It was a fascinating opportunity to spend an intensive weekend seeing what all the fuss was about – and an invaluable chance to try all three tools hands-on for myself AND to get to grips with the basics of CAT tools. However, my interest was piqued by an ITI workshop run by Michael Benis back in 2006: an introduction to CAT tools, looking specifically at Trados, Wordfast and Déja Vu. I didn’t think I translated particularly repetitive texts and I certainly received many documents by fax (or, heaven forbid, by post!) that didn’t remotely lend themselves to electronic processing in a computer-assisted translation environment. In fact, I used to dictate my translations to be typed up by the typing pool, but that’s an entirely different story… I was quite happy with my translation workflow, but when I got divorced in 2005 and started to work towards translating full-time, talk of translation memory and what it could do to help translators’ productivity started to filter through to my not particularly receptive ears.

I’ve been translating in a professional capacity for 31 years now, most of which have been without translation memory of any kind, hard though that may be for newcomers to the profession to imagine. These are the only tools I’ve used in earnest, so whilst I’ve heard great things about Déja Vu and MemoQ, I can’t possibly comment. I’ve been meaning to write about CAT tools for some time now, but before you all shoot me down in flames, I should start off by saying that I don’t claim to be a technological wizard! This is a purely personal analysis, based on my use of Wordfast Classic and Trados Studio.

Sdl trados studio 2017 freelance plus