memoQ cloud: a team server "on tap"

This afternoon, Kilgray CEO István Lengyel held one of the best webinars I've seen him do yet to describe the convenient new hosted server facilities known as memoQ cloud, which I reviewed recently.

In the webinar, he explained the company's evolution of thought for online computing and how concerns about security were finally resolved to create a more sustainable offering than the more support-intensive "honeymoon" server solution.

He made it clear how existing desktop licenses for the Project Manager and Translator Pro editions can be used in combination with concurrent access licenses (CALs) for the server, as well as how cloud services can be suspended for periods in which they are not needed, saving considerable costs for those with only occasional needs to work in a coordinated online team.

Backing up the server configuration can be done quickly and easily from a Language Terminal account, so if cloud service is dormant for more than three months (after which data are deleted from the server), everything can be restored quickly when needed.

The webinar also included a demonstration of the integrated translation in web browsers, memoQ WebTrans. This is one way of providing access to the server for others who do not have installed copies of memoQ or working on your server when using other computers. Of course this interface also works in web browsers under other operating systems, such as MacOS or Linux. (Click on the graphic below to get a full-sized view of the web translation interface.)

Access to Kilgray's premium terminology server qTerm and memoQ server APIs is also available for an additional subscription fee. Subscribed services can be changed at any time as your needs evolve.

In the webinar, István showed how in about the same time it takes to enjoy a cup of coffee, one can get a free Kilgray Language Terminal account and register with a credit card for a month's trial of the memoQ cloud server (with any services available) for just €1/$1. If you are trying out services which you will not want beyond the trial period (like the API, qTerm or extra licenses), these can be set to cancel at the end of the trial period to avoid unwanted charges.

The embedded video below is a 20-minute tour of how simple it is to set up and manage projects in memoQ cloud. Use the icon at the lower right of the video frame to watch this on your full screen.


This is a good overview of the process, although the licenses aren't explained very well, and the project type recommendation is bad advice in many cases, as I pointed out in my post on server projects on segmentation and projects with desktop documents. Everything else in the video is good, but it's often very important to allow segmentation to be changed or corrected, particularly if the segmentation rules used in the project do not cover abbreviations which may split sentences in very unfortunate ways. If you need to have instantaneous access to work from other team members by using online documents, the the segmentation will need to be checked very carefully and corrected before the project begins to avoid difficulties.

Those testing the memoQ cloud server or using desktop editions of memoQ may also want to check out various free configuration resources on Language Terminal. These include special QA profiles, AutoCorrect files, import filters that are not part of the shipping product and auto-translation rules for easier translation of number and date formats, etc. Language Terminal offers other facilities which may be of interest even to those who do not use memoQ, such as the free InDesign server, which can create PDF previews of InDesign documents (very useful for reviews before delivery) or convert InDesign files of any type to XLIFF for translation in many different environments.

UPDATE:
The memoQ cloud webinar is now available to watch on Kilgray's page for recorded webinars; it can be accessed directly here or viewed in the embedded video below.

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

Kilgray survey until April 25th: ready, aim, respond!

Kilgray is conducting a survey until April 25th, the results of which will be discussed at the conference in May. This is an opportunity for users of memoQ and their other products to say what's working and what's not and perhaps influence the future course.

It's a short survey and should take little time to answer. The first question asks three things they are doing right, the second one asks which three things are wrong and need to stop, and further questions ask your opinion on the importance of maintaining independence (in contrast to SDL Trados, Star Transit or Wordfast, for example, which are owned by language service resellers which compete with agency customers and freelancers for business) and what "big idea" you might like to see implemented.

On several occasions in past years, I have seen Kilgray respond quickly to clearly expressed user feedback, and I believe that this is still a reasonable expectation. So have your say to help make some good tools better!

Coming to terms with Kilgray

The pre-conference day for memoQfest 2011 offered dual tracks in the morning session for the TM Repository and qTerm, the advanced, server-based terminology module for memoQ. Ever since attending a webinar when qTerm was released last October, I've been intending to blog on it, and since I already had an overview of what I needed to know about the Repository from last year, I chose the qTerm track. However the Twitter feed from Polish translator @wasaty made it clear that I was missing a lot of interesting news about Kilgray's TM management technologies.

István Lengyel and Gergely Vandor of Kilgray served a lot of meaty technical details on qTerm, many of which could be the subject of an entire blog post. It's a product with great potential I think, and I expect it will evolve considerably in the course of the next year. Gergely's technical insights on problems often encountered in data migration and how non-standard the TBX "standard" truly is were particularly interesting to me personally, revealing some useful and interesting information about data exports in that format from SDL's MultiTerm. And I thought the world of TMX was a big mess....

István's telling of the history of term management at Kilgray offered me a look at the very different world of translators of technical information working with small distribution languages. In some respects, that is a very different world from mine, and I very much appreciate how being shaken out of my comfortable German/English language pair perspective can sometimes help to flush my hardened arteries and get a little more oxygen to my brain. And the repeated reference to the role of terminology in branding by all three speakers in that morning session gave me some new ideas for how to help my direct clients and agencies understand even more clearly the importance of getting terminology right.

But like yesterday's train-the-trainer session, the real highlight of the day for me was not a technical presentation with specific details of a product I find interesting. It was a general discussion of purpose and philosophy in terminology management, by expert terminologist and consultant Barbara Karsch, who was deeply involved with terminology at JD Edwards and Microsoft before becoming an independent service provider to LSPs and corporate translation consumers. Her web site offers a lot of interesting information and definitions that are well worth reading. Her methodical presentation of the real costs involved in terminology mis- or non-management left little room for excuses and made a strong, objective case that any sober business person can appreciate. What I learned from her will help me make a better case to clients I value so they can help themselves. I very much look forward to getting a copy of the slides from that presentation.

Among all her valuable advice, however, one particular point stands out for me, an obvious one that I know well from my own experience. It applies to both terminologies and the collections of data often used inefficiently for terminology: translation memories. Without maintenance and updating, terminologies (and TMs) eventually become worthless. There is a definite life cycle which applies to a lot of this data, and all of the babbling about matches, fuzzy matches, etc. and the inertial complacency of many of us and our clients with regard to existing collections of data can too easily cause us to lose perspective and sacrifice future quality and reputation while indulging in the illusion of cost savings.

Those who make an effort to think clearly about the real costs of processes and decisions very often discover truths at odds with lazy common wisdom and benefit accordingly. When we get beyond the fear, uncertainty and doubt invoked by dishonest companies and "experts" with an agenda at odds with the interests of freelancers, public bodies and LSPs of acceptable size, we are very likely to arrive at decisions that seem risky to those blinded by propaganda.

Viewed objectively, the case is very clear for efficient, modern management of terminology with technologies such as those offered by Kilgray. And considering the larger technological context of the integrated environment in which tools such as qTerm work, the case for memoQ as a mother lode of value for translation management is just as clear. That is perhaps why I will be able to greet esteemed colleagues from SDL and other important contributors to the translation tools industry who will be attending memoQfest this year to divine the future directions of translation technology :-)