Re-importing reviewed translations in memoQ server projects.

One of the unexpected benefits of testing the memoQ cloud server is that it gives me a good opportunity to reproduce and test some of the disaster scenarios encountered when working with project managers not fully aware of the implications of their choices when setting up server projects. Many of the problems that come to my attention relate to revision workflows that many experienced translators like to use.

For various reasons, exporting bilingual formats - XLIFF, Wordfast Classic-compatible DOC or RTF tables - is a popular review method. Sometimes these are checked by others who do not use memoQ, sometimes they are convenient for QA with third-party tools or have other perceived advantages. As far as I know, translators can always do bilingual exports from a local installation of memoQ connected to a server project. (I haven't looked for ways to block this, because I find the notion of doing so extremely counterproductive.)

The trouble comes when they want to re-import the corrected and/or commented bilingual file to update the translation. This is possible only by the project manager working in the management window. There's no way for the translator to import a bilingual reviewed document. I asked Kilgray Support about this and was told that this is intentional because of the difficulties which could result in the project. So basically if you edit a bilingual, someone with project manager privileges for that project has to re-import it for you.

Well, not always. Sometimes it works, just a bit differently than one might imagine.

If the project manager sets up the project to use "desktop documents" (as opposed to "server documents"), then it is possible to export bilingual files and re-import them. This cannot be done directly with documents in the Translation list. But it will work with Views of these documents. Or with the full bilingual exports of the documents themselves!

The screenshot above is from a server project with configure for desktop documents. For these two project types (with or without web translation enabled), when working from a memoQ desktop client you are able to import any bilingual to update a translation file from this interface.

But wait, that's not all!

or is it? That command says "Import" and so devious minds might wonder if it is possible to import something other than a bilingual export from one of your translation documents. Indeed, the dialog that appears for file selection tantalizingly offers all supported formats. So I grabbed a DOCX with a financial text and gave it a try:

SWEET SUCCESS! A mere translator, I've cracked the memoQ server and uploaded another document to my project. Visions of Caribbean beach vacations in the warm sun dance through my head as I contemplate all the extra work I can upload to certain client projects and bill because it is, well, right their on that server project they assigned to me.... then I get this message:

General error.
TYPE:
System.NullReferenceException

MESSAGE:
Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

SOURCE:
MemoQ.Project

CALL STACK:
   at MemoQ.Project.ProjectDocument.TranslationDocumentProjectContext.UpdateDocumentDivisionInfos(TranslationDocumentCore doc)
   at MemoQ.Translation.Storage.SqlCeStorageService.SaveDocument(TranslationDocumentCore document, SavePreferences savePref)
   at MemoQ.Translation.Storage.SqlCeStorageService.SaveDocumentAndAllInfos(TranslationDocumentCore document, ICompactSerializable workflowInfo, ICompactSerializable tagDefinitions, ICompactSerializable lqaModel, SavePreferences savePref)
   at MemoQ.Project.TranslationDocImportExport.LocalImportController.doImportOrReimport(ImportTask importTask, String targetLangCode, String docStorageDir, Boolean reimport)
   at MemoQ.Project.TranslationDocImportExport.LocalImportController.DoJob()

That's Geek for "Nice try, buddy... an automated report has just been sent to the NSA and our agents will be at your door shortly." I click again, and that message self-destructs and I am given a second warning:

A knock on the door, then after a stern interview, I sink back into my desk chair and click Continue. Next time I'll stick to importing bilingual exports of documents or views from the project. That works beautifully from the View tab and allows me to work as I prefer, since by now most of my clients with memoQ servers know to use the desktop documents options for my projects. Perhaps in the future, Kilgray's programmers might tighten up the code to trap errors from fools like me who do the unexpected.



But of course, as of memoQ 2013 R2, when translating with the desktop client in server projects, one can usually update a translation with minor edits using the reviewed monolingual target document and the Import reviewed document command in the Translations menu of the project. This won't let you bring in comments, and it does have some (but increasingly fewer) quirks, but in many cases it works quite nicely. A video demonstration of this feature can be seen here.

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.

Cloud 9 for memoQ teams

After the Civil War in the US, there was a saying that Abe Lincoln may have freed all men, but Sam Colt made them equal. A similar thought occurred to me regarding Kilgray when I began testing the new memoQ cloud service announced last month. This convenient, no-hassle "server on tap" really has the potential to level the field between teams of individual translators and agencies with servers.

Kilgray will hold a free webinar on January 22, 2014 for setting up and using the memoQ cloud service. I will also be creating some resources (blog posts, videos, additions to future editions of my memoQ user guide) to share my ideas for how to work effectively with this platform. At a cost of only €120/month for a project manager license, this is a very cost-effective way for teams to access server functions as needed without the heavy investment and risks of setting up and maintaining their own local server. It also promises to be a good alternative for small agencies or corporate departments with limited capital budgets or limited abilities to maintain infrastructure.

The memoQ cloud service currently requires the use of memoQ 2013 R2. Attempts to access the server for administration with an older version of memoQ will result in error messages or a notice of the version needed.

Both web-based translation (in a browser) and client/server translation are possible with this service and are determined by how a project is set up. There are some limitations in the number of licenses which can be subscribed, but this should not cause any real difficulties for a typical small team, particularly if the members have their own memoQ licenses. There is no access limit for memoQ license owners: in addition to any subscribed memoQ cloud licenses, currently any number of translators can connect if they have a valid memoQ license. (This will change at some point, but the access model is still under consideration.)


If you are curious about working with a memoQ server, you can try the service for a month with only $1/€1 charged to your credit card. There is a bit of a learning curve for setting up projects correctly for various purposes, and I expect some users may have difficulties putting together pieces of that puzzle from the various memoQ Server manuals from Kilgray, but I expect that before long there will be a number of useful guidelines for different audiences. Data on the memoQ cloud server are saved for up to three months of a "dormant" period, and if a subscription is to remain inactive for a longer period, a full backup (including all user data and projects) can be made and restored later.

Working with a server requires some different strategies than desktop-based work, and I think it will be important to emphasize some of these differences so that project mangers in the teams will understand what can be changed or added after a project is launched and what cannot as well as what alternative approaches are available. Adding a LiveDocs corpus on the server to a project is one such case.

A little different: the server project management window

Translators working with memoQ cloud or any other memoQ 2013 R2 server may also be a little disoriented by changes required in their revision workflows. If a bilingual file of some kind is exported for external review in a server project, it must be re-imported in the server project management window for the project by someone with corresponding rights. The new monolingual option for importing reviewed documents may provide a practical way to revise text externally in some cases and re-import the changes to the project, but this new feature is not trouble-free in all cases and thus should be used with great care.

On the whole, I am extremely encouraged that Kilgray has offered this new service. I have been asking for something very much like this for nearly five years, and what's on offer here greatly exceeds my expectations. I have a few questions about administrative details which I need to ask Kilgray, but from a technical standpoint I really see this as a best case for the company's software as a service.

Segmentation in memoQ server projects

Segmentation difficulties are often one of the most troublesome aspects of working with translation environment tools. Learning to configure segmentation rules correctly and applying that knowledge can save many hours of wasted time in alignments and translations and avoid filling translation memory resources with garbage from fractured translations of partial sentences with missing verbs, subjects and whatnot.

The usual alternative remedy for inadequately configured segmentation rules which lack the segmentation exceptions needed for abbreviations, for example, is to use the "join" function (Ctrl+J), and sometimes the split function (to manage very long, unwieldy clauses such as one might find in a patent text, and the join the parts again later).

There are situations where joining and splitting of segments is blocked. This is the case with any file which is part of a view, for example; the view must be deleted before segments can once again be joined or split. Segmentation changes are also not possible in a server project which has not been set up to allow them.

There are several options or documents available to project managers when setting up  memoQ server project. But to enable translators to correct unfavorable segmentation, there is really only one choice:

If Desktop documents (no web translation) is selected, then on the dialog page which follows, changes in segmentation can be enabled:

If a project manager does not configure a project to allow this, for example because a document is being split between multiple translators (which does not allow for segmentation changes for technical reasons), the full responsibility must be assumed by the project manager for any segmentation issues. The imported documents should be examined carefully, and if any problems are observed, the segmentation rules should be modified and the documents re-imported. Doing otherwise may unavoidably result in garbage being written to the project's translation memory.

This is a very important point for memoQ trainers to emphasize when they are teaching users of the memoQ server to set up projects. Segmentation topics should be covered thoroughly, and the potential for bad results should be understood clearly if translators are given badly segmented documents they cannot fix. Project managers should also be encouraged to avoid restricting translators options in ways which are likely to harm the quality of the results and make parts of the translation unfit for later re-use.

A good rule of thumb is to choose the desktop documents option for projects always unless there are very urgent reasons not to do so. In this way, you will avoid upsetting your translators by forcing unmanageable, fractured sentence fragments on them, and you will be assured of better quality translation memory resources.

The "WordPerfect Computer"

A recent discussion on a closed CAT tool forum on Facebook reminded me of an encounter with a school secretary some 23 years ago. At the time I was an Apple Education Sales Consultant and systems engineer for a couple of computer dealers in the Los Angeles area, advising educators on what to do about all the technology that was beginning to accumulate at their institutions.

One of the incidents I'll never forget from that time is an encounter with a school secretary who was getting a new computer for her duties. Actually, I have forgotten most of the incident.

What I will never forget is how she mourned the loss of her "WordPerfect computer". At first I was utterly baffled by what she meant, and then when I understood that she meant her old, dead IBM PC which had WordPerfect installed on it, I thought, "What a stupid person" and patiently tried to explain how the hardware was from IBM and WordPerfect was merely one of a number of applications installed on it. All in vain. For the entire length of my visit, she continues to speak of her WordPerfect computer. And how great it had been.

I was the stupid one, of course. I was a technically savvy 20-something, utterly deaf to the fact that she was giving me an important lesson in brand experience. For her, the experience of working with WordPerfect was so significant that all those other programs - Lotus 1-2-3 (an old spreadsheet application), Harvard Graphics (the pterodactyl to the bird PowerPoint) and so on - were merely other, less important things to be found on that WordPerfect computer.

As translation management servers from Kilgray, SDL, Across and others have spread among language service resellers and corporations wanting to manage their own large-scale translation resources, I am seeing some things that remind me of the secretary so many years ago.

The first encounter that many users have with a particular CAT tool is now very often in an online project. An online project with a host of problems. Very often the companies operating the server are inexperienced and haven't a clue how to operate their new platforms properly. The translators time is wasted and their work is compromised as resources are mismanaged, connections are difficult and the value proposition remains totally opaque to those doing the work. "Linguistic Sausage Producer" is probably one of the nicer thoughts entertained about an LSP at such times, as translators feel themselves chopped up virtually like bits of meat and extruded into some oozy gray mass of words in which a few specks of color and globs of fat can be dimly identified.

When a translator has had such a first experience with memoQ or SDL Trados Studio, for example, and engages in discussions with colleagues about the tool, there is often very little real communication. the victims were usually thrown at the tool like bits of meat stuffed in a grinder, trained for little, if anything other than the most basic mechanics of how to be part of the sausage (if that), and when I read their words in forum posts I see a lot of confusion, frustration and occasional rage. Except for cases like an obviously worthless tool like Across, that's really a shame. A lost opportunity in so many ways.

Who is to blame? Everyone can probably take some share of the blame, and certainly everyone suffers the consequences to some extent sooner or later. The providers of the translation environment tools should be more aware of and concerned about the experience of translators with their online tool and do more to ensure that these first experiences will be good ones. Train the language sausage producers, language service providers and corporations who buy their technology better and encourage best practices, which have an equal part of human concerns and psychology with the technology. Very often these translation servers are bought based on word-of-mouth from translators talking about their good and bad experiences.

My good experiences with memoQ as a desktop application led rather directly to a number of significant server software sales although I hadn't a clue about that environment. And I have experienced some well-managed online projects with companies that understood their memoQ Server well and used it appropriately. But I have had other server experiences that would have burned a very ugly mark on the Kilgray brand if I had not had good experience before and elsewhere. I haven't been terribly impressed by what I have seen from SDL server users, but I am trying to keep an open mind about where the problems lie. Across? (Well, the evidence is clear for Across, and we can just write it off as a lost cause.)

There are so many issues tangled up here with so many parties that there will not be an easy, packaged solution to all of it. Not even in TIPP format ;-) But most of the problems can be resolved well enough in ordinary learning processes if we make a conscious effort to be patient, to treat our business partners, clients and suppliers as reasonable people should, and if we commit ourselves consistently to better communication and education. Companies selling technology could be more aware that even after the deal is closed and the price is paid, the payables and receivables for karmic interest can continue quite a long time. The best thing SDL could hope for would be that some day some happy translators might innocently refer to their "Trados Studio" computers.

The memoQ ménage à trois

A few years ago, I tagged along behind Kilgray COO István Lengyel as he gave guests remaining after memoQfest a tour of the lovely city of Budapest. It was a beautiful spring day - what better opportunity to talk about the pressing matters of software licensing and server availability for small teams? We talked about the difficult position of translating couples who spent far too much time trading data on the SneakerNet or e-mailing TM exports to a partner sitting five meters away. He proposed a "honeymoon edition" of the memoQ Server to serve the needs of these teams, a licensing scheme certain to evoke warm feelings on par with a romantic cruise on the Blue Danube. But, alas, the promised edition never saw an official release.

But if there is one thing I've learned in my four years as a migrant to memoQ, it's that the swinging software developers in Hungary have a knack for taking a good idea and adding just a little more spice. Thus it was again as István announced to the audience in the final session of memoQ 2012 that a new small team edition of the memoQ Server is now available from Kilgray, with three licenses. The cost mentioned was € 3000, very competitive when compared to other tools in editions above the basic standalone freelancer package. I expect that when the Kilgray team recovers from the great efforts of hosting this year's excellent event there will be a follow-up announcement of what I have dubbed the memoQ Ménage à Trois edition, and those teams looking for an affordable entry solution to the industry's current best option for translation resource and project management in small- and medium-sized companies will surely celebrate.


Contact Kilgray for more details on this server solution or other excellent translation technology.

Heads in the Cloud? Or somewhere else?

As noted in my last post, concerns are growing over the trend toward "Cloud-based" translation management solutions and the potential negative impact on interoperability between TEnT systems with the wrong approach. As Jost Zetsche noted, there is a need to push solution providers such as SDL, Kilgray, Atril, Wordfast et alia to develop working, open interfaces so various clients can be used with a given server solution in online projects.

From a somewhat different perspective, Hungarian translator Csaba Bán noted that bits and dribbles of text translated via project management tools in the Cloud, while perhaps offering some efficiencies for an LSP or other company, too often unnecessarily fragment and waste the translator's time for inadequate compensation under most current schemes. I've heard a number of my clients talk about developing web-based "instant interfaces" for quickie translation service, and I know of a number of companies who have had something like this for years, but it all seems a bit like a sleazy back alley encounter on the fringes of a Red Light district with too great a chance of the translator's business suffering ill health from such indulgence. Cloud solutions which do not cleanly integrate with a translator's working environment tools but which require copying and pasting in various fields and windows are simply inefficient (despite some tools offering Clipboard integrations) and not very attractive. And appropriate minimum charges and premiums to offset the disruptions caused by too many dribbles during the day are called for. This requires some thought, and I can't pretend to offer any brilliant solutions to the dilemma, as I think each situation will have to be considered individually until a good set of general principles for best practice emerge. I have one such case I'm puzzling over myself right now: how to charge for "tweet translation" for a long-term client who runs a PR agency. So far I haven't, because the volume has been modest and fits well enough into the ordinary flow of our business discussions, but the case has me thinking.

As readers of this blog probably know, I am also involved in other types of Cloud-based project management for translation. When I began to encounter the first web-based administration interfaces with my agency clientele a decade ago, I hated them. In fact, I have dumped several otherwise rather good clients, some paying rates on par with decent direct clients, because I found their systems too cumbersome and prone to fault. One of the worst was a custom mess from an international LSP whose Swiss branch was a frequent customer; half the time, secure deliveries via their portal were simply impossible and I had to resort to insecure e-mail attachments. (Yes, these can be passworded, but that involves additional trouble.)

Gradually, decent standard solutions emerged. A number of my clients are happy with the German Plunet solution; I favor LSP.net's OTM, not because I localize the English interface but because it's comprehensive, legally secure, provides robust processes and archiving, is software as a service (SaaS) at modest cost, and I don't have to screw around with the infrastructure at my dilapidated country estate with its lousy bandwidth availability; and there are other acceptable alternatives beside the rather nightmarish mess of the Open Source solution I once tortured myself with for several months (Project ]open[ Translation). A good online administrative solution like this has many advantages over desktop or LAN solutions, and I have discussed many of these benefits in previous posts about OTM. Even the best solutions I have seen, however, have one glaring weakness: login management!!!

This is a big problem with many online applications. We all have too many damned passwords to juggle. When suddenly I have another dozen or two dozen logins to translation project administration systems for my agency and big corporate clients, things begin to get dicey if cookies, utilities like KePass or other methods are not applied. Personally, I would like to see options for OpenID and other integrations as one is beginning to see with some of the social media. Despite the hassles sometimes involved here, I think Cloud-based tools of this kind are among the most useful for managing translation-related processes and making them secure. I use my OTM for encrypted deliveries of confidential files and for providing clients with full access to their project backup archives. This is a blessing if I'm off somewhere taking a break and someone desperately needs a copy of a translation I did last year which has gone missing.

Saved by the server!

For the past several weeks I have been testing the version 3.6 memoQ Server as a project manager. My previous experience with the platform as a translator in several projects with agencies and colleagues was very positive, and I wanted more "inside knowledge" of how these projects actually get set up and how they work. As usual, the team at Kilgray helpfully supplied the test licenses for a proper evaluation (as they would do for anyone else interested in the technology). Using the server environment as a project manager was far easier than I expected, and the few questions I had were quickly resolved by the support team. I quickly figured out the advantages and disadvantages of the two major options of local projects using server resources (TM, termbase) and projects with documents stored on the server. We have worked in both modes according to the specific needs of the project. As we worked in parallel in local mode on an urgent project where a lot of segmentation adjustment was needed (big document, bad format, not everything cleaned up in advance due to hurry), my partner was astonished by the power of the TM-driven segmentation as she pretranslated the sections I had done in order to proofread them. Segments were combined and split to give matches that no other tool would have found. (This is a feature of all versions of memoQ.)

Yesterday disaster struck. Her external hard drive with all her current projects failed catastrophically, and she had no backup. In a sense I was glad it happened, because it reinforced a point I have been making about infrastructure and necessary improvements for some time. But that's cold comfort when there are projects to be delivered on a short deadline. The real comfort came with the fact that all she had to do was check out the project from the remote server again, and all her work was restored to a different hard drive in minutes. Saved by the server.

Because we are now so close to the memoQ 4.0 release I will not be writing my full review of the memoQ server environment until the new version is out and I become thoroughly familiar with it. I have been beta testing for a little while, but I have not had time to look at new server functions. However, my experiences so far reveal that this environment is astonishingly simple to use and very powerful. Little things can make a big difference. Right now one esteemed colleague has been screwed by ProZ, where he had set up private forums to communicate with his project teams about highly confidential work. The integrated project-specific (or also general use) communication tab in memoQ server projects, though not very sophisticated, would allow him to laugh off such inconveniences as project members chat and keep a permanent record of important issues in their work.

Although we are a small office with just two translators, I think I can clearly see this technology as a permanent part of our infrastructure in some form in the future! And I see great potential benefits for all the small and medium-sized agencies it is my privilege to work with. (The server has great potential for peer collaboration too, but I'm waiting for a colleague to write about that....)