How we write about other tools

Why write about other tools

Freelance translators often work for clients who use different tools: one agency sends a Trados package, the next works in memoQ, a third has its own editor in the browser. Knowing what each tool can do, and what it costs, is part of the job.

The work around the tools is changing too. In a survey of 787 members of the UK’s Society of Authors, published in April 2024, a third of the translators said they had already lost work to generative AI (The Bookseller, 12 April 2024). Tools also differ in how they are sold, as a subscription or as a licence you own, and in where your clients’ files are kept: on your computer or on the maker’s servers. All of that deserves plain, specific writing.

Our rules

1. We say who we are. Every post that discusses another tool starts with a note that we make Lexora Studio and that it competes with that tool. Read us with that in mind.
2. We date our facts and give sources. Prices, plans and features change. Each post says when we checked them and which version we looked at, and links to the source, the maker’s own page wherever there is one.
3. We test before we compare. When we report how a tool handles a file, we tested it ourselves, and the post names the file, the version and the date, so anyone can repeat the test.
4. We say what others do better. Lexora doesn’t connect to Trados GroupShare or memoQ server projects, and it runs only on Windows. When that matters to a comparison, the post says so.
5. Opinion is labelled. A post that gives our view is marked Opinion, and inside any post a view is written as one: “we think”, not “it is”.
6. We describe, we don’t mock. No jokes at a tool’s expense, and no sweeping words like “broken” or “useless”: we say what happened, in which version, on which file.
7. No hearsay. No anonymous quotes, no screenshots of private conversations, and nothing we saw under a client’s confidentiality agreement.
8. We correct mistakes in the open. A correction goes at the top of the post, with its date and what changed.

What comes next

Three kinds of posts:

• The tools. Dated, sourced looks at the tools translators use, paid, free and AI: what they do, how they handle real files, and what each costs a freelancer over a year.
• The trade. Rates and post-editing, who owns a translation memory, client files and the cloud, and what AI changes in the work itself.
• Lexora. How we handle hard files, why the app works the way it does, and what we got wrong.

Tell us we’re wrong

If you make one of the tools we write about and think we got something wrong, write to hello@lexorastudio.com. If you’re right, we correct the post. The same address takes ideas from translators: tell us which tool, file or habit of the trade we should look at next.