SDL Trados

SDL Trados is a computer-assisted translation software suite, originally developed by the German company Trados GmbH and currently available from SDL plc, a provider of customer experience cloud solutions. It is considered the market-leader in providing translation software solutions across the entire translation supply chain, including freelance translators, language service providers, corporate language departments and academic institutions.

Alongside SDL Trados, SDL also develops productivity tools SDL MultiTerm, SDL Passolo and SDL Language Cloud.

History

Trados GmbH was founded as a language service provider (LSP) in 1984 by Jochen Hummel and Iko Knyphausen in Stuttgart, Germany. The company began developing translation software in the late 1980s, and released the first Windows versions of two of the suite's major components in the early 1990s – MultiTerm in 1992, and Translator's Workbench in 1994. In 1997, the company received a major boost when Microsoft decided to use Trados for its internal localization needs. By the end of the 1990s, it had become the clear market leader in desktop translation memory software.