Understand and use linguistic assets

Smartcat linguistic assets are AI-driven capabilities in the Smartcat translation platform that help you to achieve better quality and consistency. They include translation memories and glossaries, and you can access them right on your private Smartcat workspace.

Access Linguistic assets via your navigation menu screen

Once you click on “Linguistic assets” you will then see come to a screen with options on your linguistic assets from a drop-down menu, shown below.

Linguistic assets page with options for: Glossaries, Translation Memories, Global Search, TM Editor.

Glossaries are organized collections of approved translations for specific terms. These can be technical terms, industry-specific jargon, or just set words that are used frequently in your content.

While you can use TMs to search for previous translations of a given term, glossaries provide a much more structured and organized interface, making them easier to use and maintain.

After you create or import a glossary you can associate it with a specific project.

If you enable a glossary on a project, Smartcat automatically suggests the glossary-saved translation term on Smartcat automatic AI translations.

You can create and keep separate glossaries for different subjects and clients, and add terms with translations into other languages.

Each time you create a project, you can specify a client or department for it. Smartcat automatically enables the relevant glossary from the list that you have already created in Smartcat for this client or department.

Create a glossary with as many languages as you like in Smartcat. There is no limit.

Step 1
Go to Linguistic assets from the top menu .

Step 2
Navigate to the bottom of the next page to the Glossaries area.

Step 3
Click on Create Glossary.

Step 4
In the next window, input a unique name and your languages to be used, as well as client and project tags.

Click Advanced if you already have a glossary structure in mind to use. This will allow you to change glossary structure and properties.

Step 5
Click Save.

Alternatively, you can import a glossary from outside Smartcat.

Translation memories, or TMs, are a crucial linguistic asset. They are databases of previously translated sentences. You can use them as translation references for your projects and save time and money on editing and keep translation quality standards high.

They improve quality and consistency, reduce project turnaround times, and decrease the number of words to translate by pre-populating new translations with previously translated content that matches current content for translation.

Creating a new TM in Smartcat is simple.

Once you click Translation Memories from the aforementioned drop-down menu, click Create TM.

Clicking Create TM will generate the following dialogue box

Note: the numbers have been superimposed to provide instructions below

Field 1: TMX, SDLTM OR XLSX file
Import a TM file in one of the available formats.

Field 2: Name
Choose a unique name.

Fields 3 and 4: Source and target languages
Select your source language (3) and all your target languages (4).

You can only have one source language but as many target languages as you require.

Field 5: Client
Assign a label for the client.

Field 6: Project tags
Assign a tag for the project.

Field 7: Subject
This field enables you to define a subject for your TM. However, this option is generally redundant if you need a TM for a specific client

Field 8: Comments
You can also add comments or a description for each translation memory. Click Save when you are done.

TMs and glossaries are your primary supporting linguistic assets. In the drop-down menu on the linguistic assets page, you will also see TM Editor as an option.

TM Editor is Smartcat's in-house computer-assisted translation (CAT) tool. This is your Smartcat home for editing your translations or inviting a professional linguist to your project to perform a translation review and editing round.

AI matching is Smartcat's automated talent-sourcing feature that identifies the best-match linguist from Smartcat Marketplace to work on your translation project.

AI matching analyzes Smartcat Marketplace of over 500,000 linguists in seconds. It assesses a linguist's suitability based on their language pairs, area(s) of expertise, years of experience, availability, monetary rates, and client reviews. It also scans the text of previous translations that they have completed on Smartcat to check for suitability with the content of your translation project.