The memoQ Regex Assistant Revisited at 15:00 CET on 21 September 2023!

 

Eleven months ago I was supposed to talk about terminology in a three-hour evening class taught by one of my friends at Universidade Nova de Lisboa, but I was so excited about the progress of the quality team I was training at one of my agency clients in Portugal that I twisted what was expected to be my usual straightforward 90 minute lecture on term base best practices in memoQ into an unusual take on the role regular expressions might play in terminology management.

That was a weird one, for sure, but the potential I saw was very real. I was defining "terminology" in rather broad terms to include not only more efficient term base management based on problem patterns but also translation memory clean-up, better filtering and find/replace operations in the working grid and QA.

"What the heck has all that got to do with scary ol' REGEX?" you're probably thinking.

Well, all this was triggered by memoQ's recent release of the One Ring Thing we've been needing to unify our memoQ management processes for the routine use of regex by The Rest of Us. The Regex Assistant. The Nazgul of Trados World are surely jealous.

That quality team I was training, my friends at Linguaemundi. is headed by Inês Lucas, about whom I had heard many good things for years from her enthusiastic professors at university but whom I hadn't actually met until she was hired by the agency a few years ago. At the recent memoQ Fest in Budapest, she explained how changing the approach to regex mastery from the struggles of syntax to organizing and applying packaged solutions in well-engineered processes significantly upgraded their work capacities and reduced stress levels. When you cut the nerdy crap and focus on understanding what solutions are called for particular tasks, everything gets much easier.

I was so amazed to see people who had struggled for years to learn regex well enough for simple tasks suddenly become solution powerhouses that I put together (rather spontaneously) a series of three online 90-minute workshops, which were repeated a month later. And new refinements to these methods come each time the ideas are presented.

The raw recordings of those six workshops are included in the current online course ("memoQuickies Resource Camp"), but one - the first of six - is publicly available on YouTube, where you can have a look.

However in the memoQuickies Resource Camp, a self-guided course that is serving as a platform for me to organize and distribute the best resources from my 14 years as a memoQ user, solution provider and trainer before I retire, I'll be taking another more streamlined pass at teaching some of the best possibilities for using memoQ Regex Assistant resource libraries. The webinars offered in most weeks of the course are simply an overview of the current topic emphasized in the course and also serve as a Q&A platform and a means of offering some different perspectives on information from the self-guided units. Recordings are always added to the course for later viewing.

This coming Thursday at 15:00 Central European Time, I'll give a brief overview of the Regex Assistant much like the public YouTube video does and answer any questions that attendees might have. Further information and an event notice can be found here on LinkedIn.

You can join the webinar with this link. The meeting ID is 878 3540 2561, and the passcode is 385434

10 Tips to Term Base Mastery in memoQ! (online course)

Note: the pilot phase for this training course has passed, free enrollment has been closed, and the content is being revised and expanded for re-release soon... available courses can be seen at my online teaching site: https://transtrib-tech.teachable.com/

In the past few years I have done a number of long webinars in English and German to help translators and those involved in translation processes using the memoQ environment work more effectively with terminology. These are available on my YouTube channel (subscribe!), and I think all of them have extensive hotlinked indexes to enable viewers to skip to exactly the parts that are relevant to them. A playlist of the terminology tutorial videos in English is available here.

I've also written quite a few blog posts - big and small - teaching various aspects of terminology handling for translation with or without memoQ. These can be found with the search function on the left side of this blog or using the rather sumptuous keyword list.

But sometimes just a few little things can get you rather far, rather quickly toward the goal of using terminology more effectively in memoQ, and it isn't always easy to find those tidbits in the hours of video or the mass of blog posts (now approaching 1000). So I'm trying a new teaching format, inspired in part by my old memoQuickie blog posts and past tutorial books. I have created a free course using the Teachable platform, which I find easier to use than Moodle (I have a server on my domain that I use for mentoring projects), Udemy and other tools I've looked at over the years.

This new course - "memoQuickies: On Better Terms with memoQ! 10 Tips toward Term Base Mastery" - is currently designed to give you one tip on using memoQ term bases or related functions each day for 10 days. Much of the content is currently shared as an e-mail message, but all the released content can be viewed in the online course at any time, and some tips may have additional information or resources, such as videos or relevant links, practice files, quality assurance profiles or custom keyboard settings you can import to your memoQ installation.

These are the tips (in sequence) that are part of this first course version:

1. Setting Default Term Bases for New Terms
2. Importing and Exporting Terms in Microsoft Excel Files
3. Getting a Grip on Term Entry Properties in memoQ
4. "Fixing" Term Base Default Properties
5. Changing the Properties of Many Term Entries in a Term Base
6. Sharing and Updating Term Bases with Google Sheets
7. Sending New Terms to Only a Specific Ranked Term Base
8. Succeeding with Term QA
9. Fixing Terminology in a Translation Memory
10. Mining Words with memoQ

There is also a summary webinar recorded to go over the 10 tips and provide additional information.

I have a number of courses which have been developed (and may or may not be publicly visible depending on when you read this) and others under development in which I try to tie together the many learning resources available for various professional translation technology subjects, because I think this approach may offer the most flexibility and likelihood of success in communicating necessary skills and knowledge to an audience wider than I can serve with the hours available for consulting and training in my often too busy days.

I would also like to thank the professional colleagues and clients who have provided so much (often unsolicited) support to enable me to focus more on helping translators, other translation project participants and translation consumers work more effectively and reduce the frustrations too often experienced with technology.

memoQuickie: "Partial deliveries" from the preview

Earlier today a friend asked how she might deliver just a table from a larger report she was translating in memoQ in a word processing file. My quick answer was to use the recent export functions in memoQ which enable one to export partially completed work, then open the file and delete everything but the table.

But then I thought... there must be a better way. So I built a test file in Microsoft Word:

And then I imported this into memoQ, copied the text from the preview and pasted it back into Microsoft Word .

Content copied from the memoQ preview: the red box is placed at the currently selected segment.

The Excel object copied from the preview as a bitmap graphic, but the ordinary table and the other text were normal and editable. This would often suffice to send some small section of a translation quickly, and this could even be used with the monolingual review feature to update the translation with suggested changes.

memoQuickie: fixing segmentation with goofy product and company names

The insistence by some companies to brand themselves and their products with names whose capitalization violate the usual rules of a language can cause segmentation difficulties for translators working with translation environment tools.

To correct this difficulty in memoQ, find the segmentation rules for the language in question and edit them.

On the Custom lists tab of the segmentation rule set, select the #cap# list and add the troublesome name (such as iPhone, iPad or memoQ). By adding the names to this list, you are essentially defining them as "capital letters"; if "memoQ" is in the list, then segmentation will also work for "memoQuickies". Then reimport the file using that rule set:

memoQuickie: filtering shortcut for translations

When I'm working on a text and want to see how a certain term or phrase in the source or target text is used throughout the translation - "Teilaufgabe" for instance:

I can select the text and use the keyboard shortcut

to automatically copy that text in quotes to the search box and filter:

If no text is selected and I use the keyboard shortcut, the cursor will move to the search box for the source or target text, depending on where it was. Click the red X filter icon to the right of the search boxes to show all segments again.

memoQuickie: Exporting TMX from memoQ

Translators are often asked to export translation memory data (TMX files typically) to deliver with their work. Although this is fairly simple to do in memoQ, too often more than just the required data is sent by mistake.

Select the TM from which to export via Tools > Resource Console... > Translation memories or Project home > Translation memories.

Click Export to TMX to export all the data in the chosen TM.

If a selective export (just some of the data in the TM) is desired, click Edit, enter the filter criteria in the dialog that appears and click OK. It is also possible to filter in the editor view. Only the data shown will be included in the TMX file created.

The memoQ TM editor with filtered records shown. Click to enlarge.

Here is a "video tour" of the process:


Ten brownie points to anyone who can figure out where I "cheated" with the translation information shown in the video.

memoQuickie 6.2: recovering a previous translation status

For a given source document version, it is possible to recover the complete status of the translation at any minor version stage created by import, export, a snapshot, etc.

From the menubar, select Translation > Toggle Track Changes > Custom... and choose the earlier version you want to go back to:

Click OK and the differences between the current translation and that old version will be shown:

Then choose Edit > Select All Segments:

Selected segments are highlighted blue. Now choose Translation > Revert To Earlier Version:

The translation is now in its previous state and can be changed further, exported, archived in LiveDocs, etc. Changed segments now have the edited status.

Note that content which has been overwritten in a TM can be recovered this way.

Happy Thanksgiving memoQ tutorials & book special

After fielding quite a few questions in the past week on segmentation problems with translation files and alignments as well as questions from a few colleagues and clients about ways to get better-looking output of the data stored in memoQ term bases (with SDL Trados MultiTerm), I prepared two longer tutorial scripts and distributed these with a segmentation practice file to registered subscribers to my ebook, memoQ 6 in Quick Steps. This is a little thank you and dividend for their early support of my first commercial publication effort for translator education.

To celebrate the national holiday in my native country as well as my own thanksgiving for all the ideas for best practice which my colleagues and clients continue to share, I have also set a "Thanksgiving Weekend Special" with a special rate for the ebook until the end of Sunday, California time. Registered purchasers will receive the book update for memoQ 6.2 in December as well as any further updates for a year.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

E-book release: memoQ 6 in Quick Steps

This is the 500th blog post published on Translation Tribulations and a minor milestone of sorts. After some delay, I have released the first electronic edition of memoQ 6 in Quick Steps, a guide compiled from my collection of instructions and tutorials which I use for training and consulting. It contains over 190 pages of tips and insights for beginning and experienced users of the memoQ desktop editions.

Online distribution is being handled through Lulu.com initially until I decide a better way. Those who forward proof of purchase of this release to me will receive updates of the electronic edition for a year. The translation environment tool memoQ has evolved rapidly in the four years I have tested and worked with it, and I'll be adding and updating modules appropriately as the software and methods of working with it improve.

Some of the content in the book is taken from the memoQuickie tutorials on this blog, some of it has been shared only with clients and a few colleagues until now, and other material has not been published previously.

A print edition is in the works and will be released in time for memoQfest USA early next year after the book is updated to reflect new developments and services.

memoQuickie: "compatible" XLIFF in memoQ 6, 6.2 and 2013

The recent builds of memoQ 6 have caused some confusion with Kilgray following the SDL practice of creating its own extension for XLIFF files, so these may not be recognized by other applications and would need the extensions changed to XLF or something else generally recognizable as XLIFF.

This can actually be done directly in the export dialog for the bilingual XLIFF file. Just change the file extension in the File name field. Despite a renamed extension, the file will be recognized as a memoQ bilingual when re-imported, and the translation of the original file will be updated.

If you encounter a compressed memoQ XLIFF export (MQXLZ), be aware that this is just a ZIP file. Rename the extension to ZIP and unpack it to get the real XLIFF (MQXLIFF) file. That file has a generic name (document.mqxliff) and should probably be renamed before it is shared.

Update 2013-07-23: Here is a short video I posted on YouTube to show how to export an XLF file and open it in SDL Trados Studio:

memoQuickie: pretranslation in memoQ

Pretranslating is the process of automatically translating a text or portions of it by comparison with a translation memory, the application of machine translation or the use of a previous version as a reference document. This description covers the first two cases.

Select Operations > Pre-Translate... from the menus.

 

Select the appropriate pretranslation settings for your file(s). In some cases, using TM-driven segmentation can greatly improve matching.

 

Here is an example of results with fuzzy matches from a translation memory and some segments (2 and 4) machine-translated (using the pseudotranslation engine as an example for contrast). Without machine translation or fragment assembly those segments would remain empty.

This method of pretranslation is often good to use as a follow-up step when translating with a reference document (i.e. a previousversion using the X-Translate function).

memoQuickie: Adding terms to multiple memoQ termbases

By default, memoQ always writes new terms to the primary termbase; other termbases selected are for reference only. However, as of version 5, it is possible to change where terms are written and to write to more than one termbase simultaneously.

Select a term to record and choose Operations > Add Term... or use the toolbar or keyboard shortcut to open the dialog for creating a termbase entry.

The upper right of the dialog shows the termbase(s) to which terms will be written. Clicking the small, black arrow opens the dropdown menu where all termbases in the project can be selected and deselected for adding terms.

In the example above, the term will be written to two termbases.

The selections remain the default for all new term entries in the project until changed again. If the primary termbase is not selected, no terms will be written to it.

memoQuickie: custom dictionaries (ignore lists)

memoQ 5 cannot add words to external dictionaries, such as those in Microsoft Word or Hunspell. But words to be skipped by the external spelling checker used in memoQ can be added to ignore lists, which are consulted before Hunspell or MS Word dictionaries. Words to ignore might include company names, product names, geographic terms or any other terms (such as special subject vocabulary) not in the external dictionary. These “ignore” lists might better be called custom dictionaries.

memoQ consults its ignore lists before checking a word in the external dictionary.

Ignore lists can be accessed via Tools > Resource console… > Ignore lists

 

or Tools > Options… > Ignore lists. 

Activate or deactivate lists in a current project via Translation > Spelling… > Ignore lists. 

Checkmarked lists are active in new projects. Clicking Add during a spelling check puts words in the list specified on the Ignore lists tab.

memoQuickie: customizing project, file and view lists

Many are not aware of this, but three of the important working lists in memoQ - the project list on the Dashboard and the Documents and Views lists on a project's Translation page - are customizable.

Right-clicking the header bar of the list opens a context menu where columns to be displayed are selected:

Project list context menu on the memoQ Dashboard
 

Documents list context menu in a project

Views list context menu in a project

Customizing the column display is particularly helpful in the Documents list when using memoQ versioning. If Document Version is marked in the columns choices, the major and minor version will be shown for each document. (The major or source version is the number before the decimal, the minor version - the target version for that source version - the number after it.) If versioning is not active for a document, the column displays "n/a".

memoQuickie: footnote, cross-reference & index entry segmentation in Microsoft Word files

If you have a Microsoft Word DOC file or RTF to translate, it is important to be aware of the different behaviors of the memoQ import filter options you can use. If there are footnotes, cross-references or index entries, it is far better to use the option to import the DOC or RTF file as DOCX.

The DOC file shown below has a footnote, a cross-reference and an index entry:

Adding it to a memoQ project with the default filter for Microsoft Word in memoQ 5

gives the following segmentation result:

Importing the same document with the DOCX option of the filter

yields much cleaner segmentation and better tags to work with:

Compare what some other programs do with this file:

WordFast Pro

DVX2 (DOC)

DVX2 (DOCX)

TagEditor salad (partial)

SDL Trados Studio 2009 segmentation

SDL Trados Studio 2011

There is room for improvement with most tools.

memoQuickie: comparing target text versions

One way to compare versions of a translation in memoQ (for example, after editing) is to use the source text version comparison features. This is a workaround which I hope will be implemented as a feature some day.

With versioning activated in your project (Project home > Settings > Document versioning), import the target texts as if they were source texts, using Reimport > No (and a search for the other file version) to create a version history. Then select History/Reports... from the context menu of the file in the Project home > Translations list.

Select the "major versions" of interest and export a two-column view of the changes.

This view will be an HTML file.

The columnar comparison of the two versions shows differences highlighted and some statistics on them.

Alternatively, document comparison features in Microsoft Word can be used, but this method applies to all file types.

memoQuickie: spelling ABCs

Settings to check spelling are configured under Tools > Options... > Spell settings
 

Although Microsoft Word spellchecking is possible, it is more limited than in Word itself (doubled words are not found, for example); the Check spelling as you type option for Hunspell offers advantages for catching mistakes, though words not in the dictionary will give false positives:

memoQ can download and/or automatically install Hunspell dictionaries using the commands under the dictionary list.

 

Spelling checks are started via Translation > Spelling... or pressing F7.

Dictionary choices can be adjusted on the Options tab. The Ignore lists tab has lists of words which can be ignored while checking spelling. These resources can be saved and shared.

It is always a good idea to check spelling and/or grammar after translation using an external program. If the original format is not a word processing file, bilingual exports (RTF or DOC) can be used.