Topics
Resources
About
Trados Store
English
English 简体中文 Deutsch Français 日本語 한국어 Español Italiano
Trados Store
Ensure your business is scalable with Trados Live Team
Product

What’s new in Trados Studio 2021 SR2

The latest Trados Studio 2021 service release has arrived. In this blog, Daniel Brockmann will summarize some of the exciting new functionality now available – from enhanced cloud compatibility and improved character handling to new file filters and APIs.

Daniel Brockmann
by Daniel Brockmann November 11 2021 - read time: 7 min

Everyone looks forward to a Trados Studio 2021 service release; these updates not only bring improvements in performance and stability, but also a range of new features and enhancements that are sure to make your experience working in Trados Studio that much easier. 

Now the latest Trados Studio 2021 service release has arrived, I thought I would summarize some of the exciting new functionality now available – from enhanced cloud compatibility and improved character handling to new file filters and APIs, we have something that will pique everyone’s interest. 

Exciting new cloud functionality

As always, when you first launch a new product, customer feedback is essential. From the day we released Trados Live, the new cloud companion for Trados Studio 2021, we have paid close attention to what you, our users, are saying (whether good or bad!) and have worked hard to implement changes to improve your experience in line with this. In this release of Trados Studio, I am pleased to announce that we have again taken your feedback on board and have introduced some highly sought-after functionality that will make transitioning to the cloud from Trados Studio a much smoother and more enjoyable experience.

  1. Ability to save local projects to the cloud

    Have you ever created a local project in Trados Studio and then later wished you had created it in the cloud, so you could share it with your team or work on it from a different device? Or, have you ever received a Studio project package from a client and been frustrated that you couldn’t open and work with it in your new cloud environment? Well, thanks to the new functionality released in SR2 you will never find yourself in this situation again! All users can now save their local projects to the cloud through an easy-to-use wizard in Trados Studio.

  2. Migrate file-based translation memories to the cloud

    While it is already possible to migrate your translation memories to the cloud through manual processes, there was a lot we could do to make this process more seamless for users. In SR2, users are now presented with a wizard that facilitates batch upload of your file-based translation memories to the cloud. From this point you can continue using your new cloud-based translation memories on both cloud and file-based projects as part of our existing support for cloud translation engines.

  3. Improved compatibility when working with cloud projects in Trados Studio

    Since we released Trados Live, we have seen a growing number of users starting to explore the new cloud-based ways of working in Trados Studio. With so many people now opting to work with cloud projects in their desktop application, it is essential the core Trados Live functionality is replicated in Trados Studio as much as possible so that users can transition between the two environments effortlessly. This release of Trados Studio now supports multi-factor authentication (MFA), the new Translation Quality Assessment functionality in Language Cloud Translation Management, and offers refined support for customized workflows and pricing models.

Unicode 13 and support for Emojis

Whilst our cloud adoption is picking up pace, we also appreciate working in the cloud is not yet everyone’s preference, so as usual we have committed to improving Trados Studio for those that wish to remain working in their existing desktop computer-assisted translation (CAT) tool. Which leads us nicely onto our next Trados Studio enhancement – improved support for Unicode 13, which is a personal favourite of mine.  

Unicode is a universal character encoding standard that assigns a code to every written character, technical symbol and punctuation in every language in the world. These days, computers run on this code as it enables them to retrieve or combine data using any combination of languages. Trados Studio can support most characters and symbols in the latest standard, Unicode 13, however there were a few characters that Studio was unable to recognise, such as certain Chinese symbols and emojis. 

Over the years we have received many requests to expand the range of supported characters in Trados Studio as the missing characters were naturally causing issues for translators, such as their translated text not perfectly matching the original source document. So, for Trados Studio 2021 SR2, we have reviewed the supported characters and I can now announce that Trados Studio preserves all characters defined in the Unicode 13 standard (March 2020) – except, of course, the 66 control characters which are not to be used according to the Unicode definition. Excitingly, this also includes the 3,500 emojis that are regularly seen in today’s communications! In Studio, emojis are now handled through placeholder tags, just like you will be used to when working with formatting and footnotes. This should give every Studio user peace of mind that when using Trados Studio what goes into their CAT tool will look the same as what comes out. The fact that emojis are handled through placeholder tags will also ensure maximum compatibility in the supply chain. A Studio 2021 user can prepare SDLXLIFF files with emojis, share this with a Studio 2019 user who can then work on it and return the translated file without any compatibility issues.

File type support

To accommodate support for emojis, certain file types have been adapted to read these new characters. In addition, we’ve introduced support for the Memsource file type (MXLIFF) in both Trados Studio and Trados Live. With this file type, users can translate in Trados as usual and feel confident that when they reimport the file back into Memsource all the metadata in the translatable file, such as translation status’s and split and merged segments, will be retained. Enabling translators to accept any job from any work giver in their supply chain has always been at the heart of what we do, so we’re very proud to announce this new compatibility.

API enhancements

For all you developers out there, this improvement will be of significant interest to you! With SR2, users can now access and utilise the Reports API to build their solutions. This has been a long-standing gap in our API coverage. An example of what this could look like is ‘Reports Viewer Plus’, a new app on the RWS AppStore developed by our own AppStore Development Team.  

But that’s not all. In addition, we have rewritten and rehomed our API documentation for Trados Studio to make it easier for developers to use. You can find our new documentation centre here. 

And finally…

We’ve also completely rebranded Trados Studio in line with the new RWS look-and-feel and have resolved over 50 bugs! As you can see, a lot has been packed into Trados Studio 2021 SR2. Our scope has been quite broad – not only have we enhanced cloud compatibility, but we’ve also further improved the core translation functionality in Studio. I’d like to personally thank all of you for sharing your ideas and feedback that will yet again make this release possible.  

Should you wish to learn more about SR2 and all the enhancements, read our Trados Studio 2021 SR2 release notes.  

Plus, if you are not yet using Trados Studio 2021 but would like to take advantage of these new features, I'd encourage you to upgrade now from your existing Trados Studio 2017 or Trados Studio 2019 versions. 
Buy now
Published on November 11 2021 in Product  , Trados Studio
Daniel Brockmann
about Daniel Brockmann Principal Product Manager