To register for a TM-Town account click here and:
Upon registering you will be prompted to fill in some basic information about yourself to start building your TM-Town public profile.
You will be asked to enter your language pair(s) and field(s) of expertise. You can choose up to 3 language pairs and 5 fields of expertise.
Additionally, you can begin to build out your TM-Town profile by filling in your:
You can edit your profile information at any time by visiting your Account Settings.
Why will TM-Town only let me choose 3 language pairs and 5 fields of expertise? I have way more than that!
TM-Town's mission is to create a better translation world through technology and specialization. Therefore, the restrictive nature of only allowing Professional tier members to choose up to 3 language pairs and 5 fields of expertise is on purpose to encourage you to specialize.
Regardless of your chosen language pairs and fields of expertise, there is actually no restriction on the number of language pairs or fields of expertise you can ultimately load work in. TM-Town is also built on the principle of "showing" what you can do, not just saying it.
Can I change my chosen language pairs and/or fields of expertise?
For members on our Basic (Free) tier, there is no option to change the top language pair and fields of expertise that you select when you register for TM-Town. This is to discourage translators from continually changing fields or language pairs to "game" the system. If you mistakenly selected an incorrect language pair or field of expertise please contact TM-Town support and the issue will be corrected.
For paying members you can edit your chosen language pairs and fields of expertise on your Account Settings page.
To show yourself in the best light on TM-Town it is highly recommended to take the time to fill out as much additional information about yourself as possible. In your Account Settings you can fill in fields such as:
Apart from filling in the above information, the most important action you can take to improve your profile is to load work into TM-Town's system. On TM-Town, translators don't just say what they can do, they show it by loading in examples of translation work they have done. Any work you load in stays private and confidential.
The only data that is made public from an upload is:
The above data, along with the information you enter in your Account Settings, is used to help generate your TM-Town public profile as shown in the profile image below.
On TM-Town, all of the interesting things you can do revolve around the work you load into the system.
There are 4 main types of resources you can load into TM-Town:
TM-Town's uploader makes it simple to load your work. Just drag the file(s) into the dotted orange rectangle. Additionally you can click the + ADD FILES button to select files from your computer's file system. To learn more about TM-Town's uploader please see this blog post.
TM-Town currently supports the following files types:
| TM Files | .tmx | .xliff | .xlf | .sdlxliff | .sdltm | .txt (Wordfast) | .txml | .xlsx | .xls | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Terminology Files | .tbx | .sdltb | .csv (learn more) |
.xls (learn more) |
.xlsx (learn more) |
.tsv (learn more) |
.csv (CafeTran) | .txt (learn more) |
|||||||
| Source and Target Documents (text) | .doc | .docx | .ppt | .pptx | .xls | .xlsx | .odt | .ods | .odp | .numbers | .pages | .keynote | .yml | .idml | |
| Source and Target Documents (OCR) | .jpg | .jpeg | .tif | .tiff | .png | .gif |
For the best OCR (optical character recognition) results it is recommended that your document:
OCR is supported in the following 47 languages:
After loading a file it will appear in the table below the upload box.
TM-Town has an alignment tool that can help you convert a source and target document into a translation memory (TM) file. For an introduction to the concept of alignment see TM-Town's blog post Alignment the TM-Town Way.
For additional details on how TM-Town's alignment tool works please refer to this blog post or watch the video below.
Terminology glossaries are an important tool in a translator's tool belt to help maintain consistency in a project and also to help improve efficiency. On TM-Town it is easy to build new terminology glossaries from terms automatically extracted from translation memory files.
TM-Town also has editing tools to help you maintain and improve the quality of the glossaries in your TM-Town account.
For more details on building glossaries please see the blog post Creating a Multilingual Termbase is Now a Simple, Stress-Free Process or watch the video below.
The TM-Town Terminology Marketplace is a central location where translators can buy and sell high quality terminology glossaries. The terminology files in this marketplace cover a wide variety of language pairs.
It is easy to get started selling glossaries on the marketplace. First upload the glossary into your TM-Town account and then click the Sell Glossary button to submit your glossary for approval.
Remember that while you can sell terminology glossaries, you can not sell translation memory (TM) files. The difference being that a TM file typically consists of segments that are generally a sentence in length. Glossaries, on the other hand, consist of terms that are generally 1 or 2 words in length.
For a full list of seller guidelines and frequently asked questions please refer to this page.
To learn more about selling your terminology glossaries please refer to this blog post or watch the video below.
TM-Town's Confidential Information Redactor is a tool to help translators semi-automatically redact confidential information from a document. This feature allows translators to benefit from TM-Town's unique matching platform without having to save any confidential client data in TM-Town's system.
TM-Town takes privacy and security very seriously. Every document a translator loads into TM-Town's system is automatically private and secure. Even with these protections, some translators have mentioned they would be even more comfortable if confidential information could be redacted from a document.
Documents that are under 1MB in size are eligible for TM-Town's confidential information redaction tool.
For more details on how to redact confidential information from your document, please see the blog post Confidential Information Redactor or watch the video below.
CafeTran Espresso is the first CAT tool that TM-Town has integrated with. While working in CafeTran Espresso you can access, search and update your TM-Town documents.
It is also possible to upload files directly to TM-Town from CafeTran when you finish a translation.
It is possible to connect your TM-Town account to your ProZ.com account so that you can easily send your ProZ.com portfolio samples to TM-Town. This is a great way to get started on TM-Town. Once your samples are sent to TM-Town, they will be automatically aligned for you. Watch the video below to learn more.
If loading prior work into TM-Town's system is not an option because all of your prior work is under NDA or similar restrictions, one option to get started on TM-Town is to translate a short sample text in your field of expertise. TM-Town provides sample source texts in various fields of expertise. Click here to browse the samples.
If you can't find a sample in your source language or field of expertise please email us and we'll try to add a sample in your source language and field of expertise as soon as possible.
Some translators may not have work which can be uploaded to TM-Town the traditional way in order to gain credit in a specific language pair and field of expertise.
That's why we created Deshi, a free offline desktop application that analyzes your TMs in the safety of your own computer.
Learn more about Deshi, and add this to your workflow today.
It is easy to track your daily productivity on TM-Town. You can submit a new productivity report here. To learn more about this feature please check out this blog post or watch the video below.