchanged if everything is ok. As with the source layout check, you can restart the process even after clicking Complete task. How to assign the layout check The layout check assignments are similar to regular assignments but do have a few differences. As with the regular assignments, you can select a team member for the job on the Task assignment page. Your in-house team members will show up in the list of your team either way, but the freelancers from the Marketplace should have this particular service indicated in their profiles in order to be assigned. This can be done in the linguists' private profiles at your end (more on that here). To add this service, Click Add Service and select Other Choose Desktop publishing and set the rate, then click Save Back to assignments, and now the Marketplace freelancer shows up on the list as well. Once you've assigned a freelancer, you can set the estimate for their work in pages. This step can be skipped for the in-house members. And that's it for the assignments. Needless to say, you can also use our Marketplace to look for freelancers with a Desktop publishing service. That’s how you can easily include the layout check in your workflow. It’s worth trying out if you are working with graphic file formats or documents with complex structure and elements.

Understanding word match levels in Smartcats CAT tool

Word match levels | Smartcat Help Center Learn the differences between word match levels in Smartcat's CAT tool, Smartcat Editor It can sometimes be confusing differentiating between the different level of word matches when using a computer-assisted-translation (CAT) tool like Smartcat Editor. In this article, let's look at these differences, explaining 100% matches compared to 101% and 102% matches, and also fuzzies and near matches. 100% and 101%/102%. What's the difference? 101/102% matches are called by different names, depending on the CAT tool. also referred to as context matches, perfect matches or ICE matches. When a segment is stored in a Smartcat translation memory, Smartcat stores not only the source and target text, but also the content of the previous and following source segment. For example, this is what you might see in the TM. <Previous Segment>  I live in a small village. <Source Segment> I have a small house. <Translated Segment> J'ai une petite maison. <Following Segment> It is blue. The translation is stored only for the segment that is being translated, but the other two segments are used to provide context. 100% matches explained If this same segment was encountered again, and neither of the two accompanying segments matched the TM-store, there would be a 100% match because only the text matches. 101% matches explained If in the next document, one of the context sentences was present, there would be a 101% match. 102% matches explained If both were present, it would be a 102% match. Having the context sentences match what is stored in the TM helps increase the certainty that the translation is a perfect match for new segment. In practice, 101/102% matches are often locked during pre-translation by project managers when the project is started because customers don't pay for these segments in most cases. Explaining nearly exact and fuzzy matches in Smartcat Let's look at the difference between nearly exact and fuzzy matches, as well as the different tiers of fuzzy matches. Nearly exact match (95%-99%)The source text in the segment is identical to the match, albeit with minor discrepancies in numbers, tags, punctuation marks, or spacing. In pre-translation, this represents a good match by default, though it can be customized. Fuzzy match (50%-94%)The source text closely resembles the source text in the match, yet some variations already exist in the text. When it comes to the required editing, three categories of fuzzy matches can be identified. High fuzzy (85-95%): For segments of average length or longer (typically 8-10 words or more), there is usually a discrepancy of just one word.Medium fuzzy (75-84%): In segments of average length or longer (8-10 words or more), typically there is a variation of two words.Low fuzzy (50%-74%): In segments of average length or longer (8-10 words or more), the difference encompasses more than two words. In pre-translation, the term "any match" encompasses all types of partial matches together, commencing at 50% by default, though this can also be adjusted to suit preferences.

Show more