What is SDL Trados Live?

Earlier in the year, we took the pulse of the translation industry with our 2020 Translation Technology Insights survey. We received feedback from over 3,000 translation industry professionals who shared their thoughts on the current state of the industry, the shift in expectations they're experiencing, and what can be done to alleviate the challenges of today’s localization professionals. 

One of the key findings from the survey was that translators and project managers don't want to have to choose between working in an offline and online environment. The majority of respondents felt that a combination of cloud-based and rich desktop app working would be the best model to invest in, to meet the evolving demands of clients. This desire for hybrid working was heard loud and clear by our team, resulting in SDL Trados Live - the cloud companion that compliments the SDL Trados Studio app with a set of online capabilities. 

If you envision SDL Trados Live as partly a kind of online replica of SDL Trados Studio 2021, then you are not too far off. It does feature an Online Editor with many similar functions to those in Studio, and you can monitor your translation projects and their progress with a very familiar-looking dashboard. 

But while you could potentially do the entirety of your work inside SDL Trados Live, you certainly don’t have to. The integration it has with SDL Trados Studio 2021 means you can transition smoothly between working in both of them. You may create a translation project in SDL Trados Live, using your tablet or via the new SDL Trados Live smartphone app for example, later do the translation using SDL Trados Studio 2021 on your desktop, and finally do some review and post-editing back in SDL Trados Live again.

‘Flexibility’ was the word that permeated team meetings throughout the product’s development, and we are confident that this level of flexibility is unmatched by any other CAT tool available on the market today. 

Currently SDL Trados Live comes in two flavors – SDL Trados Live Essential for individual users who want to manage projects, translate, review and store resources in the cloud, and SDL Trados Live Team for translation teams who want to collaborate and share project resources. When you first purchase SDL Trados Studio 2021, you will automatically be granted a free 12-month subscription to SDL Trados Live Essential to get you started.

One of the key forms of flexibility delivered by SDL Trados Live is the fact that users can upload their chosen assets (for example, translation memories, or termbases), and store them securely in the online SDL Trados Live environment. All of our online servers are located in Frankfurt, and this is no coincidence. The security of your assets is of utmost importance to us, and Germany has one of the strictest security protocols in the world when it comes to cloud storage. If you want to learn more about the cloud functionality and how we protect your data, we have a whitepaper available for download which you can read for own peace of mind here.

You can also create new translation memories and termbases in SDL Trados Live and make them available for when you next work in Studio. ‘Seamless’ is a word we use a lot when referring to the integration of these two platforms, and I cannot stress enough how simple and fluid it is to create, edit and utilize your cloud-based translation resources when alternating between working in the two. 

So there you have it – SDL Trados Live gives you the freedom to be truly flexible. You can now work online or offline and on the device of your choice, which is a real game-changer when you exist in an industry with increasingly tougher expectations and demands. 

We have taken great strides to provide you with technology that is empowering, but we need your feedback to continue to improve it. Our community ideas forum is a great place for you to share your experience of using SDL Trados Live alongside Studio, and even suggest some changes we could make to further enhance it. The SDL community is populated by over 70,000 members across the globe, so join the conversation here and become part of the biggest translation community in the world.

For more information on SDL Trados Live, make sure to visit our upcoming webinars page regularly. We host training and demonstration webinars every month to help get you comfortable using our software really quickly, no matter your personal level of technical expertise.