In the last 5 years, the use of Computer-Aided translation tools has grown around 40%. Indeed, today more and more jobs posted online mention at least one CAT tool as required or preferred by the job poster. But, what led to such expansion on the use of CAT tools?

First, when used appropriately, CAT tools can certainly reduce costs and improve productivity. This happens thanks to a very important feature such tools have: TM or Translation Memory. According to a survey, translators working with TMs expressed they work between 20-30% faster when using TMs.

The secret of TMs is that, as the name suggests, they are databases that store expressions in both, source and target language. When there is a similar segment, the Translation Memory will pick it up and make a suggestion. This allows translators to save time by not working on the same content twice, while also increasing consistency.

Moreover, CAT tools offer different options for quality control. Linguists can check the translation, correct punctuation, check tags, conversion of numbers and consistent terminology.

Given the many advantages of the use of CAT tools for language service providers, it is indeed important to impart the knowledge on how to use them. Translating is not exactly a simple task. In fact, replacing a certain word or expression of a source language with another word or expression in a target language. However, finding equivalence is harder that it seems.

CAT tools are tuned to the needs of the translation task. Therefore, the right knowledge and use of them is an ability that helps any linguist with their professional paths. The curricula of translation training institutions vary from country to country. However, the idea of any career is to prepare students as much as possible for real world scenarios and challenges related to the industry they will work on.

Investing on the preparation of language service providers with how to use CAT tools adequately and how to maximize the benefits is a real need for a today’s world, where most companies demand such knowledge and where production and quality can be enhanced with the use of such technology.

We’ve seen why CAT tools are important, we’ve seen how the demand of skills involving them has been increasing, therefore, the more institutions decide to invest in making these tools part of the knowledge they share, the more they help and prepare future linguists, editors, project managers for the requirements of the world.