The rapid development of electronic resources for translators has pointed to a real need to conduct empirical studies on how practising translators use these resources in their professional practice. The present investigation examines how English-Chinese translators make use of web resources to assist their translation, drawing on insights gained from recent studies – especially those on the role of agency in the use of technology (O’Brien 2012; Olohan 2011) and the tendency to shift from the syntagmatic to the paradigmatic axis in technology-assisted translation (Pym 2011). We engaged 13 translators in two age groups from Macau and Australia – i.e., six senior translators who are over 45 and seven younger translators aged 22 to 25 – to participate in our experiment. They performed a timed translation task, recorded their web-search history, and developed a concise summary of their searches. They then elaborated on their search strategies and explained their search techniques in a semi-structured follow-up interview. This study identifies different characteristics and traits of web searches in the two groups of translators. We discuss our findings in light of Pickering’s notion of “dance of agency”, and consider the implications for the future development of web resources for translators.