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Key TMS features
Every TMS should have certain features you should look for to meet your business needs.
Content management
A TMS maintains all the translation-related content centrally to be accessed in real time.
Language variants
Some languages have variants that you want to preserve in separate translation memories. However, a problem appears if you want to leverage on cost reductions due to a high number of matches from a TM with a different language variant.

Key TMS features
Every TMS should have certain features you should look for to meet your business needs.
- Project management
  Even though the primary goal of a TMS is to automate a lot of tasks in the translation process, it still requires people to manage it.
- Finance management
  The main reason for investing in a TMS is to reduce costs that your organization spends on translation in general. See how can this tool help you achieve it.
- Content management
  A TMS maintains all the translation-related content centrally to be accessed in real time.
  - Translation memories
    TMs are the most important of all translation resources so it's important to choose a TMS that has the most options to manage them easily.
  - Alignment
    While alignment is a feature shared with a lot of CAT tools, its use can vary from very difficult to extremely easy so you should choose your TMS carefully.
  - Termbases
    Using a termbase is an excellent solution for terminology management. TMSs should have relevant features to make your work easier and quicker.
  - Terminology extraction
    Computer-aided terminology extraction proves useful when you need to search for customer-specific vocabulary.
  - Concordance
    Context is the king in translation. Here is how Concordance helps linguists make the most of translation resources in XTM.
  - Language variants
    Some languages have variants that you want to preserve in separate translation memories. However, a problem appears if you want to leverage on cost reductions due to a high number of matches from a TM with a different language variant.
- Translation editor (Workbench)
  Currently, hardly anyone translates in an original document, be it Word, HTML file or InDesign. Most translators and reviewers work in special text editors that are core CAT tool components.
- Quality management
  There are still discussions on what should be considered a high-quality translation. Is it an error-free document in the target language or the smooth process where every step complies with the established procedure?
- Machine translation
  Machine translation engines are third-party systems for automatic translation that are not standard components of a TMS.
- Connectors
  Learn how to gain more control over your content by integrating content management systems and translation management systems via a connector.
- Security
  Nowadays, data security is on top of mind of all businesses, with the translation industry being no exception.
- Documentation
  When you start working with a new tool, it is extremely useful to have relevant documentation at hand to refer to it when you need it.
- Support
  High-quality documentation is useful, but in some cases it may not be enough. As with every IT tool, with TMSs you can also experience technical problems.
- Product development
  You have bought a TMS and what comes next? Since every IT tool is upgraded from time to time and you get the new version instantly if you use the cloud-based software, you need to be ready for constant changes.

Language variants

Some languages have variants that you want to preserve in separate translation memories. However, a problem appears if you want to leverage on cost reductions due to a high number of matches from a TM with a different language variant.

XTM gives you the option to benefit from TMs of other language variants for Arabic, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. If you choose it and are translating English to Spanish (en-GB to sp-SP), XTM will firstly match against the TM of English en-GB to Spanish sp-SP and then check all the other variants of English, such as en-US or en-AU, and Spanish, such as sp-MX or sp-CL TM to find a match.

As a result, you can pay considerably less if matches are found from another language variant TM.

Language variants in XTM — Figure 1. Language variants in XTM

You can also set a TM language variant penalty profile (lower rating of a variant vs. the basic language) and highlight segments populated with a language variant match (to identify them as potentially needing more corrections).