Marina Trautmann 

Thank you for your message and for your good questions. Hope my answer below will help. 

There is no difference in the quality of the machine translation. Both options come from the Language Weaver platform and offer the same machine translation. 

The Cloud-resources option connects to the former Language Cloud platform and offers access to also other Cloud resources such as Translation Engines and Machine Translation. This is built in Trados Studio. The cloud resources platform is linked to the Language Weaver platform through an API Key. This is done automatically in the background when your accounts are set up. 

The Language Weaver plugin connects to the Language Weaver platform directly, and can only provide Language Weaver machine translation results. The plug-in was designed for customers that buy and use Language Weaver separately from Cloud resources /Language Cloud. As you can see the LW plugin has a few extra features that the cloud-resources integration doesn't. So it is up to you to decide which one to use. 

In the Language Weaver platform, you can check your usage for machine translation. See this article: https://gateway.sdl.com/apex/communityknowledge?articleName=000013218

Or go directly to https://portal.languageweaver.com/reports/dashboard 

The Cloud resources platform doesn't have any machine translation management options. 

You should be using only one of the options to avoid incurring extra usage, as segments will be sent twice to the servers for translation. 

Let me know if this is helpful.

Regards, 
Radu

Thanks for the quick response, that helps a lot.

However, I have a follow-up question:

What other Translation Engines and Machine Translation does the Language Cloud platform provide? And how does trados studio decide which engine will be used?

Or will trados studio only select Language Weaver as engine if I haven't activated any other engines?

Marina Trautmann 

Marina Trautmann said:

What other Translation Engines and Machine Translation does the Language Cloud platform provide?

Similarly to Trados Studio it will use whatever you setup.  Translation Engines are essentially an umbrella term for a resource that can contain the following:

• translation memories
• termbases
• machine translation engines

So it provides you with a way to select one resource and have all translation assets you want already configured.  So it's a sort of project template, but one that can live within a project template.  Just more flexibility for working.

A good place to check this out is the help documentation.  I don't know what version of the cloud products you have so here's the link to Translation Engines for Trados Studio users:

https://docs.rws.com/812699/710032/trados-studio-cloud-capabilities/cloud-translation-engines

If you are using Trados Team which is a bit more collaborative then this link is more appropriate:

https://docs.rws.com/795494/753163/trados-team/cloud-translation-engines

And if you need more then here's the link for Enterprise/Accelerate users:

https://docs.rws.com/791595/710032/trados-enterprise---accelerate/cloud-translation-engines

In terms of Machine Translation the Language Cloud Platform currently supports around 8 MT providers which you can see if you look here in your Cloud account:

Marina Trautmann said:

And how does trados studio decide which engine will be used?

Because it will use whatever you tell it to, no different to adding a TM or MT provider.

Marina Trautmann said:

Or will trados studio only select Language Weaver as engine if I haven't activated any other engines?

No, you can have as many as you like.