Trados Studio 2021

Trados Studio 2021 is a complete centralized translation environment for editing, reviewing and managing translation projects and terminology — either offline in a desktop tool or online in the cloud. It offers many features designed to help speed up your translation processes and improve consistency while building a repository of assets you can use over and over again. 

Trados Studio 2021 is built on the same open platform as Trados Studio 2019 and uses the same bilingual file, translation memory and termbase formats.

Trados Studio has evolved to bring you a brand new way to work. With Studio 2021's seamless integration to our new innovative cloud-based translation and project management environment, Trados Live, you can now work either offline in your desktop tool or in the cloud. This provides you with the flexibility to work anywhere, from any device and anytime.

With Trados Studio 2021, all of the existing ways of working with local and GroupShare projects continue to work exactly as before with previous editions of Studio. It’s your choice as to whether you use the cloud capabilities of Trados Live with Studio 2021.

To find out more about Trados Live, view our Trados Live FAQs here.

Trados Studio 2021 delivers many enhancements to boost your productivity, including more powerful search features, improved automation and QA, and the ability to manage your apps from the RWS AppStore directly from within Studio. With Studio 2021, you will achieve new levels of productivity for the whole translation team and deliver unrivaled quality in your translations.

With your Studio 2021 license, you'll also be provided with a license for MultiTerm 2021, the world's leading solution for terminology management.

Discover all the latest enhancements in our What’s New brochure here.

Existing customers with an active PSMA (support and maintenance agreement) receive a free upgrade to Studio 2021. This can be downloaded from your SDL Account.

Existing customers who don’t have an active PSMA can purchase an upgrade through our online shop, or by contacting your Account Manager.

New customers can purchase Trados Studio 2021:

• Through our online shop (if you are a freelance translator)
• By contacting your Sales Manager (if you are an LSP or Corporation)
• Or by contacting your Local Authorized Reseller (if you are an LSP or Corporation)

You can upgrade and take advantage of special upgrade pricing when moving from Studio 2017 and Studio 2019 to Studio 2021. Moving from Studio 2015 and earlier versions requires you to purchase a new Studio 2021 license.

Many new and exciting features have been introduced in Studio 2021 including:

• Access to Trados Live, the translation productivity cloud from RWS
• Manage your projects on the go with our new Trados Live mobile app. With the app, you can create projects, track your translation progress, check project due dates and lots more whilst you are out and about
• Translation memories are now even more accurate with customizable recognition settings for times, dates, currencies, and measurements
• Benefit from more powerful search capabilities with a new and improved Advanced Display Filter, as well as quick project and file name searching
• The RWS AppStore is now fully integrated into Studio 2021, so you can discover and manage your apps without having to leave the familiar Studio environment
• A more streamlined Translation Quality Assurance (TQA) experience with enhancements to the way reviewers feedback their amends
• For Trados Studio Freelance users, you can now work with as many languages as you wish.

Plus many other enhancements have been made to improve the performance of Trados Studio and the user experience. Find out more in our dedicated brochures:

Trados Studio 2017 users — Why upgrade?

Trados Studio 2019 users — Discover what’s new

Trados Studio 2021 is the fully supported release of Trados Studio. 

RWS continues to support Studio 2019 as the limited support release.

Trados Studio 2017, 2015, 2014, 2011 and 2009 are in a retired state and are no longer supported. RWS does not provide technical assistance, issue service packs or hotfixes for retired releases.

This will vary depending on what version you are upgrading from:

• If your original license was for Studio 2017 Professional and you want to retain both versions, you should consider purchasing a full license instead of an upgrade. For Studio 2017 Freelance licenses, you can continue to run the Studio 2017 application if you do not deactivate your license after upgrading. Your previous Studio 2017 license will be marked as inactive in your SDL Account and will be automatically removed if, for any reason, the license is deactivated.
• If your original license was for Studio 2019 Freelance/Professional, you will be able to run Studio 2019 and Studio 2021 on the same machine, as the license for Studio 2021 is a 'compound license'. For this to work, you will need to update Studio 2019 with the most recent CU* and it will then accept your new Studio 2021 license. Note that this is for Single license owners only and will not work for a Network license. Network licenses can be configured in such a way that multiple versions of Studio can be served by the same license server, since it can run multiple licenses for different Studio versions in parallel. Contact your account manager for details.

*CU stands for cumulative update. At RWS we are constantly reviewing and improving our products and release enhancements and hotfixes as and when required. These are bundled into cumulative updates that are installed automatically using the AutoUpdate functionality in Trados Studio and MultiTerm. You will be notified automatically by the software when a cumulative update is available. For a full list of enhancements and fixes for Trados Studio 2019 SR2 to date, please click here.

The upgrade process is the same for all users owning a Single or Network license(s).

If you already have Studio 2017/2019 and you upgrade to Studio 2021, you need to:

1. Deactivate your current Trados Studio 2017/2019 license(s)

• Go on to your Trados Studio application
• Click on Help > Product Activation > Deactivate

2. Upgrade your license from your SDL Account

• Login to your SDL Account and go to the Licenses section.
• On the left-hand side, you should see "Upgrades" available, marked with a yellow arrow icon. Click on the icon and you will be able to see the Upgrades page.
• Click on the Upgrade button to process the license upgrade. If you have several licenses, please bear in mind that you need to choose the number of user licenses that you wish to upgrade.
• A new licensing code will be generated.

3. Copy the new licensing code and paste it in the Studio 2021 application to activate it.

Yes, we offer full compatibility in terms of translation memory and bilingual files across Studio 2017, 2019 and 2021.

Although translation memories and bilingual files are compatible across Studio versions from 2009 to 2019, as we continue to add more features, there are potential discrepancies in feature availability, word counts and file types when working in older versions of Studio. Some of the latest features, such as upLIFT, are only fully available in Studio 2017, 2019 and 2021.

Trados Studio 2021 no longer offers out-of-the-box support for legacy Trados file types including; ITD, TTX and Bilingual Workbench. If you are still working with these file types, please install the Trados Compatibility and Migration Power Pack from the RWS AppStore. The app is installed as an add-on and will enable you to open and work with projects that include such files. RWS recommends that you consider converting legacy file types to the latest .SDLXLIFF format.

Studio 2021 is compatible with GroupShare 2017, GroupShare 2020, Trados Live Team and RWS Language Cloud TMS. 

We recommend using the latest released versions of GroupShare 2017 and 2020. 

For details on the latest releases, see our Knowledge base for GroupShare 2020, the RWS Community page for Trados Live Team, and the RWS Community page for RWS Language Cloud TMS.

There are no planned major releases in 2020 for Trados GroupShare. We will release more frequent updates via cumulative updates and, where necessary, service releases instead of full major releases. This means our customers will not have to have to fully reinstall GroupShare as frequently.

Since Studio 2021 is fully compatible with GroupShare 2020 and 2017, you will be able to continue working with these versions.

It is possible to export software string lists from Passolo 2018 to SDLXLIFF format for translation in Studio 2021, and then re-import them. Passolo 2018 CU10* is compatible with Studio 2021, 2019 and 2017 for sending and receiving SDLXLIFF files.

*CU stands for cumulative update. At RWS we are constantly reviewing and improving our products and release enhancements and hotfixes as and when required. These are bundled into cumulative updates that are installed automatically using the AutoUpdate functionality in Passolo. You will be notified by the software automatically when a cumulative update is available. For a full list of enhancements and fixes for Passolo to date, please click here.

Trados Studio is available in three different editions: Starter, Freelance and Professional. The reason behind having separate editions is freelance translators do not usually require all the functionality within the full Professional license. 

To see the differences between the different editions, please visit this page.

• Trados Studio is more than just a product — it's an integrated platform of translation, terminology management, review, project management and machine translation solutions
• Seamless integrations with Trados Live, our new innovative cloud-based translation and project management environment, providing you and your translation teams the option to work anywhere, from any device at any time
• Integrated access to over 250 apps in the RWS AppStore, providing you with the ability to easily extend Studio's functionality
• Widest support for industry file formats and third-party translation environments
• First-class user experience with useful tips and videos for on-boarding and 'Tell Me' technology to access features and settings quickly and easily
• Best leverage from translation memories with upLIFT technology
• Studio is one of the key components of an unrivalled range of RWS's Translation Productivity solutions which can scale with your business needs.
• Largest translation community in the world with over 270,000 translation professionals already using our solutions
• Local direct presence in 15 key markets to better serve you, combined with a wide network of 50 resellers to ensure we are always close when you need us
• Extensive free education opportunities and seminars delivered at more than 20 cities around the world
• Free webinars and web-based resource center
• Support infrastructure of a successful global organization to ensure stability and confidence

Trados Studio 2021 will work on Windows 7*, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10. We recommend Windows 10.

As a minimum requirement, we recommend an Intel or compatible CPU-based computer with 8 GB RAM and a screen resolution of 1024x768.

For optimum performance, we recommend a 64-bit operating system, 16 GB RAM, an SSD drive and a recent Intel or compatible CPU. Full support for 4K hi-resolution screens is planned and will be implemented incrementally in future releases. You can find more information on how to deal with display issues in this Knowledge Base (KB) article or by running an application from the RWS AppStore which implements a fix, mentioned in the KB article. Trados Studio 2021 uses .Net Framework 4.8

*Please Note: Microsoft has recently stopped support for Windows 7 and as a result, we are no longer testing Studio on Windows 7. Studio continues to work on Windows 7, so you can still install and use it with this Windows version, however to work with GroupShare and Language Cloud projects on Windows 7, make sure to first enable TLS 1.2 as default secure protocol. Language Cloud and GroupShare 2017 SR1 and later only accept TLS 1.2 connections. This is to ensure the highest data security when sharing projects on RWS servers.