Translating "foreign" bilingual tables in memoQ

--- In memoQ@yahoogroups.com, Liset Nyland wrote:
> A client has sent me a 2-column rtf-file export from DVX.
> It looks similar to the MemoQ export but not quite.
>
> The target column is full of fuzzy matches, so I need to recover these.
...
> ... do you know if there's a bilingual format exported from DVX that can
> be loaded and translated directly in MemoQ?

There is one way to deal more-or-less directly with the DVX bilingual RTF tables - or any others being introduced by other providers or bilingual tables that some customers are fond of using to store translation strings or other content. I would love to see a general import routine from Kilgray that allows selection of source and target columns of various file types in a dialog, but until then...

1. Get a copy of the PlusToyZ macros by German/English to Ukrainian/Russian translator Arkady Vysotsky.
2. Copy the source and column targets into a separate RTF or MS Word file.
3. Run the PlusToyZ macro to convert that to a Trados-like bilingual (the old Wordfast/Trados RTF/DOC bilingual)
4. Import the converted file to memoQ using the default filter, which is intelligent enough to recognize that you are dealing with Trados-compatible bilingual DOC/RTF.
5. Translate, edit, feed the TM, etc.
6. Export the processed file.
7. Use the appropriate conversion macro in PlusToyZ to turn the data back into a table.
8. Paste the data back into the original bilingual table from DVX or whatever tool it came from.

This is the preferred method to use when your bilingual table is partially pretranslated, or you have a translated table you want to edit while having a better look at the source text. This would also be a useful method for jobs I've had where customers have string or terminology lists in Excel to translate that are in some cases incomplete.

Once you get to Step 3, you can translate that bilingual format in any tool which works with the old Trados RTF/Word segmentation, such as WordFast Classic.I think that was actually the reason Arkady wrote those macros in the first place.

If you want to protect the DVX codes (or similar structures, including placeholders) or store them in the TM as proper tags, run the Regex tagger or use a cascading filter a described in my other blog post about regular expressions for DVX external table translation in memoQ. Of course, for content other than DVX tags, a different regular expression will be needed.