Tired of repetitive tasks and complex translation projects? Discover how Smartcat's project templates can streamline your workflow. Learn to save time, ensure consistency, and optimize your process, whether you're a seasoned project manager or just starting out.

Project templates help you save substantial time and effort by automating repetitive tasks and processes. For example, let’s say you have a new translation project that comes in. You could spend hours manually creating a project plan, assigning tasks, and setting deadlines. Or, you could simply use a project template that you’ve already created. This would save you of time and effort, and you could get started on the project right away.

Next to saving you time, project templates can also help you ensure consistency and accuracy in project management. When you use a template, you know that all of your projects follow the same process. This helps to reduce errors and ensures that projects are completed on time and within budget.

Finally, project templates can help you improve collaboration and communication among team members. When everyone is using and familiar with the same template, it creates process uniformity and knowhow. This can help to improve productivity and efficiency, and also make working on projects more enjoyable.

When templates are not used, projects may encounter challenges such as inconsistencies, errors, and inefficiencies, leading to disruptions in workflow and potentially compromising project outcomes.

1. Inconsistency : Without templates, there's a higher risk of inconsistent workflows and translation quality due to manual setup variations.

2. Increased errors : Manual project setup can lead to more errors and oversights in task assignment, content preparation, and project configuration.

3. Wasted time : Lack of templates results in repetitive manual tasks, wasting time that could be spent on actual translation and project management.

A project template is a feature in the Smartcat platform – a pre-configured framework where you can define:

• template name – give it something that relates to your department or project type

• translation workflow – includes different stages, such as AI translation, human review, editing, proofreading, transcreation, etc. You can add as many as you want. The most commonly used is AI translation + human editing

• source and target languages

• project properties, such as deadlines

• linguistic assets, such as translation memory, glossaries

• linguistic asset rules, for example, when translation memory phrases are used

• assignments configuration

Step-by-step instructions on setting up a project template

By customizing your translation template, you can streamline your translation process, ensuring efficient and high-quality translations every time.

1. To create a project template, select Create project template from your Smartcat workspace.

1. To begin, select a descriptive template name that reflects the purpose of the template. For example, if the template is intended for legal documents, you might name it "Legal Documents Translation Template."

1. Next, choose the AI human translation workflow, which combines AI translation with human editing for optimal efficiency and quality.

2. Specify the source and target languages for the translation project. Smartcat supports 280+ languages, positioning you to cater to any audience worldwide.

1. Additionally, set project properties such as the project deadlines, description, and subject matter. These details help match your project with the most suitable linguists.

1. Bolster your template by selecting the correct linguistic assets such as glossaries and translation memories. These assets ensure consistency in terminology, phrasing, and tone across your translations. You can also set rules for linguistic assets, defining how and when they should be applied during the translation process.

1. Finally, you can configure the task assignments within the project template. Define workflow stages for this project to include AI translation, proofreading, editing, and many other options. Specify deadlines and other project milestones to ensure timely delivery.

After you are done creating the template, you can also use it when starting new projects to ensure that the project always follows the same processes and uses the right linguistic assets or subject matter experts each time without fail.

To create an assignment template to automate your translation assignments in Smartcat, follow these steps:

1. Click on the "Create Assignment Template" under the Tasks page of your project.

2. Enter a name for your template and select the project tags and subject.

3. Add a workflow stage and the language you want the assignments to be created for.

4. Add the collaborator from your team to this task or an SME reviewer from Smartcat Marketplace by clicking on the "Add Suppliers" button.

5. Specify the assignment settings, such as the due date, instructions for translators, and quality expectations.

6. Save the assignment template to use it for future projects.

When you create a new translation project, you can select the assignment template you created to automatically generate assignments for your suppliers. This saves time and ensures consistency in your translation process. You can also modify the assignment template as needed for specific projects. Finally, auto-launch will allow you to instantly use your templates without any manual work at all. 

With Smartcat, you can use AI to automatically assign translation review tasks to the best-vetted Smartcat Marketplace linguist.

A key benefit of using AI assigning is that it saves time and effort in the translation process. By automating the task of selecting the best linguist for a particular translation review task, you greatly minimize the effort that goes into procuring new resources, which is a hard feat on its own.

Additionally, AI assigning helps to ensure consistency in the quality of your translations by selecting linguists who have the necessary skills and experience for the task at hand.

The assignee selection algorithm used by Smartcat takes into account several factors when selecting the best linguist for a particular task. These include the linguist's overall rating, their experience in the relevant subject matter, availability, and location. The algorithm also considers the linguist's performance on previous tasks, as well as any feedback that has been provided by other users.

In addition to the automatic assignee selection process, you can also set up additional criteria to ensure that the assigned linguist meets your specific requirements. For example, you can specify their level of education, years of experience, positive reviews, and ratings.

Finally, you can also set your budget and let the AI sourcing find linguists within your budget.