All About Robert
Commercial partner promotion | By Gerald Clark, Robert
Robert is the new CAT tool on the block, and we’ve been telling anyone who’ll listen about it over the last few months. It genuinely does things that no other CAT tool does. This is because Robert wasn’t built by a software company with translation added. It was built by translators who needed something that worked differently.
We have spent years in the industry using CAT tools ourselves and seeing how workflows have changed and evolved. That’s where Robert comes from, built for the way translation companies work today and priced for the way translation companies operate.
AI is built in as standard rather than bolted on, workflows can be shaped around how your team works, and pricing that has remained affordable. The trouble is that everyone who wants or needs a CAT tool already has one. So, here’s exactly what Robert offers that your current solution might not, starting with the price.
The Price
Many of the translation company owners and managers we have talked to are struggling with rising CAT tool pries, or changes to pricing structures that are difficult to absorb in a very challenging climate.
Robert was built for maximum functionality, to sit alongside the industry leaders, but has a single monthly charge per company for unlimited users and unlimited words.
Where Robert is Different to Other CAT Tools
Many translation companies have struggled to adapt AI into their Translation process over the last few years. Many clients have decided not to bother and just use Claude or ChatGPT to do their translations for them. Sometimes they bring those translations back to us and ask us to improve it, because it doesn’t always flow as well as it should.
There are other software companies offering AI review programmes, AI Quality Assurance programmes, spell-checks etc. Robert integrates all these things into the software that professional translation agencies are using every day – the humble but now elevated CAT tool.
Personas And Workflows
Robert allows you to entirely customise your own workflows. You can add each step that you use into your workflow – whether it’s a multilingual translation piece or monolingual editing. You can also make any of these steps a Persona. This means that when you assign the task, it’s not necessarily a human doing the work, or an MT engine like DeepL (all of those are options too), but a persona for which your linguists can select the best LLM and the best prompt. You can then post-edit and review, using actual linguists if you want to (who can rate and refine the personas), or using a post-editing persona.
Why?
Because most of us are already using Machine Translation and have been for years. If you train the persona correctly, we’ve found that LLM translation produces better results than MT and it’s cheaper.
The workflows allow you to translate the same source into multiple languages, using different processes for each one if you want to. You may only have a good Persona trained for French, so you can still use DeepL for Spanish and Human Translate the Chinese, for example, if you want to.
QA
Robert has a sophisticated QA process, including utilising AI if desired to complete the QA process. Instant QA can be selected, so that any Quality Assurance issues are instantly flagged.
If AI QA is enabled on your project, checks marked with an AI badge are powered by an LLM rather than rule-based logic. AI checks can detect issues that conventional checks miss such as inflected terminology, missing numbers in context, and linguistic quality problems like critical mistranslations, severe omissions, and grammatical defects.
Using the AI QA you can also add your own QA rules.
All of this can be run within the translation workflow before the final document is exported.
Some of Robert’s Other Features
Update Source Text
If you translate a text for a client and they then send you a new, revised version of the source text, Robert allows you to update the source text. It will identify new segments and add them into the editor, removing the deleted sections. It will keep the segments already translated for those that are identical.
Aligner
We have a built-in Aligner, so you can upload a source and target to create a TM and then apply that TM to the task you’re working on. You can easily modify it too, either before you start, as you go, or afterwards. Of course, we utilise AI to improve the Aligner (if you want to). It is very good at cleaning up alignments, largely by matching segments when they are misaligned.
Alt-Text
Robert picks up the alt-text in IDMLs , DOCs and PPTs. Crucial in a time when Accessibility is increasingly important. It also picks up text in formulas for Excel files.
Monolingual Editing
You can set up an Editing project in Robert which is largely monolingual (you can also set up one where the source and target language are the same, which could be used for editing but is not technically a monolingual project). This allows you to break the text into larger segments, like paragraphs, for editing purposes, but still use all the editing features of Robert (including personas)
Client Portal
As well as our conventional CAT tool, we have also built a Translation tool designed for your clients.
You can set a client portal up for selected clients on either a pay-as-you-go or a subscription basis and either setup users for them or give someone in the client company admin access. This will allow anyone in the company to get their own instant translations. Just as if they were using ChatGPT. Except that the quality of the translation will be much better, because it will actually send the translation to your own version of Robert, where you have their Translation Memories and Termbases already entered. It will use AI translation (we can’t guarantee getting straight back to them otherwise), but as the task is already in your CAT tool, if they then request a Review, it’s very easy for you to organise.
So, Is It Worth Switching?
If your current setup works and your team is happy, there may be no pressing reason to change tools for the sake of it. But if you’re paying more each year for a tool that hasn’t integrated new workflows, or you are paying for different extra pieces of software to supplement your process, then it’s worth at least seeing what Robert does differently.
It’s possible that your linguists are already quietly using AI on the side, with no oversight or consistency – this way you maintain control over everything, in one platform.
Get in touch and we’ll show you round.
About Robert
Robert is an AI-driven translation platform that enables LSPs to deliver translation as a branded, client-facing service. Through a fully customisable, white-label portal, agencies can give their clients direct access to fast, secure AI translation, while retaining control over quality through human review and sign-off. By embedding a translation tool within their own brand and workflows, LSPs can strengthen client relationships, reduce reliance on one-off project work, and build more stable, recurring revenue streams. Learn more here: https://www.robertcat.ai/
