Nov 15, 2012

Are we aMused by memoQ 6.2?

I'm not in the habit of reposting messages off online discussion lists, but this contribution on the Yahoogroups memoQ forum was just too tempting. It was the Muse that got me. I hate predictive typing, but I love the laugh I got out of considering the possibilities of that feature.

One question in inquiring minds right now should be what the heck freelance translators can expect for improvements in terminology handling and when.Two of the three points mentioned for qTerm are things I have been pushing for ages, and I often got the impression that Kilgray is afraid to give freelance translators what they need because of some daft notion that might hurt qTerm sales. Really, guys... that last feature is basically what I have been doing with Trados MultiTerm since the year 2000. I know that MultiTerm sucks boulders in the eyes of even most Trados users, but it excels in its flexible options for formatting output, and for many years I have exported data from memoQ to format nicely in SDL Trados MultiTerm and share with clients and colleagues. In fact I did a big dictionary for an industrial customer this morning - a beautiful two-column format with my own custom touches and marketing cover. It was only when friends using memoQ wanted to make good looking extras like that for their clients that I started messing with XSL transforms again after a ten year break and dragging others into the game. So please, play with us Gábor!

Ah yes, that repost.. good stuff....

memoQ 6.2.1 [beta] released

Thu Nov 15, 2012 6:56 am (PST) . Posted by:

""Gábor L. Ugray"" gabor.ugray

Hi All,

For the kamikaze and the Zen lovers: I am happy to announce that
6.2's first beta build is now ready for download at the following
link:

http://kilgray.com/memoq/62/memoQSetup.6.2.1.exe

Some technical information.
-- The 6.2 client installs "next to" previous versions, i.e.,
you'll get a new desktop icon and you can continue using 5.0 or
6.0.
-- The beta version accepts 6.0 licenses; no upgrade license
needed yet. This will change when the beta flag is stripped and
it becomes a normal release.
-- The Help, localized UI, and graphic elements are not final
yet.
-- LiveDocs corpora need to be migrated again. You can also do
this one by one, so unmigrated corpora remain available in 6.0.
-- If you're running a server or memoQWeb, mail us at support for
instructions about getting a beta for the server-side components.

The Zen. This is what I consider to be the most important
innovation in the client, a feature that I expect will no less
than revolutionize computer-aided translation.

A concise list of the functionality this release adds in the
client.
-- The Muse. Wouldn't it be nice if memoQ automatically, er,
suggested expressions extracted from TMs as you type your
translation? Now it does. Create a Muse and train it from your
existing TMs or LiveDocs corpora, and memoQ's predictive typing
will get inspired.
-- How about importing SDL Studio packages directly - including
the TMs? Also, SDLXLIFF is now a filter in its own right, not
part of the generic XLIFF filter.

-- 101% matches from LiveDocs. Cross-links are also
retrieved as matches now! (Works only with fresh content
in your corpus. You can export to XLIFF and reimport to
get this working with existing content.)
-- Numbers, tags, terms, upper-case words? Take them over from
the source with a single shortcut. A really, really short
cut. Just press "Ctrl". This is AutoPick.
-- Get results from multiple MT plugins.
-- Open translated documents automatically after export.
-- "Reject" changes, or revert to an earlier version of the
entire document.

-- Filter for X-translated rows; rows with tracked changes; rows
modified by a user, or after a given date; sort by segment
status.
-- Prefix matching in term recognition for Hebrew.
-- A new QA check for tag order changes, and other neat QA
tweaks. Missing term? The warning's text now contains the
possible target terms.
-- A simpler X-translate for mid-project updates. It also takes
over previous comments; retains the previous match rate recorded
in the document; and retains ignored warnings.

In the server and memoQWeb.
-- Document history recorded for actions related to 6.0's new
workflows: FirstAccept, GroupSourcing, slicing, and subvendor
groups.
-- Option to disable MT and terminology plugins in specific
online projects, for confidentiality.
-- Statistics and pre-translation for all target languages at
once.
-- Attaching analysis to e-mails sent out for FirstAccept.
-- FirstAccept and sliced documents available in webTrans.
-- qTerm: MultiTerm XML import
-- qTerm: CSV import, including updating existing TBs
-- qTerm: CSV export; fully formatted "dictionary-like" lookup
result and export; glossary PDF export.

Download and enjoy! BR,

Gábor

--
Gábor L. Ugray
Head of Development

Kilgray Translation Technologies
1255 Budapest, P.O. Box 7., Hungary
5700 Gyula, Béke sugárút 72. II/8., Hungary

5 comments:

  1. Oh great, I hadn't even noticed those three new additions to qTerm. It's just as I expected: they seem to be saving the features that are sorely lacking from memoQ and adding them to qTerm. But since I will most likely never be able to justify buying qTerm, I just get to sit here and see all of the things added that I have been asking for, for over a year now. I suppose next they will add a way to purge TBs of duplicates ... in qTerm.

    And about all that Muse stuff. It's all very nice and well, but I think a lot of us actual translators would much prefer it if they would FIRST FIX THE POOR DATA MANAGEMENT in memoQ before adding even more new features (and associated bugs).

    Don't get me wrong, I still think memoQ is the most comfortable CAT tool to work in, and the one with the best feature set. However: Kilgray has not been listening to its users. It is listening to its development roadmap.

    Michael

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    1. Well, Michael, these capabilities actually do exist in some form now for memoQ. I either have working prototypes on my hard drive or I can get the rest in a development effort estimated at about four days. Some of it was blogged some time ago. (The second bit is already supported by memoQ - you probably already know it, and I've documented it here somewhere and/or in the mQ 6 book.)

      But commercial interests do not like these solutions for various reasons. SDL is unhappy with a solution that might support "ancient" versions of Trados and be perceived as making an upgrade to the latest, greatest Studio version less imperative. (This is silly, because the good reasons to upgrade are many and haven't got a damned thing to do with the formatting of terminology output.)

      Kilgray seems to have a misguided fear that any real improvements to memoQ to allow it to do what freelance versions of Déjà Vu or Trados or even Open Source tools have done for as long as I have translated commercially will somehow undermine corporate server strategies for qTerm and the TM Repository. I hope they at least prove me partly wrong about this by offering these features in their upcoming SaaS plans, but a lot of it needs to work unplugged from the Net in my opinion.

      I am very happy about many of the changes announced in v6.2, though I am behind on testing these to see if they do what I really expect. But in most respects I see Kilgray as being on the right track. I am very pleased that they offer in v6.2 a better alternative for dealing with SDL packages than my uncomfortable "dissection" workaround that works but scares people. (However, I still believe that Kilgray, SDL and others who have not yet implemented TIPP support for better interoperablity should so so at last. Others are there already and more are joining the party. What did Kilgray do instead in memoQ v6? Add confusion by adopting a new XLIFF extension and not even offering the option of a recognizable extention in exports intended for other environments, thus necessitating manual renaming. C'mon, guys.)

      *rant off*
      What it all comes down to is that users, even "little freelancers" really must communicate more assertively. The two-column RTF bilinguals in memoQ that everyone loves were an idea taken from Déjà Vu. These were on no Kilgray roadmap, and users asked for them for a long time (or at least this user did), and no commitment was made for development until a friendly revolt occurred in the last session of the first memoQfest in 2009. One Kilgray exec joked the following year about how much that development "cost", but many of the agencies I have met who adopted memoQ would never have done so without this feature. I call that investment, not cost. We need more real investment, not just entertainment.

      Delete
  2. I have to agree with the above comments. I also find it irritating that it apparently isn't deemed necessary by Kilgray to add basic terminology export/update functionality to the freelance pro version of memoQ.

    My impression is that there's a lot of misunderstanding around the term "freelance translator" and hence about what we need to be able to do. There are actually two types of freelancers. The first I'm not that familiar with, so forgive me if I'm off here, but I picture someone working in a fairly technical field, receiving packages from their clients (who are translation agencies) that contain more or less everything they need to plug in for the translation, which they do, then send everything back, and they're done. (I know this will be a very simplified version of events so please do not be insulted anyone!) The other type of freelance translator works in fields that are less to not-at-all technical, for either direct clients or technologically clueless agencies. For the agencies, we still end up doing most file preparation ourselves plus holding the agency's hand in figuring out how review workflows are going to proceed between various translators on a project who are using different or no tools, or more realistically we bypass the agency all together and figure out review workflows by ourselves; the agency just gets the final product. For direct clients, we of course do not bother them with any technical details at all and handle everything from receipt of their barely legible PDF, or mounds of Word documents with upmteen updates (I DO appreciate the versioning capabilities added to memoq pro!) to output of a usable, nicely formatted final product. During this process we notice that their terminology is all screwed up - there's no consistency even within a single document - particularly if it's been authored by different departments in the company - much less between these departments and whoever's responsible for the website. So we translators have the bright idea of helping the process run more smoothly for everyone involved by offering terminology management services, which we're doing for ourselves anyway, on top of translation services. Need I say more? Does anyone not get the picture now? ;-)

    Dear Kilgray, please do think about what the "pro" in "translation pro" really means.

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    Replies
    1. I would love the possibility to 'like' this comment.

      Delete
    2. I would love the possibility to 'like' this comment.

      Delete

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