Multiple CAT tools for translation company; one CAT tool for a translator

In modern era of translation industry, having CAT tools seems to be an obligation for professionals who wish to further penetrate global translation market. Some, or we can say, many foreign translation companies (outside Indonesian translation companies) adopt and deploy these CAT tools and more developers are offering their comparable products. The number of CAT tools offered is also increasing over time, with their own unique features. This condition urges all parties in the industry to keep pace with this to be on and even ahead of the market.

How much does one CAT tool cost?
Cat tool is much more different from machine translation or literally Google Translate and the similar platform. It is fully controlled by human and it cannot do the translation task without the interference of the translator. It stores the data translator creates. Not only does it store, but it also serves as corpus. Translator can refer back when he is not sure of similar words he uses. But, how much does one CAT tool actually cost? The cost of one CAT tool will really depend on the nature of it and sometimes the region where we live in. It may be US$100 for Indonesian translators, but US$500 for translators outside Asia regions. For Indonesian market, we can say that price of one CAT tool ranges from US$150-US$1500 (around IDR 2 million-IDR 17.5 million). It is quite expensive, isn't it? For some established translators, this price is not a problem. For newbies, it will be a problem.

Multiple CAT tools are needed for a translation company
There are one thousand one reasons a translation company should equip themselves with several CAT tools. They should have at least 3 popular CAT tools; say SDL Trados, Wordfast, memoQ to randomly accommodate incoming request. A translation company is not supposed to reject any order due to the absence of CAT tools. They should be ready for any CAT tool request at any level, ideally. Wisely speaking, the translation industry is adopting latest translation technology more and more and a translation company should be prepared for this. Translation memory is now a mainstream and we do not know what will happen in next 10 years. In essence, a translation company should provide multiple CAT tools. This is to address any possible request from end clients or fellow translation companies. In ProBahasa, we provide our fellow translation companies with latest translation technologies to cater to their requests. For end clients, though they do not request, we make use of these CAT tools to produce quality and consistent translation result.

One CAT tool is enough for a translator
How many CAT tools is a translator supposed to have in his/her daily operation? The more CAT tools, the better. However, it is too good to be true for a translator to have all the available CAT tools. Buy wisely and stay firm on it. We personally say that a translator only needs one CAT tool and needs to hold fast on it. If he prefers Trados, he should hold it fast and the rest is about negotiation. Negotiate with the translation job provider how you as a translator can still use your own available CAT tool without compromising your quality and complicating the outsourcer job. Check our case study on how this is possible for us and translator.