Best memoQ Translator Pro deal ever — until March 28th, 2024

In the fifteen years I've been using memoQ, I have never seen a discount this good on new perpetual licenses for the desktop translator version of memoQ: 50% off the retail price. For those whose service and maintenance agreements have been lapsed for three years or more, this is also the best price you'll see for getting up to date with the latest version and a new SMA covering any releases in the 365 days following your purchase. The current version of memoQ is 10.5.

Now lately I've heard some people claim that there have been no worthwhile improvements for individual translators since memoQ 205 (version 7.8) or so. Nonsense. Have a look at the "What am I missing?" page to see what changes have occurred since the version you currently use and whether and upgrade is worthwhile for you. If your version is older than 8.0, all you'll see on that page is changes since that version, but there are a lot of good ones to benefit individuals. memoQ server revenue may comprise the vast majority of profits for the company, but the rest of the user base has hardly been neglected. (What has been neglected is good teaching and reference tools for the most part, but that applies to server customers too.)

In the versions 8.x, major improvements were made to term bases that I personally begged to see for years, and a lot has been done to upgrade the user-friendliness of LiveDocs corpora, backup processes for projects and entire memoQ installations, improved regex handling with a special library tool that allows us to focus on getting work done, not idiotic syntax to drive mere mortals mad... and more. These are just a few of the many things that have confirmed time and again that my friends at memoQ Ltd. really are top class and well ahead of the pack.

So take the plunge if you need the latest features, and tell others not to miss a chance they aren't likely to see again anytime soon.

Get a Q about translation!

Once again, my friends at memoQ Ltd., the software artists formerly known as Kilgray, are offering a great deal:

30% discount

on new licenses for the Translator Pro edition of memoQ, the most versatile professional platform for organizing and performing translation work. The relevant sales page can be found HERE.

Many people who use memoQ these days are only familiar with the limited WebTrans versions linked to a server for slavelancing; with your own desktop edition of memoQ Translator Pro, you need no licenses allocated by server operators and have far more control over the resources used in projects based on remote servers. And, of course, total control over all the projects on your local computer, without dependence on sometimes unreliable online connections.

A memoQ license often makes a lot of sense for translators and reviewers who prefer to work with other tools as well. Each platform for computer-aided translation has its own unique set of characteristics, such as the file formats it can process (a major, major point) and the kinds of operations it can perform to translate, edit, review and quality check texts. This is why, for example, I keep a license of Trados Studio on hand, because certain types of files can be prepared better with that tool, but the actual translation after preparation works better for me in memoQ. Conversely, if you are a user of another tool, such as Trados Studio or Wordfast, file formats which cannot be handled easily in those tools can often be prepared in memoQ as an intermediate stage and then translated in your preferred tool. And powerful features like memoQ's Regex Text Filter, which is basically a build-you-own-filter toolkit for any sort of crazy client-cooked text-based data format, enable memoQ to "serve" a wide variety of other platforms. Just a week ago, for example, I used that feature to build an import filter for the *.ctm format used in Community Trade Mark information in the EU so that XLIFF files could be prepared for memoQ, Trados Studio, etc. and translators and reviewers would no longer have to suffer nightmare's from the EU's badly programmed translation software.

This special price on new licenses is also relevant for current users of memoQ who have not had a support and maintenance agreement (SMA) for some years. The annual SMA cost of memoQ Translator Pro is 20% of the list price of the software (€620) or €124 per year (or the equivalent in other currencies). This entitles the user to deeper-level support and access to all upgrades released during the term of the SMA, even if these are not installed by the time an SMA lapses. Some think there is no "value" in that, because they ask all their questions on a listserve or a Facebook user group, but I've had too much personal experience with corrupted customer files rescued by my Hungarian Heroes to give much credit to that opinion. The memoQ Support team is honestly the best in its class. I have five decades now of experience with software support teams on which I base that opinion. On more platforms than most people can or should imagine.

There is some confusion and occasional resentment about memoQ's policy of cumulating costs for the SMA if someone wants to renew in order to access features in a new version. If you "skip" two years, the cost of those "missing" years is added to the cost of your renewal, and at some point it's just cheaper to buy a new license. What's that point? Let's do the math. There is usually at least some opportunity to get a 30% discount deal at least once a year, and some professional organizations have continuous access to that rate, which would currently be €434 (or about US$ 515 according to xe.com, but if you are in the US or somewhere else and plan to pay in US currency, please check the sales page for the actual price). So...

(434 new license cost)/(124 SMA per year) = 3.5 years

In other words, if you feel you don't need support from the dedicated experts who make the software and need to eat and pay their water and electricity bills just like you, then upgrade (pay the SMA) only every five years (one free year of SMA comes with each new license) and you'll save a little bit of money. This approach actually works best for people who are only occasional users or who rely on other tools for their routine work. The memoQ license continues to work indefinitely with or without the SMA under any Windows operating system with which it is compatible. Unlike a Wordfast or Memsource license, for example, it isn't a subscription which lapses after some period. I still run into memoQ users with ten year old software, and it works just fine for them, and they don't do the SMA. I've heard discussions of possible memoQ subscription (SaaS) models, and there is a cloud-based server that uses that model, but that's not what this special Translator Pro deal is about.

memoQ has a lot to offer, and the user community is full of really great people who offer mutual support for a lot of really tough challenges, as one also finds for many other leading commercial and Open Source tools. As a consultant for translation technology with over 5 decades of IT experience now, I try to make fair comparisons of usability and value and invest what personal time I can afford (or someone pays me to afford) to see what works best for a given individual or organization. And more often or not, the answer UI find is "memoQ". Even when my friends in the company piss me off with some awful bug in a new or old release or disappoint me with some policy with which I vehemently disagree, and in a fury I think, "Damnit, I am going to switch to X!", I never find that X > Q.

So for all of us in translation, even those without a clue, maybe it's time to get a Q. It also matters to me that the people behind it all actually do care about what we do.

Is it worthwhile to upgrade to a newer version of memoQ?

 

I am often surprised how many people still work with very old versions of memoQ, though I shouldn't be. Royalties continue to dribble in from books I wrote covering memoQ versions 6 and 2013 R2, and I still see questions from people using versions 4 and 5 as many of us anticipate the release of version 10 later in 2021. In several of the guides I wrote, I tried to give a summary of important changes in versions which are relevant to individual translators, but that's really a rather subjective, moving target and a somewhat thankless task. Well, that task is now a little easier, and you can handle it yourself.

The new "memoQ Features You Missed" web page makes version comparisons a lot easier. In some cases.

Unfortunately, the current version of this page only permits comparisons from the horrible 8.0 ("Adriatic") version or later to the present version. I can hack the URL to make it appear that a comparison is made from version 6.0, for example, but only features introduced in version 8.1 or later will be listed. It is, nonetheless, rather useful for most of us.

I hope that the company adds more information to cover older versions, because - as stated - there are still quite a few people out there on rather old versions, and a more complete summary of improvements might prove helpful in decisions to upgrade.

This page has also helped to settle a few arguments about the extent to which some recent versions are useful or not to individual translators doing particular types of assignments. The most recent version changes have been largely focused on server-based processes of little relevance to individuals in most cases, but for certain specialties there have been new features of good value introduced.

I expect that the value of this tool - if it is maintained by the software provider - will continue to increase with time. It will certainly save ME a lot of time answering questions about whether it is "worthwhile" to upgrade.

memoQ 2014 Release 2: beware of Hungarians bearing updates!

Just kidding, actually. Facebook groups are, of course a buzz with tales of bugs and crashes the day after Kilgray's milestone release, and in my own office I heard a flurry of curses behind me as my Portuguese translator discovered the "can't quit" bug that someone had written about. This was just a short time before I delivered the last files for one of the busiest weeks of translation I've been hit with in months, weeks where I decided to live dangerously and do all the work with the bleeding-edge beta for yesterday's release. For me it was actually a rather bloodless experience.

Sure, I saw bugs. Screen refresh weirdness in the first few beta builds and my favorite (non-lethal) quirk: multiple instances of memoQ web search. I guess the developers figured we can't get too much of a good thing!

Triple play, anyone?

I didn't write as much about this release as I intended to originally, partly because I was too busy, but also because I took a very different approach this time, using the beta opportunity to do a little informal psychological research to support some upcoming tutorials I'm working on to help people make a smooth transition to the new interface and cope better with the costly challenges of flipping between versions if required to by some projects (for example with conservatives who still use old memoQ servers.

Those who are not absolute newbies on the technology scene are well aware that the months after any release from any provider of translation technology are always a risky time for those eager to get started with a new version. The prudent advice to anyone is don't hurry. There's no use slamming Kilgray or SDL or anyone other firm for the inevitable bugs after any release, at least not until two or three months have passed and the version has put through the real-life wringer in a way no testing program can do. After that, fair game as far as I'm concerned. Those first months are usually a critical time in which many improvements not even anticipated by the designers occur. So regardless of the official line, people, for the next three months any of you using memoQ 2014 R2 are beta testers. And that's a good thing, a chance to participate in a good development process. SDL Trados Studio users, DVXn fans and everyone else are on more or less the same curve each time a big upgrade hits.

In my beta test over the past month I made few attempts to explore new features. Instead, I focused on my usual workflows to see how they felt in the new environment. As I indicated in my first blog post on this release I was not entirely comfortable after a week of work just with thew new version. And I'm still not. I am less productive than I want to be, because changing the translation environment interface is always a costly process associated with reduced productivity. This is why I am such a strong advocate of interoperability and tell people to go deep with their environment of choice and learn how to work with information prepared in other environments with just your favorite tool for maximum efficiency and better earnings if you work at full capacity.

What I have learned so far is that this learning curve will be longer and steeper for me than I anticipated. However, the Kilgray ribbon designs for the new memoQ are well-designed for the most time, and I can reason my way through them and find anything. It just takes time right now. So make the transition when you aren't going to be under the gun for a while. Kick the tires soon (you can install versions in parallel at no risk) but take it slow and easy. The trip may be long, but it is clearly worth it in the end for a design that will benefit most in the long run.

And focus on keyboard shortcuts. The more you depend on those, the easier your work will be in the months ahead. Stay tuned.

memoQ 2014: a first look

I couldn't make it to memoQfest this year - the first one in Budapest that I have missed since the event began in 2009. But the first family visit since that same year took priority, so my exposure to the upcoming memoQ 2014 version was strictly second hand until today.

I wasn't too happy with thing I heard on the Yahoogroups user list. In fact, when I read one message describing how the new transcription feature for bitmap graphics in some files required the Product Manager version, I was quite annoyed. The reality - a whole month before the official release - is very good for both freelancers and corporate outsourcers, and I think by the time this version makes its official debut in June there will be many good reasons to smile. I'm frankly amazed at how much Kilgray seems to be getting its act together and balancing the needs of users at all levels.

This afternoon I downloaded the first test release (alpha??) of memoQ 2014, installed it and began to take a cautious tour. My first impression was that it looked the same. And then, bit by bit, subtle and excellent small differences began to emerge. I looked for and found major new features I had heard about and discovered many interesting things not mentioned along the way.

The grammar checking feature seems to be implemented in a sensible way, though it actually doesn't work at all right now for me. But I can see where it's headed, and it is going in a good direction.

I had a quick look at the new plug-ins, particularly TaaS, and made notes about testing the potential for teamwork. What I have seen of TaaS for its much-advertised terminology extraction is a huge disappointment, and those who have followed my comments on Twitter will know I have nothing good to say about this EU boondoggle, but I see potential for other possibilities that nobody has really talked about, and if my instinct is right, this could be really useful. But I will need to invest a lot of testing time for the approach I have in mind.

The Project home view has gotten even more impossibly cluttered with the addition of "People", a rather sensible reworking of role assignments that even in the Translator Pro version clearly acknowledges that most freelance translators are not, in fact, 'islands' in their work.

This will surely make the small screen (netbook) usage problems worse if Kilgray does not redesign the view a bit, but in every other respect I see this as a significant improvement of project workflow, emphasizing the relationships between project participants in a better way.

One little bit that I stumbled across was the new way of handling the export of unfinished translations. This is a nice way of recognizing the frequent pressure in some projects to export incomplete stages of work.

I have had ways of dealing with this need for years in memoQ, but this new approach will make things simpler and obvious for all users.

There is a nice little feature for tracking time too:

This will facilitate record keeping for some jobs involving time charges.

The feature I have looked at in some depth so far, which makes me very happy, is Kilgray's very sophisticated handling of embedded objects and graphics, which sets new standards in many ways. I think there is still a key feature missing to make it the equal of OmegaT for handling charts with data stored as XML in the MS Office file (though I have not had time to check this yet), but what I have seen so far goes way beyond similar features I have seen in STAR Transit and Déjà Vu X2.

Embedded objects and images are imported as separate files from within the media and embeddings folders of the Microsoft Office file. I see a few potential problems with the current way of displaying a file and its objects and media. I've had projects with multiple files having embedded Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint slides and other objects as well as any number of pictures needing to be localized. One recent project had 59 spreadsheets embedded in a DOCX file. Without an accordion or tree structure to collapse the subordinate structure view and show the embedded content again, the overview will be lost quickly. But this is a very good start. Note how the main file includes a count of the segments in the subordinate objects and graphics. (And take note of the new progress bar with different colors for different process stages like translation and proofreading.)

Bitmap texts can be recorded with a new transcription feature, which is also compatible with voice recognition. I dictated my German source texts with Dragon Naturally Speaking set to German, then switched to English for the translation. And of course the bitmap transcriptions are included in the word counts of the Statistics functions and the translations are written to the translation memory. I believe this is utterly unique in translation environment tools. Fluency has a transcription module too, of course, but its purpose and application are very different.

The exported translations with translated objects will look like they are not done at present, because the difficult refresh problem has not been solved by Kilgray. Each translated spreadsheet, slide, etc. will need to be opened in the document before the translation will become visible. This is much easier using the macro I published two years ago, and I am certain that by release time or soon thereafter Kilgray will find an elegant way of dealing with this difficulty. Atril handles the same problem by distributing macros as I recall.

In the recent Kilgray blog post on the six reasons to upgrade to memoQ 2014, the only overlap with the above points is the image localization. Peter Reynolds talks instead about other good stuff, such as the long-awaited project templates and Language Terminal. There are so many nice things ahead with this upgrade that we'll all just have to take it slowly, one bit at a time.

Of course the usual precautions for any new software version apply. The new version can be installed in parallel to your current version, and it can be tested while you continue to do the bulk of your work in the older, stable version. Typically it takes a few months for any new version to get the kinks out, but this allows plenty of time for planning the transition and preparing to take full advantage of the new features relevant to you. Migration is also not a trivial matter in many cases, but this time around there may be a little more help with that. More on that another time!

The state of the upgrade: memoQ 2013 R2

The memoQ 2013 release started off on the wrong foot with me in many ways. I was deeply disappointed by the features that were previewed in Budapest at the last memoQfest, and I was even less happy after I saw what a hash had been made of one of the features I use most: comments. In fact, I wrote a rather annoyed blog post about that not long after the release. There was a lot of talk about "game-changing innovation", but frankly I really could not see it. My translating colleagues asked me if it was worth it to upgrade, and aside from my usual warnings about the need to wait for at least 2 or 3 months after any release for it to mature and stabilize, I just could not find any compelling arguments for a freelance translator to move from the stable, excellent 6.2 version to the rather dodgy 6.5 version, or "memoQ 2013" as it was rechristened.

Almost on the usual schedule, however, two months later the bugs were largely sorted out, the initial mistakes in the comment feature redesign were well fixed, and I no longer saw the memoQ 2013 release in the same dim light, but could actually see some benefits for my freelance colleagues to upgrade to that version and no actual harm in doing so. And as I got to know the fuzzy term matching feature better and saw how it helped me deal with typo-laden source documents or the usual spelling chaos of German technical writers, I began to see some very compelling value in memoQ 2013 for translators.

Most of the "game changers" talked about in May actually arrived a month ago with Release 2 of memoQ 2013. I did my best to lower expectations for this release, not because I think it is crap, but because I think this is one of the best CAT tool version upgrades I have seen in 13 years, and I knew it would need the usual time to mature. I think by the end of the year this version will have so much to offer that I would rather not have people stressing over the small stuff that I am confident will be fixed well.

However, I decided to live dangerously, and I switched over all my production work to use this version even before the official release. The first few weeks were not fun with all the little quirks I discovered and duly reported, but I encountered nothing data-destroying or really shocking, mostly just housekeeping details like somebody forgetting to vacuum the rug after gutting the whole house and giving it a nice remodel.

One month after the official release, memoQ 2013 R2 is far more reliable than I remember any memoQ version being one month after release. There has been steady refinement in its features, and I continue to discover hidden gems that I sometimes suspect most of the Kilgray team aren't even aware of yet because so much was added and changed, but not in a way that disrupted older work processes. I have a long shopping list of refinements that I think should be made to new features like the TM search tool (which has only actually worked on my system since the release of the 6.8.5 build about a week ago) or that ground-breaking monolingual review feature which (will probably be the next big CAT feature to copy), but even the new features I consider rather immature are already looking pretty damned good. I can't guarantee that this release can be trusted for all your work right now (though it actually seems pretty good to me right now), but since it can be safely installed in parallel with older versions, I definitely recommend taking a look and joining the conversation on refinements still needed. I think Kilgray has been very responsive to user feedback in this round, and I can't say I am anything but encouraged by what I have seen in the last month.

One very exciting change for me in the current build (6.8.6) is that the rather risky non-optional export of target text comments with DOCX files has been sorted out very nicely. The solution seems a little strange to me right now, but it's a great step forward with some excellent possibilities.

When I saw those "severity levels" added to the commenting features in memoQ 2013 (6.5), I had very little good to say about them. I still don't think much about how they are named and wish I could choose my own labels, but now I can only applaud their usefulness. Why? Because the addition of the five checkboxes above has given me the control I want over comments to be included in an exported translation of a DOCX file. I can cleanly separate the comments which are notes to myself from those for my project partners and comments for my customers. This is very helpful.

I do think it is odd that this control was placed at Tools > Options > Miscellaneous > Translation when the comment exports (as far as I know) only affect DOCX files, but if there are plans to extend this feature to other exported formats, then this makes sense. I would like to see similar filtering controls for the ordinary view filters (on that last tab where comment and tag filtering criteria can be specified) and for comment inclusion in a bilingual RTF export. Either of these would be an enormous help to my frequent work processes, because I use a lot of comments intended for different people, and sorting these out cleanly can be laborious.

In recent weeks I have been working on the new edition of my memoQ tips book and taking a very close look at "corners" of the software that I suspect very few have time or inclination to look in. And I've had days when it really felt like Christmas has come early. One discovery after another of nice little refinements, lots of incremental improvements, which added together give a total with what I feel is a lot of value. I'm writing way too many private thank-yous to some of the people at Kilgray for what I see as excellent new directions even if I am inclined to argue over some of the details.

Since the release of memoQ 6.2 and its follow-ups with the bilingual text/Excel filter, there has been such a steady flow of useful improvements to help individual translators work better that those who claim that all the effort of development has been spent catering to the corporate sausage-making interests of the low-paying cattle call crowd simply haven't been paying attention. Or they have been confused by Kilgray's occasionally appalling failure to organize their messages properly for different interest groups. If you're talking to a big group of freelance translators and start discussing "great server features to monitor your translators' productivity", don't expect blown kisses and showers of rose petals. Sometimes it's obvious that the makers of the tool don't always understand the importance of what they have created for our work. Well, why should they? We're the ones doing it. But I tell you, right now there is a lot more gold for individual translators in the memoQ mine than anyone realizes. That goes for me too. I am surprised by fat new nuggets I find almost every week.

Do I care that so much effort is spent on developing cutting edge project management features for memoQ translation servers, even ones that I think can be abused in some pretty awful ways by some companies whose business practices I detest? Well yes I do... I think it's great. Besides, I can actually come up with nice uses of those awful features. You can do a lot of things with a cutting-edge: chop up a tasty salad... or the local nursery school. Blame the fool, not the tool.

Kilgray has avoided the disastrous errors committed by Atril in the last decade as their market mis-focus and disastrous failure to get the maintenance revenue needed to fix and develop features steadily eroded the ability of its loyal users to cope with a changing market. There was nearly a complete failure to compete for the business of translation agencies and corporate and government translation departments. And the solutions that prevailed in those quarters were mostly rather awful. I watched whole departments of Siemens traumatized by the disastrous Trados Teamworks, which made a number of those in the translation team of the medical products division look forward to retirement.

Kilgray has steadily built its business in the markets ignored by Atril a decade ago and in doing so has secured its future far better and ensured the funding of a truly remarkable series of improvements in the four and a half years I have been using memoQ. And now... when I look at the features of the recent SDL Trados 2014 release I see good things that I have known from other tools for a long time for the most part, nice to have really, but as I stifle a yawn I wonder if it all really has to be so complex since I'm not depending on consulting or training for SDL to pay my bills. And then I get back to memoQ and keep getting rocked by the "wow factor" as I find useful new things while trying to concentrate and get a job done. memoQ 2013 R2 is one of the worst offenders I've seen in a long time for its very real threats to make my work a lot easier and more fun!

An SDL Trados Studio update question answered

Thank you to the team at SDL for a timely answer to my question. Although in most of the 13 years I've been translating commercially I have relied on other tools for the bulk of my processes, because these were generally more efficient or ergonomic than the available Trados technology, there are some things which SDL's products really excel at, and I often use various versions of Trados for preparing projects that I translate in Déjà Vu (once upon a time) and (now) memoQ.

However, when I upgraded to SDL Trados Studio 2009 some time ago, I missed the cutoff for the Studio 2011 update which soon appeared by a very short time. In most cases this didn't matter; my copy of Studio 2009 served me well for consolidating the TMs of translators migrating from OmegaT to memoQ and for testing a number of interoperability scenarios. But there were a few times that having SDL Trados Studio 2011 around would have been helpful, like the time I had to turn down the opportunity to translate a bunch of the latest Worldserver packages with some interesting content. And it gradually grew embarrassing to have to pester various colleagues to test processes on their Studio 2011 installations to be sure they really would work with all versions of Trados. After the long wait for that version to stabilize, I considered various upgrade opportunities, but the business case was always a bit borderline for me, because I will never "CAT hop" for translation. The efficiency loss is simply not worth it; if I ever do switch to some future version of SDL Trados Studio or another tool such as Fluency or My Incredible Translating Machine!, then my other tools will be relegated to project preparation tasks as Trados is now.

But with The Third Coming (SDL Trados 2014) on the horizon, I though that it is finally time to do the upgrade and have the full range of versions available for my process compatibility studies.

I am aware, of course, of the desire of many SDL Trados Studio users to jump off a cliff or lay themselves on train tracks to end the despair, but this condition is usually treatable by a good course of ACT (alternative CAT therapy), and as I have a cabinet full of that I'm not worried.

So I boldly logged on to the SDL translationzone.com site to explore my upgrade options. These were explained clearly enough, but after getting burned last time I was very careful about believing what I read, especially as the web pages I looked at freely swapped dollar and euro signs for prices as if these currencies were at parity. (It seems that the boys in Maidenhead figure that anything other than "real money" - GBP - is just play money anyway.) So I made a "quotation request" online, and two days later received a very kind response assuring me that an upgrade to my SDL Trados Studio 2009 Freelance Plus license to its Studio 2011 equivalent would indeed qualify me for a free upgrade to partake of the Third Coming Communion of 2014:

Dear Kevin

Thank you very much for your enquiry.

If you do upgrade now your SDL Trados Studio 2009 license you will receive Studio 2011 immediately and Studio 2014 when it releases in September.

The upgrade to Studio 2014 is therefor included in the price of your current upgrade.

The price is $235.

You can purchase directly online on our shop www.translationzone.com/shop/freelance-translator

Or Steve can also help you with an upgrade.

Yours Sincerely,

Massimo

Fair enough all round. So I'll do this and be able to continue examining the best ways for people who follow different technology paths to continue working together successfully. And I can see whether I'm on Riccardo's side about the damned ribbons or whether Paul and Daniel are right. They certainly present some good arguments.

Kilgray offers 101% Support & a free book in February!

During the month of February, Kilgray has been running a special promotion featuring 101% support (i.e. the usual above and beyond the call of duty assistance), which this time also includes a free copy of my memoQ 6 in Quick Steps guide.

If you already own a copy, you can share that special promotional gift with a friend in need as many others have done already with full-priced copies.

I would like to thank Kilgray and my readers for all the kind support of my methods research  and efforts to find better ways for all of us to work together with the often complex software intended to support our efforts. It has been a pleasure and an honor to assist so many of you in recent years.

This special promotion ends on Thursday; if you have recently renewed your support contract it will merely add another 12 months to your remaining term of free support and upgrades.

Clich HERE to extend your Kilgray memoQ Support and Upgrade contract and receive your free code to get the memoQ 6 in Quick Steps book at no cost.