Using present participle and past tense of an acronym

In computer networking (my field), there is a term, Network Address Translation, which almost always takes its acronym form “NAT,” and is pronounced like we say gnat (the annoying little insect). NAT often gets used as a verb (as in the word “translate”). For example, somebody might say one of the following:

• You should NAT that address as 169.254.37.29



• What are you NAT(t)ing that device as?


• That gets NAT(t)ed as 169.254.37.29

When speaking, we say this kind of thing all the time. But when writing it in an e-mail, it has always bothered me as to how to express the second two examples... should it be NATed (which doesn’t fit English’s pronunciation guidelines of two Ts to make a soft a), or NAT’ed; NATing, NATting (looks stupid), or NAT’ing?

In the past I have often just skipped it by saying translating or translated, but that’s now how we talk when we use the term, so it seems artificial.