logo image
  • News
    • People Moves
    • Deal Wins
    • Demand Drivers
    • M&A and Funding
    • Financial Results
    • Technology
    • Academia
    • Industry News
    • Features
    • Opinion
    • — Divider —
    • Press Releases
    • Sponsored Content
  • Data & Research
  • SlatorCon
    • London 2019
    • — Divider —
    • Other Events
  • Jobs
  • Directory
  • RFP Center
MENU
  • News
    • People Moves
    • Deal Wins
    • Demand Drivers
    • M&A and Funding
    • Financial Results
    • Technology
    • Academia
    • Industry News
    • Features
    • Opinion
    • — Divider —
    • Press Releases
    • Sponsored Content
  • Data & Research
  • SlatorCon
    • London 2019
    • — Divider —
    • Other Events
  • Jobs
  • Directory
  • RFP Center

Download Slator’s New 2018 Language Industry M&A and Funding Report

  • Partner with Slator
  • Login
Advertisement
ABBYY-LS’ SmartCAT Enters the CAT Race

3 years ago

September 4, 2015

ABBYY-LS’ SmartCAT Enters the CAT Race

Technology ·

by Gino Diño

On September 4, 2015

3 years ago
Technology ·

by Gino Diño

On September 4, 2015

ABBYY-LS’ SmartCAT Enters the CAT Race

There is no shortage of computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools in the market today, with SDL Trados still being arguably the most well-known, at least according to an informal poll among translators in 2013. Other familiar names are Wordfast and memoQ, and both sides of the fence — language service providers (LSPs) on one side and freelancers on the other — have their favorites.

So Russia-based ABBYY Language Services’ entry into the market may seem surprisingly late. It’s called SmartCAT, and if the way ABBYY-LS is pushing it across conferences and events is any indication, they’re quite confident of its capabilities.

Announced October of 2014, SmartCAT is an assemblage of everything ABBYY-LS can put into one out-of-the-box solution. It’s a cloud-based translations project management and coordination platform. It offers an UpWork-like method for choosing freelancers to assign to a project. It also has ABBYY’s optical character recognition (OCR) capabilities built-in so translators can use image files aside from traditional document files. And, of course, it’s a translation memory (TM) driven CAT tool.

Advertisement

It’s been called a tool that makes life “a whole lot easier for freelance translators,” by an article on The Next Web, where it notes that while the concept isn’t groundbreaking, “the new thing SmartCAT has done is the introduction of a freelance translation marketplace, which simply eliminates the need for clients to work with an agency or spend hours on ‘general-purpose’ freelance platforms.” It looks like things are looking good for SmartCAT, perhaps with the exception of fact that they aren’t the only ones who thought of that name.

Of course, SmartCAT also has the full support of ABBYY-LS. ABBYY-LS has been developing several projects outside of (but relevant to) the parent company ABBYY’s OCR technology for years now, and it seems SmartCAT is the culmination of their previous efforts — solutions like post-edited machine translation, enterprise terminology management, and of course OCR technology.

It’s like they rolled all these capabilities into a platform, slapped $6 million in seed funding to jumpstart it, and is now heavily pushing it as a major contender in the space.

Indeed, ABBY-LS has more plans in store for SmartCAT. Among the more immediate ones, according to the same TNW article above, is the implementation of integration into CMS, ERP, and document management systems. They are also planning to develop a crowdsourcing platform based on SmartCAT, joining in on a trending pattern of similar ventures online.

While it looks decent on paper, SmartCAT is a very young entrant into the CAT space, and while ABBYY-LS is going full steam ahead with its efforts of promoting it, it remains to be seen how well it contends with more established players.

SHARE
Gino Diño

By Gino Diño

Content strategy expert and Online Editor for Slator; father, husband, gamer, writer―not necessarily in that order.

Advertisement

SUSCRIBE TO THE SLATOR WEEKLY

Language Industry Intelligence
In Your Inbox. Every Friday

PUBLISH

PRESS RELEASEJOB AD

SUBSCRIBE

RFP Center
Advertisement

Featured Reports

See all
Slator 2018 Language Industry M&A and Funding Report

Slator 2018 Language Industry M&A and Funding Report

by Slator

Slator 2019 Neural Machine Translation Report—Deploying NMT in Operations

Slator 2019 Neural Machine Translation Report—Deploying NMT in Operations

by Slator

Slator 2018 Blockchain and Translation Report

Slator 2018 Blockchain and Translation Report

by Slator

Slator 2018 Media Localization Report

Slator 2018 Media Localization Report

by Slator

Press Releases

See all
Aspect Translations Company Awarded ISO 9001:2015 Certification

Aspect Translations Company Awarded ISO 9001:2015 Certification

by Aspect

Across Systems Presents New Major Release of its Across Language Server

Across Systems Presents New Major Release of its Across Language Server

by Across Systems GmbH

Smartling Announces 2019 Merger and Acquisition Strategy

Smartling Announces 2019 Merger and Acquisition Strategy

by Smartling

Popular articles

Inside the Brain of a Simultaneous Interpreter, Literally

Inside the Brain of a Simultaneous Interpreter, Literally

by Gino Diño

Why Netflix Shut Down Its Translation Portal Hermes

Why Netflix Shut Down Its Translation Portal Hermes

by Esther Bond

He Said, She Said: Addressing Gender in Neural Machine Translation

He Said, She Said: Addressing Gender in Neural Machine Translation

by Gino Diño

Upcoming Events

See All
  1. Translation Conference 2019 Warsaw
    Warsaw, Poland

    The Translation and Localization Conference 2019

    Sobieski Radisson Blu Hotel

    by TLC Conferences

    · March 29 - March 30

    Join the Translation and Localization Conference on 29-30 March 2019 in Warsaw, Poland

    More info €65-370

Featured Companies

See all
Locaria

Locaria

Seprotec

Seprotec

Versacom

Versacom

KERN Global Language Services

KERN Global Language Services

SDL

SDL

Smartling

Smartling

Lingotek

Lingotek

XTM International

XTM International

Smartcat

Smartcat

Memsource

Memsource

Translators without Borders

Translators without Borders

Wordbee

Wordbee

STAR Group

STAR Group

memoQ Translation Technologies

memoQ Translation Technologies

Translia

Translia

Welocalize

Welocalize

Advertisement

Featured Jobs

See all
Account Manager Translation and Localization

Account Manager Translation and Localization

Brookfield, United States

Country Manager — Germany

Country Manager — Germany

Berlin, Germany

Lead Generation Manager (North America)

Lead Generation Manager (North America)

North America

connect with us

footer logo

Slator makes business sense of the language services and technology market.

Our Company

  • Support
  • About us
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Privacy Policy

Suscribe to the Slator Weekly

Language Industry Intelligence
In Your Inbox. Every Friday

© 2019 Slator. All rights reserved.

Join Our Mailing List

Sign up for our Weekly Newsletter and Language Industry Updates Delivered Straight To Your Inbox.

This information will never be shared with third parties. No Spam.