This content was originally published on Trades

While most of the world uses Microsoft (more or less 83% of shares) and quite a notable few use Mac (almost 10%) (see Stat Counter for exact figures),  the situation is different here in Switzerland. Windows is still the main operating system used, with about 73% of shares, but Mac is much more represented with almost 24%! There are several reasons for this, for example higher incomes and the love Swiss can have for well-designed and beautiful objects. There are certainly many other reasons but that is not the point of my post.

The question is: which operating system do you use as a translator? (Sorry I will not be talking about others OSs like Linux or Ubuntu because I have never used them, but feel free to talk about your experience if you are using one of them!)

I was wondering this because, as a Mac user and earlier Microsoft user, I sometimes struggle in my everyday tasks as a translator. Softwares are the main issue.

The most popular CAT tool, Trados (about 70% of the translators use it) (Proz), only runs on Windows. If you want to run it on your Mac, you have to use a virtual machine and for some of us, it can get quite troublesome (see Lingua Greca’s blog). Fortunately we, Mac users, have also some good CAT tools such as Wordfast, Omega T, etc.

Apart from that problem, we also face other struggles: there are many pieces of advice out there about which is the best software for invoicing, for this or for that. Most of them are only Windows-friendly, so you need more time and more research to find the most suitable software for you and your OS. We also (usually) have fewer options than Windows users.

Moreover, Word or Excel files can be opened with their equivalent on Mac (Pages and Numbers), and you can even save them in .doc or other Microsoft formats! That looks great, but you sometimes need to use Word or Excel directly to modify the source, etc. and when this happens, well, you need to have a Microsoft license! These problems don’t happen to Windows users (I guess).

As a new translator on the market, and a Mac user, I faced these problems and had to make decisions. Was it better to directly buy a Windows computer and just use my Mac for other things? That sounds quite expensive to do… Or should I stick to Mac but use Bootcamp or parallels and try to run Trados or another CAT tool? Or finally, should I just stick to Mac and use a CAT tool for Mac and just deal with all the small problems I could face in the future?

For the moment, I have decided to stick to my Mac and use Wordfast which I like. I still have to deal with some issues but nothing terrible and I hope it will remain this way. It’s just a bit frustrating to see I cannot apply for some jobs because the agency or client wants me to use Trados, and I am not ready to buy parallels + Windows licenses.

So now I am interested to know how do YOU handle that OS question: Did you refrain from changing your OS because of a CAT tool? Or, did you refrain from choosing a CAT tool because it implied changing your OS?

I am looking forward to your comments on the topic, share your experience! 🙂