One of the best professional translation software features you could look for is compatibility with the language pairs your team requires (or will require). Before you invest in professional translation software, you should map out the languages you need to translate to and from. These are referred to as language pairs.

For example, you might work with French, English and Chinese. Just because a professional translation software system states it will translate French might mean it translates from French to English, but it doesn’t mean it will translate from French to Chinese (and vice versa).

The best professional translation software you’ll find will include a file translator. If you come across translation software without this feature, stay away.

The software you choose should be compatible with all the file types your company definitely needs to translate. You should also think ahead. This means keeping in mind the additional types of files your company might need to translate in the future.

The best professional translation software around won’t only be able to translate files, but it will translate multiple files simultaneously with speed.

The best professional translation software you’ll find will include a file translator. If you come across translation software without this feature, stay away.

The software you choose should be compatible with all the file types your company definitely needs to translate. You should also think ahead. This means keeping in mind the additional types of files your company might need to translate in the future.

The best professional translation software around won’t only be able to translate files, but it will translate multiple files simultaneously with speed.

If you plan on translating digital files with professional translation software, you want to search for a system that will automatically format your files for you.

This is hands down one of the best professional translation software features you can find. This is because it will encode your image placement, font properties, spacing and paragraph breaks.

Otherwise, you will spend hours reformatting your output file to match the original.

In some instances you won’t need to perform high-volume translations. The ability to gist an email, instant message, or paragraph of text from another website will be your task at hand. This is where copy-and-paste translation functionality will come in handy.

When shopping for professional translation software, make sure it will not only include a file translator, but also the ability to gist translations of small snippets of text via pasting.

No need for elaboration here. Look for an integrated spellchecker to eliminate the need to proofread, so you can focus on the human translation component.

The best professional translation software you could choose will support team collaboration. Why? There is rarely ever just one person completing a translation request.

Bilingual internal resources are often used to produce translations in global organizations. This means that you’ll need to be able to easily share translations and request editing from within the translation software interface.

Choose cloud-based professional translation software so that you can collaborate with international colleagues. This way, they don’t need to install software on their computers, and everything related to your translation projects will be accessible in one central hub.

Speaking of collaboration, it’s important to be able to track the translations that your colleagues contribute on a translation project.

The best professional translation software will include translation edit history. You’ll want to be able to see the details tied to each segment of edited text, including date and timestamp, the editor’s name and what was changed.

Does your organization produce audio and video for internal purposes such as employee training? Professional translation software that allows you to get text-to-speech output files will come in handy for global training initiatives.

It’s handy to receive an audio file for an uploaded script, in the target language. You’ll save money because you won’t need to hire voice talent. If voice-over translation is important to your organization, make sure you define which languages you need voiceovers for.

You’ll want to be sure that the most common commercial languages are available.

The best professional translation software will provide you with 24/7 live human support. After all, your translation software should save you time in all respects.

Don’t buy software from a company that won’t give you the chance to speak to a human by phone when you need help.

Does your company like to connect its software systems with each other? If so, translation API access is important. Before you purchase professional translation software, make sure it gives you the option to access its API.

The best professional translation software is one that comes with high standards for security. Why? Any company that uploads its data into software is at risk of a data breach.

Look for two-step authentication, encrypted file storage, SSL certification and PCI-compliant payment processing.

If your organization needs extra security or to adhere to strict data compliance laws, private cloud and onsite hosting options are important to look for in professional translation software.

If this is important to your organization, make sure this is available as an option so that you choose the best professional translation software for your organization.

With any software that you use, you need to check the Terms of Service to make sure they don’t reserve the right to use your data in ways that your company disapproves of.

You don’t want the translation software company to repurpose your data in any way that could compromise the confidentiality of your data. This includes sharing, indexing or publishing it.