Sep 4, 2012

memoQ 6.0.55: The Great Leap Forward with a Client API

Yesterday in the Yahoogroups forum, Kilgray's COO quietly announced the release of a new build of memoQ, which contains some very significant additions and improvements.
Important: memoQ 6.0.55 released 
Mon Sep 3, 2012 12:12 pm (PDT). Posted by: "Istvan Lengyel" 

Hi All, 

Sorry for the long silence since the previous memoQ build - we had something in the making. memoQ 6.0.55 was uploaded to our website today, you can download and install it. This build now supports 64-bit installation, however, we have an issue with AutoUpdate which we may or may not be able to solve (it's third-party software), so for the time being you have to install 6.0.55 yourself from the website, and it may remain so in the future if we can't fix this. Therefore AutoUpdate is not available for an indefinite amount of time. Besides numerous bugfixes, there is new functionality added: 
  • - the long-awaited SDLXLIFF filter
  • - a client-side API - only for users of the project manager edition (hello Paul :)), 
  • - on the server side, the possibility to use FirstAccept from content-connected projects. 
We did not release this as a new version as the number of features does not qualify for a full new upgrade. I hope it will meet your expectations. 

István 
There were actually many other improvements; a great number of fixes to bugs in the concordance and LiveDocs, which were driving me nuts. Also, the performance for importing very large XLIFF files (think EU DGT scale!) was improved by an order of magnitude, though to see the full benefit one needs a 64-bit operating system and lots of RAM.

The SDLXLIFF filter should be helpful to the many memoQ users who translate files created in SDL Trados Studio. It has been possible to read this format since it first appeared using thestandard XLIFF filter, but this new filter offers better results.

I am particularly excited by possibilities offered by the new client application programming interface (API). This will enable certain functions of memoQ to be run from other applications, even when memoQ is not active. Available features include analysis and TM functions; I've seen three simple lines of macro code in Microsoft word that will export a memoQ TM to TMX, for example. I think this will lead to many interesting extensions of memoQ functionality and automation. Note that the API is only available in the Project Manager edition, but the additional cost of that version is less than I paid for my Déjà Vu X Workgroup upgrade years ago, and for those who work with multiple target languages or who need additional features for outsourcing and collaboration, an upgrade to memoQ Project Manager makes sense anyway.

And who knows? With rumors of SaaS resources for memoQ on the horizon, I can imagine more reasons to upgrade from memoQ Translator Pro.

Addendum: The documentation for the Client API is found at C:\ProgramData\MemoQ\SDK

Polish colleague Marek Pawelec also commented in the Yahoogroups list:
I'm happy to report that in version 6.0.55 you can import .sdlxliff files with mapping segment states without any hassle (see SDLXLIFF tab in filter settings) and if appropriate option is selected (States tab, Map memoQ states to XLIFF states on export, select SDLXLIFF in Source drop-down), memoQ states are properly mapped back to Studio states.

5 comments:

  1. AFAIK, the PM edition of memoQ is not available to freelancers (= holders of a single license) as a paid upgrade from translator pro, it's only available as part of a memoQ server package. You would therefore need to buy memoQ serverFive (= the entry-level memoQ server package) in order to get the PM edition (you would get two licenses with PM capabilities). That's going to cost you more than what you paid for your DV Workgroup license.

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  2. Not true, Dominique. Kilgray has just been historically reluctant to sell the PM edition because the company believes that most who would need it "really" need the server. However, it has always been available if you push, and I hope that the company wakes up to the fact that this edition has plenty of value on its own. My crystal ball tells me that future events may move Kilgray to see this as well :-)

    Also, FYI, Server Five is not the entry level edition any more. This was mentioned at memoQfest this year and there were later announcements by Kilgray. There may be other entry level server options, but that's not something I keep close track of. In any case, the PM edition is available, and I hope that with recent changes and other plans Kilgray will give serious thought to encouraging upgrades.

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  3. OK, if you say so and if that's what Kilgray promised. I'm not sure introducing a super-charged translator pro for power users and a scaled-down version of serverFive for mom & pop outfits makes much business sense: it's going to consume lots of support resources for little financial reward IMO. Let's see if/when the webstore and the memoQ server page are updated to include such new products.
    Kilgray did a wise thing when they got rid of memoQ standard and focused on translator pro. The move you suggest would turn translator pro into the new standard and make PM edition the new flagship for a happy few. Is that really desirable?

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  4. I don't think making the PM version more easily available (by not pushing the big jump to the server in most cases) would diminish the Translator Pro edition in any way. For the record, I think it's a mistake to restrict the API to the PM edition, because I can envision a number of useful utilities for automation and quoting that would benefit rather average translators, but other than that, TP is really the right tool for most translators. They work with a single target language in a given project and have little real need to publish projects on a server or create handoff packages - a bilingual and TM/termbase export will usually do the trick unless they do a lot of outsourcing, at which point the PM edition or even server start to make a lot of sense.

    DVX Workgroup is used by a minority of Déjà Vu users as well, but those who have it upgraded for very good reasons specific to their businesses. With the PM edition of memoQ, that would be the case as well, and I don't think there would be a lot of extra support involved. I use mine mostly for documentation, consulting and training purposes. Not everyone who might train project managers at an agency, for example, really needs a server in the home office. And consider the possible role of an "itinerant" project manager working for multiple corporate clients and using their servers. That person would need a PM edition but not a server, really.

    You probably also know Trados users who bought the "Professional" version, which is in many ways similar to DVX Workgroup or memoQ PM edition. Damned few of them have a server nor do many of them feel the need for it. Most of the small agencies I know seem to run that way. I like the idea of a server in those businesses, but face it - with the allergy that many freelancers have to the idea of Big Brother watching their project progress, it's a solution that should be given some thought and handled with finesse.

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  5. Thanks for this! I'm not in the Yahoo!group, and the announcement that I saw elsewhere didn't include the key bit about Autoupdate, so I didn't realize I wasn't getting it automatically. Just tried it out and thank goodness for the concordance fixes!

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