Best Practices for Implementing CAT Tools: A Complete Guide

You're here because you want to get the most out of your CAT tools, and you’re looking for guidance on how to implement them. 

We've spent years working in the machine translation industry, so we know about the ins and outs of CAT tool implementation. We’ve gathered all the essential practices to help you integrate CAT tools online into your translation process.

What are CAT Tools?

CAT tools, short for Computer-Assisted Translation tools, are software programs that help translators work faster and more accurately. They are often available as standalone software or as SaaS (Software-as-a-Service), depending on the provider. With a CAT tool, you can translate, edit, and manage multilingual content all in one place. 

Why are CAT Tools Essential?

90% of companies use YouTube to promote their content, but 70% of YouTube’s audience is international. To reach a global audience and get the most out of their investment, businesses are increasingly demanding more content translation. Multilingual support has become important for companies looking to expand internationally, bridging communication gaps with customers across different regions. 

The global language services industry is projected to reach $65.5 billion by 2026.

If you’ve ever worked on a translation project, you know how time-consuming it can get, especially with the growing need for content localization. 

CAT tools are useful assistants that help translate faster without sacrificing quality. They use Translation Memory (TM) to store everything you’ve translated before and suggest it when the same or similar text appears again. CAT tools also split large documents into manageable segments. And most of them include a built-in alignment feature, so even if a sentence is broken into smaller parts, you can still see how everything flows.

A survey revealed that 88% of translators use at least one CAT tool for some of their translation tasks. Among those using CAT tools, 83% use them for most or all of their translation work.

Key Features of Modern CAT Tools

Translation Memory (TM)

• Translation Memory (TM) of CAT tools remembers every sentence, phrase, or segment you’ve translated before and suggests it when you encounter the same or similar text again.
• Once a term or phrase is translated a certain way, it stays that way throughout the entire project.
• Every new translation you complete feeds the memory, creating a personalized database that becomes more efficient with every project, especially for technical, legal, and medical translations.

Terminology Management

Using terminology management in your CAT tool allows you to build and update a list of important terms for your project or field. This list has approved translations, definitions, and context for each term, giving you the right way to translate specific phrases every time.

Let’s say you’re translating a machine translation document that mentions terms like "Neural Machine Translation" or "Statistical Machine Translation". You can add these terms to your glossary along with their exact translations and definitions in the target language. The next time these terms come up, your CAT tool will automatically suggest the approved translation. 

Quality Assurance (QA) Checks

No matter how experienced you are, mistakes can happen. Overlook a punctuation mark that changes the meaning of the sentence. Quality Assurance (QA) checks can swoop in to catch those little errors before they become big problems.

As a translator, you want any small mistakes to make a project look sloppy. QA checks flag any possible errors instantly, so you don’t have to spend precious time double-checking every single word yourself. 

Collaboration Capabilities

• Real-time collaboration lets you and your team edit the same document together. You can all update, comment, or suggest changes right away. 
• Also, your team can use and reuse translation memories from earlier projects. 

Integration with Other Platforms

• Modern CAT tools can connect seamlessly to other popular platforms like WordPress and Google Drive. 
• If you're working on WordPress, you can directly pull in content from your site, translate it, and then send it back. 
• And if you’re working with more complex projects, like enterprise localization systems, your CAT tool can integrate with those platforms as well. 

Best Practices for Implementing CAT Tools

Choose the Right Tool for Your Needs

Two things matter most: usability and efficiency.

• Usability. We don't think spending more time figuring out the software than actually translating is better. A CAT tool should feel like a useful assistant. A clean, intuitive interface is great. It helps you navigate effortlessly.  And, can the tool adjust to different file formats? Does it support keyboard shortcuts that speed up your process? These small details are a plus that enhances your workflow.

• Efficiency. A powerful translation memory not only stores past translations but also retrieves them intelligently. It should quickly recognize repeated segments, suggest the most relevant matches, and adapt to different contexts. Additionally, any of the terms should stay consistent across the entire document and even across multiple projects. It really matters for long-term productivity. The better your tool manages TM, the more time and effort you save.

So, don’t just get dazzled by big promises when choosing a CAT tool. How it feels to use every day and how well it leverages what you’ve already translated - these things can make or break your experiences. 

Customize Settings to Match Your Workflow

How useful your translation memory is depends on how well you set it up. 

• Some prefer to see only exact matches, while others benefit from fuzzy matches. If you work on projects about marketing translations, it may be better to get lower-percentage matches. It won't constrain you to rigid phrasing.
• Translation memories aren't all the same. They can come from different clients or old projects that use outdated terms. When you adjust penalty scores, your CAT tool gives top priority to high-quality current matches instead of older ones.
• One more thing to think about is matching the context. A phrase could mean something different in a legal contract compared to a marketing brochure. When you enable context-aware TM suggestions, you can reduce wrong matches and make things more accurate.

Train Your Team Thoroughly

A single training method doesn't suit all CAT tools. 

• If your projects deal with technical content, make terminology management your main concern. Your team should know how to build, update, and apply terminology databases efficiently. 
• For teams working on projects about software strings and website copy, version control should be a top priority. Everyone should know how to track changes, manage different file versions, and avoid overwriting work. 

The goal is to show your team how those features apply to their actual work. 

Leverage Automation Features

Automation is the driving force behind industry-wide efficiency in translation, like how advanced route optimization helps couriers find the fastest paths. 

• Your CAT tools automate repetitive processes. It can automatically pull past translations from Translation Memory and insert them into your new document. If there’s an exact match, it fills it in instantly. 
• Pre-translation can speed things up and keep your terminology consistent across projects.
• Instead of manually scanning your work, let the CAT tool flag potential issues immediately. It checks for missing translations, formatting errors, and more.

Just as courier companies utilize technology to optimize delivery routes and enhance operational efficiency, your CAT tools should flag potential issues immediately. They check for missing translations, formatting errors, and more. This level of automation not only saves time but also ensures consistency across projects, allowing your team to focus on delivering high-quality translations.

Foster Collaboration Among Team Members

If you’re translating industry-specific content, a shared glossary helps everyone use the correct terms. And, of course, project guidelines. They set the tone for how the work should be done. 

The key to smooth collaboration is to assign roles and permissions wisely. Your team members don't all need to access everything in the project. Some might be doing translations, others could be editing, and maybe you have a project manager overseeing it all. 

CAT tools come equipped with real-time commenting and tagging features. This makes communication within the tool easy and direct. 

Monitor Performance Metrics

Keep an eye on which metrics are important. Most CAT tools include detailed analytics, which can give you a goldmine of information. But you’ve got to know what to focus on to really improve your workflow. 

• Let's see word counts and translation speed. These are pretty simple - if you’re looking at how fast you’re translating. But just because a translator is fast doesn’t always mean they’re accurate. That’s why you’ve got to dig deeper and pair these numbers with quality metrics.
• If you’re spending way too much time editing the translation, track revision history or error rates and see trends and patterns in your team’s work. If certain segments are always slower to translate, that’s a workflow inefficiency. Maybe these segments require more specialized knowledge, or they’re more complex.

Challenges in CAT Tools Implementation

Address Resistance to Change

It’s not simply about new technology or tools. It's about the fear of change itself. Sad but true. There’s always that one person, or maybe even a few, who is unwilling to budge. It’s completely understandable. People are often comfortable with what they know. 

Up to 61% of B2B leaders worry that technology like AI could replace them in their jobs in the next five years. We can’t ignore this problem. It can potentially lower productivity. 

Take your time to explain why the change is happening and how CAT tools will benefit your team. All is about giving them a tool that will help them do their job better. Make sure your team feels heard and supported. Reassure them that the tool enhances their capabilities, not replaces their skills. 

Ensure Data Security

We’re talking about sensitive client data, project details, and proprietary information. 4.88 million is the global average cost of a data breach in 2024, IBM reported. 

The thing you want is to trust a CAT tool that does have strong security measures in place. You want a tool that’s proactive about security, not reactive. 

But human factors too. Verizon’s Data Breach Investigations Report stated that human-element breaches form 68% of total breaches.  Everyone needs to know the best practices for handling client data safely. 

Keep Resources Updated

 With multiple projects on the go, it’s easy to leave a few outdated terms in your TM. Maybe your glossary hasn’t been touched in weeks, and your TM is starting to get clogged with older, irrelevant data. 

Advanced Strategies for Optimizing CAT Tool Usage

Integrate with Machine Translation (MT)

When you learn to use MT effectively, it can become one of your best partners in speeding up your process. Most CAT tools let you plug in different MT engines like Google Translate, right into your workflow. The machine does its thing, providing a rough translation, and then you come in to refine it. Over time, as you work with the same content or project type, you’ll start seeing the MT results improve. 

Train your MT engine. This means you can feed it more specific data, like terms, phrases, and style preferences. From there, it better understands your unique translation needs. 

MT can be amazing at handling those repetitive sentences or phrases, but it still needs your human touch for context, idioms, and the emotional tone of the content.

Utilize Optical Character Recognition (OCR)

OCR scans images or printed documents and converts the text it finds into editable, digital content. When it is integrated with your CAT tool, it gets even better. Once OCR has recognized the text, it can be transferred straight into your CAT tool’s interface. 

Set Measurable Goals for Accountability

So, what kind of goals are we talking about here? Measurable. Having a specific number gives you something concrete to strive for and allows you to assess how well your CAT tool is really working for you.

Conclusion

Statista estimated the global machine translation market to be valued at 1.5 billion U.S. dollars in 2024. Many translators and teams leverage CAT tools in their tasks. And we hope this guide has helped you better understand the best practices for implementing these tools. 

FAQs

What is a CAT tool good for?

CAT tools provide translators with an interface for submitting, editing, managing, and storing multilingual content in one place.

What is CAT tools knowledge?

The term CAT stands for Computer-Assisted Translation Tool. CAT tools have significantly changed the way how translators work and manage translation projects today. CAT tools split large multilingual documents into segments (phrases & paragraphs) which are stored in a database.

How do CAT tools work? 

CAT tools break down a document into smaller segments and store these translations in a Translation Memory. When similar content shows up again, the tool suggests previously translated segments

How to use CAT tools for translation?

Import the document into the tool. The tool then breaks the content into smaller segments. Translate each segment, storing your work in a Translation Memory. Use glossaries to make sure you're using the right terms and leverage previous translations. 

What are the disadvantages of CAT tools?

Contextual errors – this is the major fault with most CAT tools. A machine cannot yet be programmed to fully understand the context of how a certain word or phrase is being used.