CAT tools in 2023: part two

Who uses a CAT tool

Just over 93% of full-time professional translators use at least one CAT tool. Not a surprising percentage, especially if you take into account that ten years ago, the percentage of translators using a CAT tool was already at or above 80%, and the trend has been steadily upward.

Around 43% of translators asked in 2023 had been using a CAT tool for fewer than 10 years, but that percentage more or less coincides with the segment that has been in the industry for fewer than ten years too. Note that, for many of the statistics we’ll see here, we are talking about translators using “at least one CAT tool”. As we’ll see in a moment, that is because relatively few CAT tool users are using just one.

And it’s not necessarily the case that you either use a CAT tool or you don’t use a CAT tool. Around 30% of translators say that they use their CAT tools for all of their work. Close to 60% say they use their CAT tools for most of their work, but not all of it.

Yes, but in my field...

Does the field in which you specialize determine whether you use a CAT tool? Not particularly. Some subject matters have been traditionally held up as unsuitable CAT tool material, but there were no fields reported among non-CAT tool users which were exclusive to them. The only fields provided by translators surveyed where there were not groups of both users and nonusers were Tourism and Video games, where the respondents were all CAT tool users. Those fields, and Business, Medical, Marketing, and Tech are dominated by CAT tool users, while non-CAT tool users were a bit more prevalent in fields like Social Sciences, Art/Literature, and Law. 

Up next: Ten years on... comparisons with the 2013 report

This post comes from CAT tools 2023: an industry report. ProZ.com industry reports can be found at https://www.proz.com/industry-report/ . ProZ.com paying members receive immediate, full access to the information available in industry reports, which are about and for freelance language professionals.