memoQ Translators' Essentials

What is Translation Memory and how it works?

What is translation memory? / Translation Memory explained

Translation Memory (TM) is a database for sentence pairs (matching source and target segments); in other words, the heart of translation technology. It speeds up translators’ localization processes while maintaining consistency, and increasing translation quality.

Translation memory, unlike machine translation, offers the possibility to reuse previous translations and handle language repetition across a project. 

How does translation memory works?

Translation memory works in the background of your CAT tool, offering sentence suggestions as you translate. Its memory consists of your previous translations and only identical or similar sentences are suggested.

The similarity between the source and target segments is indicated with percentages (100% is the perfect match) while differences are highlighted with colors.

What are the benefits of translation memory?

Speeds up Translation: A TM offers previously translated sentences that are identical to the current translation, with differences only in numbers, tags, formatting, punctuation or spacing.

Reduces Translation Costs: Translation memory is usually the most effective with texts that include many repetitions, such as website content, games, contracts and product manuals.

Increases Translation Quality: Proactively prevent inconsistencies by storing correct phrases and sentences. It can be extremely useful when several people are working on the same text. 

Next: Term Base

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