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Computer Assisted Translation tools (CAT tools) help the tranlator to tranlate different documents in an easier and faster way. Examples of this kind of tools are: Déjà vu, TRADOS workbench, PROMT or Reverso.

Nowadays completely human translation does not exist because there is much translation to do in a very quick way.

Computer assisted translation (CAT) is a software solution to help a translator when he/she does his/her work. We can define it as something halfway between a human translation and a machine that can also translate. With the use of a CAT tool, a translator translates the works in matched sentences. These sentences are then kept as the translation memory of a concrete piece of translation, in a concrete style, in a concrete language, for a concrete project. The translation memories can also be kept as a kind of dictionaries for new work so when a similar work is presented, the software translates all of its contents into the original combination of the language.

A few years ago, we could not talk about CAT because this term did not exist. Instead, there were three different kinds of translation, depending on the degree of automation:

A)Human-Assisted Machine Translation (HAMT): The translation is done by a computer, but before, during or after the process of translation, the source language text (SL) is changed by a human translator. In other words: machine translates, human assists.

B)Machine-Assisted Human Translation (MAHT): The translation is done by a human translator, who uses the computer as a tool to make the translation process faster or to improve it. In other words: humans translate, machine assists.

C)Fully Automated Machine Translation (FAMT): The source language text (SL) is put into the computer as a file, and then it makes the translation automatically without the intervention of any human person.