Introduction
When it comes to choosing a TMS integration, large companies may find it hard to know what to choose, how to choose it, and if it is worth it in the long run. For Square Enix, a company with over 5,000 employees worldwide, accuracy, integrity, consistency, and quality are all at the forefront in considering the power their name holds in the gaming industry. A translation management system would need to be seamlessly integrated into the company’s current process, while also providing a means to expedite and improve their process. For this reason, my partner Nicholas Niculescu (he/him/his) and I decided to pit two TMS’s against each other to ultimately decide what would be the best for a company like Square Enix.
While there are many TMS’s on the market, my partner and I decided to look at two different systems, one fairly new and the other well-known in our industry: Bureau Work (BWX) and memoQ TMS. With games, the TMS needs to be able to integrate well with several different functional groups such as the development team, the localization team, marketing, and, of course, the translators. We determined these two were the best means to our end; however, there are many other TMS such as Crowdin, Phrase, and Weglot that may be suitable for an enterprise as well.
Below we decided on 7 key business factors to evaluate the TMS:
- Cost
- Translation Memory and Glossary Mgt.
- Integration
- In context development tools
- Web based
- Finance Tracking
- Quality Control
Scorecard: BWX and memoQ
We then weighted those scores based on priority, as well as what was necessary or just nice-to-have.
