About Us

Since its entry into the translation software market in 1984, TRADOS (acquired by SDL in 2005 and now known as SDL Trados) has become a widely recognized name within the industry.

SDL Trados has steadily grown its customer base of over 270,000 translation professionals (from freelance translators to large enterprises) by continuously delivering innovative and robust translation memory software.

Daniel Brockmann and Matthias Heyn look back on 30 years of TRADOS. (19 minutes)

TRADOS (TRAnslation & DOcumentation Software) was established in Stuttgart, Germany by Jochen Hummel and Iko Knyphausen in 1984.

Hummell and Knyphausen initially set up TRADOS as a Language Service Provider (LSP) following their decision to tender for a translation project for IBM.

The mid-eighties saw the emergence of Computer Assisted Translation (CAT) tools following the increasing demand for translated content. Translators were unable to keep up with number of translation projects being passed on to them from customers, leaving a requirement from technology to help bridge the gap between supply and demand. Hummell and Knyphausen recognized the opportunity for technology and started developing software to solve this issue.

At the dawn of the translation memory era in 1988, TRADOS developed TED, a very early version of what we know today as Translator's Workbench, one of the translation memory applications in SDL Trados 2007 Suite. It was around this time that TRADOS made the decision to split the company, passing the translation services part of the business to INK in the Netherlands, so that they could concentrate on developing translation software. It took a while for TRADOS to get established as a translation technology provider, however momentum soon built up following successful strategic decisions, including moving software development onto the Microsoft Windows platform.

In 1990, TRADOS launched their first product, MultiTerm (a terminology database, now known as SDL MultiTerm) into the market place. The first version of Translator's Workbench was later released in 1992. Trados also started expanding as a company in the mid-nineties. Matthias Heyn, a computational linguist from the University of Stuttgart joined the company and developed the first alignment tool on the market (T Align, later to become WinAlign, one of the applications available in SDL Trados 2007 Suite). In addition, TRADOS began to open a network of global offices, including Brussels, Virginia, UK and Switzerland.

The nineties saw a marked increase of development in translation software technology. Many freelance translators were benefiting from the increasing sophistication and affordability of personal computers, meaning that CAT tools were becoming more and more commonplace. As well as the time-saving and quality benefits of using translation memory tools at a desktop level, the Internet paved the way for enhanced productivity through the real-time sharing of translation assets via server technology. This helped to rapidly accelerate the rate at which content could be localized, enabling organizations to enter new marketplaces and communicate their messaging in the language of their customers.

2014 marked the 30th birthday year of Trados. The brand of Trados was created on 26 September 1984 and over the last 30 years has achieved status as the eponym for computer assisted translation (CAT) tools.

Trados is now a worldwide industry standard and over these 30 years has had many competitors who have tried to emulate the features and functionality of this world class product set.

The innovation in CAT tool product development established by Trados continues today with the SDL Trados Studio capability and further across the evolution of the entire SDL translation productivity product platform.

In 2019, we celebrate the 35th year of Trados. Innovation has been and will continue to remain at the heart of SDL and what we do. But it is, of course, the needs of our customers that continue to be the driving force behind the innovation that supports the translation process. And reflecting on the past 35 years of Trados, what comes to mind, is the relationships that we have developed with our customers and the opportunities we have had, every day, to interact with this group of talented, passionate and skilled individuals. The support we have had from our customers over the years has allowed us to grow and further enhance the SDL Trados suite of products with the result that they still comprise the industry’s market leading CAT tool solution today.