Substack in #xl8 & #l10n

 As related in my last post, I've been testing the Substack platform as an alternative means for distributing and managing the kind of information I've published for many years now on this blog, professional sites and social media, course authoring platforms, YouTube, Xitter, Mastodon and probably a few other channels I've forgotten. And I'm quite surprised to find any expectations I had to be exceeded at this point. On the whole I can do a better job of creating accessible tutorials and other reference information there, and there is far less effort involved with maintenance, style sheet fiddling and whatnot.

All my various projects there can be found here on my profile page.

Currently, these are the

• Translation Tribulations Substack, a general blog for the language services sector and the
• memoQuickies Substack, with content related to the memoQ TMS platform in one way or another.

Other plans include The Diary and Letters of Charles Berry Senior, a US Civil War veteran from Yorkshire, England, who participated in Sherman's march to the sea and who is my great-great grandfather. Some of his records exist in very deteriorated form in a university archive in the United States and can be found online, but much is missing, and I am in possession of the complete transcript prepared by one of the man's daughters more than 100 years ago when the family feared the information would be lost to the forces of material decay. I'll be preparing clean text from her handwritten record (the typescript done by a cousin about 50 years ago was lost and probably contains more errors) and probably an audio reading. There's some hard stuff there, as well as some surprises and interesting lessons in how our world has changed in the past 160 years.

And at some point I'll probably share some of my culinary obsessions as well as what life was like traveling on the other side of the Iron Curtain sans papers or in dingy Paris bookshops and refugee hotels 40 years ago and more.

This past week, I've done a big blitz on memoQ LiveDocs, for which there are still another dozen or so drafts to be finished, and a lot of stuff from my CAT tools resource online class from last year should be appearing there in updated form in due course. There isn't a lot of translation-related activity that I've found on Substack, at least not for the technical side of things, but a lot of historians and authors I follow are very present there, so I'm hoping the better half of my translation technologist friends will join the Substack party at some point.

Most of my new text, video and teaching content will appear on those Substack channels. It's simply far easier to manage, and there you won't have the same RSS headaches you might have here. And the damned editor of Google Blogger just keeps accumulating bugs I don't have to cope with in Substack. And don't get me started on bloody Wordpress!

I hope to see you in my Substack channels soon! I think there will be something like a memoQ QA course there before the summer is over....

memoQ "Auto-translation Roundup": 14 September 2023 at 15:00 CET

 

This week's public lecture for the "memoQuickies Resource Camp" on Thursday, September 14, 2023, at 3:00 p.m. Central European Time (2:00 p.m. Lisbon time) will be a summary of currently available auto-translation rules on the course pages which are open to everyone (enrolled or not) and those restricted to registered participants. This is all about getting to work now with stuff that is ready to go, and how to adapt that stuff for clients with different requirements.

So if you want to get right  down to productive work using available memoQ auto-translation rulesets in translation, review and quality assurance without wasting time on learning bloody regex, this is for you.

Be there or be square....

A recording of the talk will be available to all registered course participants afterward.

Last week's lecture, "Auto-translation Rules for Everyone", is available here.

Oh, and next week at the same time we'll be talking about the memoQ Regex Assistant and all the cool libraries available for QA, filtering, find & replace and other tasks.....

New online course: "memoQuickies Resource Camp"

Summer is almost over, but technically, "camping season" will continue in memoQ World until November 30th. Or maybe January 31st, depending on how you count.

Today, a three-month journey of exploration begins, covering six important kinds of resources to make work with the memoQ translation desktop and server environments more pleasant and efficient... and profitable. This self-guided online course will give participants full access to my 14 years of cumulative experience as a memoQ user translating, managing projects and developing hundreds of solutions with this world-leading productivity tool.

Click here or on the icon bar above to have a look at the course description and to see (and maybe download) some of the publicly available information and resources for better work in many language pairs. 

The emphasis of teaching will shift to a new resource every two weeks (with auto-translation rules as the main topic for the first two weeks), but throughout the course, information will be added continuously to all topic sections as I trawl through, sort, upgrade and publish the best or most interesting stuff from my archives. And course participants have access to open virtual office hours each week on Thursdays and some other occasions, where any questions can be asked and special requests made.

A special enrollment discount of 40% is available for the first week (code: HALFOFFLAUNCH) until September 10th, but you can join at any time and work with any of the material posted, ask questions and receive feedback. Learning material and downloadable, ready-to-use and -adapt resources will continue to be added until the end of November, and the full course will remain online through January 2024. Enrollment fees and content are subject to change without notice.

Addendum 1: On Thursday afternoon, September 7th, 2023, a presentation was made to introduce the first course topic - "Auto-translation Rules for Everyone". The recording and slides can be found here.

Addendum 2: Payment options for groups and monthly budgets have been introduced now. These options enable teams, departments and organizations to obtain blocks of passes for their members to receive continuing professional education in translation workflow tools. The host site applies VAT and other taxes where relevant and generates appropriate invoices. All relevant information can be found at the bottom of the information and enrollment page.

The challenge of light resource updates with many projects in memoQ

"Templates" take two forms in memoQ: the configuration option for equipping new projects with relevant resources in an automated way to save time and avoid forgetting important references or other information, which was introduced several years ago, and the older sort of "template" - a configured, existing project for a particular client or subject area - where new documents are simply added and old ones archived or deleted as time goes by. I use both approaches and still tend to rely more on the latter practice, as many do.

One colleague who is a frequent source of inspiration for new workflow approaches often mentions that her projects and support resources number in the hundreds, so many ideas I have for managing my own more limited set these days are not practical for her work. But recently someone mentioned casually that it was going to be difficult to update segmentation rules in the 1500 or so projects that her team maintains to support in-house translation needs in their firm. Oh, my God. Yes, that would take some time following the usual approach of going to Project home > Settings and selecting a new resource in even 10% of that number of projects.

There is a better way. In fact, this way will work with the desktop editions typically used by individuals as well as with memoQ server installations of any size, and a "mass update" of project light resources can be performed in very little time - less than it usually takes me to finish a cup of coffee in the morning. My recent article on memoQ light resource defaults and how to change them essentially points the way, but more details, now tested with a memoQ server as well, are given here.

Light resources in a desktop edition are typically stored in the paths

C:\ProgramData\MemoQ\Resources\Defaults for default resources and
C:\ProgramData\MemoQ\Resources\Local for customized (user-created) resources, unless that path was changed (as many do if they deal with a lot of files with long names and need to shorten paths to avoid errors when the file and path names together approach the 256 character limit imposed by Microsoft Windows).

Server installations follow more or less the same logic:

C:\ProgramData\MemoQ Server\Resources\Defaults for default resources and
C:\ProgramData\MemoQ Server\Resources\Local for custom ones, unless changed as noted above.

Note that the ProgramData folder is a hidden folder by default in Windows, so you may need to change your folder settings to view it.

Light resources stored in both the Defaults and custom (Local) folders are saved without the MemoQResource header one sees in an exported light resource file. Compare the following two screenshots of the same resource in the external editing and maintenance file (with XML comments to help me keep track of what things mean) and the stored file after importing it into memoQ:

My master resource file for German segmentation, maintained with comments in Notepad++

Imported custom resource file for German segmentation. All comments are stripped by memoQ.

So, what should you do if you have 200 projects for your personal work with a memoQ desktop edition or 1500 projects on your memoQ server, and you have a new segmentation rules file, for example, which you want to apply to all of your projects? Simply

1. Copy all the text beginning with the XML declaration
   
   all the way down to the end of the file.
2. Find the default or local resource to update in the paths described above (or in your own custom path) and open the file in a text editor.
3. Select all the text in the installed resource file, and paste the text of the new resource over it, replacing the content completely.
4. Save and close the file.

The changes to your default or custom resource will be active immediately. No need to restart memoQ or close and re-open any projects.

In my case, with the German segmentation file given as an example, I would paste that new content into the resource files for generic German (ger), as well as German from Germany (ger-DE), Austria (ger-AT) and Switzerland (ger-CH). No need to mess with the awful integrated resource editors in memoQ, because I keep a master resource file with explanatory comments to help me maintain it better outside of memoQ, and the segmentation I want will be the same for all language variants.

This method does nothing to disturb the content of existing projects nor does it affect their stability in any way. This should work with any memoQ light resources. Thus, for example, an IT department could plan bulk updates even of local resources like keyboard shortcut or web search settings given the necessary access to user drives on a network.

The approach that many follow of deleting old resources and importing new ones with the same names won't work; this can play Hell with project settings, because memoQ notices that a resource used in projects has been removed, and it does not replace the old assignment with a new one, even if that new one has the same name. I played that game with many variations to see if I could trick memoQ into substituting the same-named resource in my project and had no success at all. Don't go there. Use the process I described above.

No comment... on memoQ "light" resources and their editors

The memoQ working environment includes a number of editing functions and modules, some better developed and more useful than others. Unfortunately, the terms "better" and "more useful" cannot be applied to many of those functions for creating and maintaining resources for auto-translation and many other functions. And, at the present time, integrated facilities for documenting the purpose and function of resources are usually limited to a short description field. The consequence of this can be, in a better case, some confusion, and if you are unlucky you might lose and or accidentally delete resources or apply a version unfit for use.

Auto-translation rule set editor with inadequate space for reading and writing the rules.

The auto-translation rule set editor is a particular headache for me. Scrolling back and forth in a tiny field to read and edit a long match rule (here, in the example of the number-matching auto-translation rules provided with the memoQ installation) is difficult and error-prone.

Even with the dialog-based editors which don't look much like editors (such as the example for QA options configuration below), it's hard to get an overview.

Unless I can compress all the relevant information into the description field for the resource, the only way I am going to get an overview of which functions are enabled is to go through all eight tabs for the QA profile in that dialog. Yuck. And the "why"? Maybe recorded in a notebook buried in the paper pile of my work table if I'm lucky.

There is a better way. And while that way is followed by a number of technically adept colleagues and developers I know, unfortunately it is not usually discussed and taught in workshops and other training venues, nor is it promoted by the software providers for memoQ in any way of which I am aware.

I typically recommend the use of specialized text editors, such as the free text and source code editor Notepad++ for most development, maintenance and documentation tasks involving memoQ light resources. It is available at no cost to everyone and offers simple functions to help you get an overview, edit and document your resources. Only a tiny bit of arcane knowledge is required.

Armed with such a tool, or even with the simple Windows Notepad application, there are a number of useful things that can be done, such as:

Add <!-- comments --> to the text of an MQRES light resource file saved from memoQ

The markers shown in red in the previous line can be added to a line in the file to provide explanatory comments or maintenance instructions. In files with regex content, I often use comments to explain to myself the use of syntax that I will otherwise forget and be unable to understand in a matter of hours or at best weeks.

Example of an auto-translation rule set with comments added

Note that these comments are stripped when resources are imported into memoQ, remaining only in the original external file. Thus, a workflow involving external development and documentation in the resource files, with imports to memoQ for testing and use, is highly desirable. If deficiencies are found in the resource, it should be corrected externally in Notepad++, etc. and re-imported, not fixed in-situ in memoQ, where no information will be present regarding the resource, its purpose and mysterious details.

Comments of this sort night be added to a QA profile, for example, to give a quick overview of the resource and its purpose in more detail than the description field allows (and I often forget to update that description field, because it is in the header of the file, which is usually not of much interest for developing and testing configurations, except to note a version number and a few details). 

Edit the resource more sensibly, using standard text editor features like search and replace

Often I'll decide to add nonbreaking spaces to a date or currency expression (or to the French output numbers in the "French Group" numbers auto-translation rule set provided with memoQ, which unfortunately probably still uses ordinary spaces as separators for thousands, millions, etc.), and this can be totally tedious in the internal editors of memoQ. Such tasks are much simpler in Notepad or Notepad++, for example.

It's also much simpler to find multiple instances of a word or structure that needs amendment or to do just about anything else when you can see all the content in a larger display.

Where resources are in fact simpler to develop inside memoQ, it is still worthwhile to export MQRES files as security. Comments added to these are a form of internal documentation which can avoid confusion and mistakes later when sorted file messes on a hard drive.

Teach and practice resource development and maintenance more effectively

A heavily commented resource file can be thought of as an easily portable "textbook" which includes a functional, importable example of its teaching. And when another person receives a copy of such a file as an example, it will be much easier to understand its structure and purpose and make any necessary changes.

Troubleshooting memoQ light resource import problems

The other day I sent a friend some updated auto-translation rules for currency expressions; a short time later I received a message that they would not import into memoQ. The error message displayed was the following:

Now the problem here might seem obvious, but the name of the file I sent was nothing like any rule she already had installed,

In the example shown below, the source of the trouble is more obvious, but if there are a lot of resources in the list shown in the Resource Console or elsewhere, the redundancy of the name in the import dialog and an existing resource name in the list might not stand out so clearly....

In the MQRES file (for the memoQ light resource), the "trouble  spot" is in the XML header at the top of the file. This can be seen by opening it in any text editor (in this case I used Notepad++ to show line numbering);

In this case, the fifth line contains the name that will be applied to the resource after it is imported. The <Name> tags are found in all kinds of memoQ light resources, and the same problem will occur if a redundancy is found during import. Here is an example from a memoQ ignore list (used to exclude certain words from error indications by spellchecking functions):

There are a couple of ways to avoid or correct these problems:

• First of all, when a ruleset is edited, the text enclosed by the Name tags should be altered. It's probably a good idea to update the Description as well. The FileName  is actually ignored and need not be updated; a difference with the real name of the MQRES file will not cause any trouble with an import.
  
• When importing a light resource, you can always change the information read from the Name and Description tags of the MQRES file. This avoids the conflict.
  
            
    
• The name and description of an existing light resource can be edited via the Properties of the resource in the Resource Console or Project Home > Settings, Accessing the resource via memoQ Options will currently (as of version 8.1) not show the Properties.
  
             

memoQ's "light resources" - the portable configurations and information lists to assist various translation tasks - are one of the environment's greatest strengths, but the generally bad state of the associated editing tools and unhelpful error handling continue to cause a lot of unnecessary confusion among users. Key people at Kilgray are not unaware of this problem, and for years there has been a debate regarding new features versus actual usability of the features already present. When you encounter difficulties like the one described above - or other troubles using this generally excellent, leading translation assistance tool - it is important to communicate your concerns to Kilgray Support (support@kilgray.com). 

Without appropriate feedback from the wordface, there is often really no way for the designers and product engineers to understand and prioritize the challenges of usability. I can understand the reluctance of those who have used other tools for many years, where it was clear that their requests for bug fixes or other improvements were largely ignored, to take such action, but it really does make a difference, though not always on a time scale of hours or days. Weeks, months, sometimes years may pass before important changes are made, but usually this is because the urgency of the matter has not been communicated with sufficient clarity, or there are in fact, more pressing matters which require attention. But in fact no serious matters are seldom ignored by those responsible, as nine years as a satisfied user have shown me.

Finding resources on Kilgray's Language Terminal

Kilgray’s online platform for translation, Language Terminal at https://www.languageterminal.com/, may be a game-changer in many ways. Not only does it offer affordable, on-demand memoQ translation server capacity for small teams on demand, it provides free InDesign server availability to users of any tool for converting InDesign formats to XLIFF and PDF for translation and review, back-up features fully integrated with recent versions of memoQ, some evolving project management and invoicing tools and a growing library of light resources shared by users. This post discusses how to find and use these resources, which can be useful in all supported versions of memoQ.

Accessing your account
The user menus of Language Terminal can be accessed in two ways: in a web browser from the URL above or from the link on your memoQ Dashboard.

If you are not already a Language Terminal user, a free account can be set up in just a few minutes.

Looking for resources
The current user interface for finding resources on Language Terminal is confusing to some users. The Resource menu link in the orange navigation bar shows a list of resources you have uploaded yourself to Language Terminal. The dropdown list indicated by the arrow filters your own resources. To find resources from other people, click the Advanced Search button.

There is nothing “advanced” about this search. It simply allows you to use four fields to find resources which are publicly available on the site. Be careful of your selection criteria for language as some resources (like auto-translation rules) are not language-specific by definition even if they might have been created for use with a particular language.

The result of the search for English stopword resources to be used in terminology extraction to filter out “noise” words (like prepositions, pronouns, articles and common vocabulary) looked like this at the time I performed the search:

Download the resources you want by clicking on their names in the Resource column. The shared library of filters, QA profiles, auto-translation rules, stopword lists and more on Language Terminal continues to grow. Why not contribute something yourself?

In any case, Language Terminal is a useful place to archive one’s valuable light resources, such as segmentation rules developed over time with great effort, and these are not shared with others unless you specifically release them. Given the occasional unfortunate “disappearances” of light resources known to occur with some memoQ upgrades, this is a very useful backup option to have, and it would be nice if future integration of Language Terminal and memoQ were to facilitate more complete, automated resource backups from desktop systems.