The translation industry does not really have a clear terminology, so it makes sense to define the terms used throughout BeLazy.
User types:
Freelance translator: A translator who works independently for multiple LSPs or directly for translation buyers.
In-house translator: A translator who is employed by an LSP or a translation buyer.
LSP (language service provider): In other words, a translation company.
MLV (multilingual vendor): Generally an LSP that serves directly the translation buyers, and helps them manage their multilingual content in many languages. MLVs are often technology- and customer process-savvy, that's the value they add for the translation buyer. Because of the number of languages they handle, MLVs usually have a much bigger revenue than SLVs. MLVs outsource work to SLVs, freelance translators and sometimes have in-house translators.
SLV (single language vendor): Well, not really single language... at least two languages are involved! These are usually smaller LSPs that only service certain language pairs, but they do those right. One variation is the RLV (regional language vendor) which services not only one language like Dutch, but all the Balkan languages, all the Nordic languages, all the Baltic languages, all the South-East-Asian languages, etc. SLVs don't often work directly for translation buyers, however, some technology-savvy buyers prefer to work with them. Please note that the terms MLV and SLV are not completely clear. An SLV that provides e.g. Croatian for Apple through an MLV may also provide services to direct clients in Croatia.
Translation or localization buyer: Often also referred to as enterprise, these are companies that order translation for their own marketing, compliance, support, contracting, etc. reasons - to facilitate their international expansion or operations. The content to them comes either from other people (shared services approach), or from computer-operated systems (integrations). They decide what to translate, into what languages, if they produce computer software code like most companies do today, they are responsible for internationalization, etc. Most of the time they drive the agenda of continuous localization.
Automator: Any company or person that wants to automate the receipt, delivery and processing of jobs.
Integration types:
Business management system (BMS): Most LSPs use a business management system to track and facilitate order handling, to report on their finances, etc. While most LSPs need to use multiple TMS'es, they usually use a single business management system to have one-click access to all their data. There are commercially available BMS'es such as XTRF, Plunet, Flowfit, Protemos, etc., but many companies have developed their own system. In BeLazy terms, a BMS is where your translation project needs to be created and managed.
Vendor portal: A vendor portal is a website that is offered by the business management system of your customer. You can log in to a vendor portal and see the list of the projects you are offered, accept or bid for the projects, upload your invoices, track your previous work, etc. In BeLazy terms, a vendor portal is the source of the projects if your customer has a business management system.
Translation management system (TMS): A translation management system is a system that handles the actual translation of the actual content. While a BMS is about storing information about your customer, project deadline, who works on it, what was invoiced and what was not, etc., the TMS is processing the source files and gives useful tools such as translation memory, terminology, or corpora to speed up the translation work. The TMS often does not track any financial data, or does not care who your customer is. However, there are translation management systems with business management system functionalities as well, especially aimed at translation buyers. Translation management systems come in many forms: some of them are installed locally, others are installed on the customers' servers, whereas some are cloud-based and only have one instance. They can be an application on your computer, or they can have a browser-based interface. The project that you receive may be sent in a package format as a file (as often done in SDL Trados Studio), through integration between your customer's and your server (in Across, memoQ server, etc.) with the translation happening on your server, can remain on the customer's server and the translator logs in there, or maybe all users work on the same instance hosted by a technology company (in Memsource, Smartling, etc.). In BeLazy terms, the TMS may be a source of the projects if the customer does not have a BMS, or TMS projects may be matched to vendor portal projects for reassigning translators and delivering the project.
Additional important concepts:
Connection: A connection is a connection to a source system. It is usually described by a name, a URL, a user name, a password and some instructions.
Onboarding: Onboarding is preparing a connection for automation by enabling automated access to both the source and target systems, and by mapping the information coming from the source system to the information that the target system expects.
Automated connection: A connection that went through onboarding and is able to create projects in the target system with or without the click of a button, unless something unexpected happens.
Red flag: A red flag is an exception for an automated connection: the automation found a new value (e.g. a new service is requested from you and the system does not know which BMS service to use for this) or ran into some difficulty (e.g. your user name and password don't work, or the other system is down). Red flags need to be resolved through the appropriate actions.
Application programming interface (API): In a computer software, most of the things you want to achieve you achieve through clicks in the graphical user interface. Using APIs, computers can automate the performance of certain tasks in other systems programmatically. For example, your own business management system can request project information from BeLazy and create it there, or can directly push projects into BeLazy.
Agile localization: Agile localization means localizing software strings and other things as part of the agile software development process, in foreseeable sprints (rather than starting it just whenever somebody requests it), with a view to continuous improvement.
Continuous localization: Continuous localization is a technology-powered process that provides a high degree of automation in the localization of small batches of content with regular updates. It can relate to any area, not just software development (e.g. websites), but it also involves continuous improvement.