A design driven by and for the translation community

The first idea for Wordfast came in early 1999. At that time, only very few TM software packages were available, and proposed at outrageous prices.
So the first idea was to develop a power-to-the people TM package at an affordable price. The second idea was to make a tool simple to use, so translators could focus on doing their job, not needing to be computer wizards.

A large translation agency adopted Wordfast 2.0 as its main tool, both for in-house work and associated free-lancers. The focus, however, was on keeping compatibility with the leading legacy TM system (Trados), adding quality-check functions, terminology control as well as networking capacities. A major project involving 20 translators networking for over 9 months on a single TM pushed Wordfast to be entirely overhauled and reach industrial strength. This led to the release of version 3.