TM-Town API Use Cases for Translation Agencies

Recently TM-Town has received inquires from various language service providers asking how the TM-Town API can be used in their own TMS or online tool. In today's blog post I'll detail some potential use cases for the TM-Town API including:

• How to find and message the most appropriate professional(s) for a translation job.
• How to find relevant glossaries for your translators based on the parameters of a client job.

By using the TM-Town API, language service providers can more easily automate their internal processes and create a custom solution that can connect directly to their in-house TMS system.

Finding and messaging the most appropriate freelance professional(s) for a translation job

Instead of having to visit the TM-Town (or ProZ.com) website every time your agency needs to find service providers for a new job, you can instead create a solution using the TM-Town API which will allow all of this to happen right within your agency's own TMS system.

In this particular case, you will be making use of two TM-Town API endpoints:

1. Nakōdo Search https://www.tm-town.com/api/nakodo-search-data-only
2. Job Message https://www.tm-town.com/api/job-message

Step 1 - Get the relevant translators

When a new job comes into your TMS system, you can use the TM-Town Nakōdo Search API endpoint to find the most suitable freelance translation professionals for the job. Your API request will send 3 pieces of information to TM-Town:

1. The source language of the document that needs translation.
2. The target language of the document that needs translation.
3. The text (or a sample of the text) that needs to be translated.

With this information TM-Town's Nakōdo search engine will return data on translators who have translated similar material in the past; sorted by Nakōdo's Similarity Score.

As the data is now in your hands you can use your agency's own criteria to determine how to display, rank, or choose the translators whom you would like to message.

Step 2 - Message translators

The Nakōdo API results from Step 1 above will not return the translator's email address as this is private information; therefore, once you have determined the freelance professionals that are of interest to you, you will need to use TM-Town's Job Message endpoint to send an enquiry. For this API endpoint you will need to send the following parameters to TM-Town:

• The TM-Town username of the translator you would like to message (the username will be returned to you in Step 1 as part of the Nakōdo results).
• The name of the sender of the message (typically the name of the project manager).
• The email address of the sender.
• The source language of the document that needs translation.
• The target language of the document that needs translation.
• The budget for the translation job (e.g. Entry Level: less than $0.09/word | Intermediate: $0.09/word - $0.15/word | Expert: greater than $0.15/word).
• The text of the message to send to the translator.

That's it! You just messaged your next service providers without leaving your agency's TMS system. Of course, this is only one specific use case. The great thing about using APIs is that there is a lot of flexibility around how you can design for your own specific use cases.

Finding relevant glossaries for your translators based on the parameters of a client job.

This use case is pertinent for those agencies looking to equip their service providers with the best tools for the job. In some cases a client will provide a terminology file to use with a job; however, in others they may not. For those times, you could utilize the following set up to inform translators of potential relevant glossaries for the job at hand.

This example makes use of following TM-Town API endpoint:

1. Marketplace Term Search https://www.tm-town.com/api/marketplace-terms

When a new job enters your TMS system, you can query the TM-Town Terminology Marketplace API against terms from the text to be translated to see if there may be any relevant glossaries to alert your service providers to.

For this API endpoint you will need to send the following parameters to TM-Town:

• A query to search the source terms of the glossaries in the TM-Town Terminology Marketplace.
• The source language of the glossaries you would like to search (optional)
• The target language of the glossaries you would like to search (optional)

The TM-Town API will return details on any matching glossaries including the title, overview, price, seller, as well as a URL link to purchase the glossary. Using this information you could then notify your service providers of this potential resource.

Hopefully the above two examples give you some ideas of ways that you might incorporate TM-Town into your agency's internal work flow to make your team more efficient and productive. Nate and I love working on the API, so if you have any requests or additional endpoints that you would like to see, please send us an email.

Thank you for reading and please share with any LSPs or agencies who you think might benefit from a TM-Town API integration.

Kevin Dias
TM-Town Developer

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