The following steps can be used to investigate the degree to which a CAT tool is compatible with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.

1. In Dragon NaturallySpeaking, go to Tools>Options>Miscellaneous and check the box Use the Dictation Box for unsupported applications.
2. Open a project in the CAT tool you are testing, place the cursor in the translation target cell and start dictating with Dragon. If the Dictation Box opens immediately in Dragon, that means that Dragon has determined that your cat tool is not fully compatible with Dragon and that you must first dictate your translation in the Dictation box that it has just opened. You can then transfer your dictated translation from the Dictation Box into the translation target cell of your CAT tool by typing Ctrl+T or by saying “Transfer”. This extra step does not reduce your productivity too much if your source segment contains little or no formatting, tags, auto translate items or placeables. But if your source text does have a lot of these sorts of things, you’re going to have to add the extra step of first copying all of the source text segment into the Translation Box. When you do this, though, you’re going to lose any tags and formatting. Once you’ve translated the raw text in the Dragon Translation Box and have transferred the contents of the Translation Box into your translation target cell, you’re still going to have to reformat, add tags, and generally mess about a bit, maybe a lot. I went through this process for many years when using CAT tools that were not fully compliant with Dragon and eventually realized that all of this extra work was completely wiping out the productivity and income boost I was getting from dictating. Plus, it was more fatiguing because I was making my workflow more complicated.
3. The next thing to try if the Transfer Box comes up automatically is to…

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Photo credit | “Dragon at Twilight” by TOTORORO.RORO (Off) on Flickr