Moving to memoQ and selling translations

Yesterday was workshop day for memoQfest 2010. Two all-day sessions were offered. In one, Doug Lawrence provided training to language service providers on selling translations. His company is noted for its nuts-and-bolts practical assistance to translators and small agencies in improving their viability as businesses. Training webinars on selling translation services have been offered through proZ and other venues and Doug's company regularly offers introductory and advanced sales courses for individual translators and a three-day master course for translation companies at their locations. The second workshop that day was the memoQ master class on migration to memoQ. This advanced seminar taught by the highly respected German training consultant Angelika Zerfass and Kilgray's CEO Balázs Kis (also a university instructor for 15 years) went into great detail on the best ways to move data for translation memories, terminologies and configurations between memoQ systems and other systems. In some ways it was a far more detailed version of the talk I'll be giving tomorrow on interoperability. Everything you need to know for optimizing the migration process from Trados to memoQ was presented in the session, covering the range from freelancers to large companies with complex translation processes. Balázsalso revealed the new memoQ open interface for external terminology service integration and showed an online service to which all licensed memoQ users will receive free access. Thomas Imhoff, a former senior developer of Trados systems for a decade was present and expressed an interest in using this new interface to allow memoQ desktop and server systems to access online and offline MultiTerm termbases. If this happens you can be sure I'll announce that loudly here, as I believe it will be a great benefit to a huge number of translators and companies who want to maintain the value of their legacy systems and integrate parallel systems more effectively.


LSPs and other companies in German-speaking countries can turn to both Ms. Zerfass and Mr. Imhoff for practical advice, strategic consulting and implementation of system migration from Trados to memoQ as well as establishing new enterprise memoQ systems from the ground up. Both are knowledgeable industry veterans with deep expertise in Trados systems who have joined the Kilgray camp because they know a superior solution for corporate (and freelance) needs when they see it. Competent migration planning and assistance is also available from Kilgray's team as well, and there are several team members currently based in Germany.


I attended the workshop on memoQ data exchange and learned how to correct a number of errors I've made in the past. At the very least, anyone planning a major move from another system to memoQ should get a copy of the presentation from Kilgray or attend a similar workshop offered in the future. (In Germany the two experts mentioned above can provide local training and support.) Migration to memoQ is really easy, but even so there are many subtleties to the process, and knowing these can make the difference between a solution that works with some hitches and a more perfect process.


And now I'm off for a quick breakfast and a great day at the first regular day of the memoQfest conference. Maybe I'll try tweeting the most interesting parts.

Training the trainer for memoQ

On March 4, 2010 on the day before the memoQfest 2010 conference, Kilgray held a special day of training for memoQ experts to help them better understand the many changes in the latest version of the translation environment tool. Trainers from around the world - Canada, the USA, Germany France, Sweden, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Finland, the UK and elsewhere - came to learn about the latest advances and key developments to come.

Topics covered included (in a more logical order than in this list):

• permissions management
• offline synchronization
• online projects
• termbase rights
• licensing and license management
• project workflows for translation and review
• project management reporting including post-analyses
• notifications for online project participants
• RTF tables for translation and review
• memoQ resources for settings, etc. and how to share and publish them for online and offline projects
• multilingual project configuration
• online project forums, messaging and chat
• PM through handoff packages and delivery
• splitting large files and selecting portions in online projects using views; local views exported as MQ bilinguals for the online project
• setup a local project and publish it to the server (publish ONLY views is possible)
• filtering strategies using views for project management efficiency, locking out matches, etc.

The event was held in Kilgray's new offices in a beautiful old building whose electrical circuit breakers were severely challenged by over 20 translators plugging into a single circuit in the training room.

The delivery was informal and flexible with plenty of opportunities to clarify situations encountered in real situations with clients. The long lunch break also provided an excellent opportunity for networking and discussion with colleagues and the Kilgray team as well as great food. The presentation was made in roughly equal parts by Gabor Ugray, Kilgray's head of development, and Gergely Vándor, the Kilgray lifecycle manager.

Denis Hay, who recently joined Kilgray and works remotely in support from southern France made numerous valuable contributions to the discussions as he has always done as an expert user of DVX and memoQ software. His creative, user-oriented approach to problems is a perfect fit with Kilgray's philosophy and long-term practice. His occasional comments on possible applications added a lot to what was learned.

A representative from Kilgray's office in Austin, Texas shared news in the breaks and at the party later that evening of developments on the US market and communication issues there. Angelika Zerfass, one of Germany's premiere trainers for CAT tools and a noted expert for SDL systems also shared interesting perspectives on the German market. Agencies and corporations in the German-speaking countries have an excellent resource in Ms. Zerfass if they want a neutral, competent overview of this technology. Her English is also superb, so communication with clients in that language is no problem at all.

Overall, the day provided memoQ experts with a lot of valuable material to assist their clients and employers in planning and managing their translation projects. I left with many ideas for guidelines and training materials to assist my readers and clients with this user-friendly, cost-saving, efficiency-boosting technology. And I'm looking forward to tomorrow's pre-conference workshops.

The Lenovo S10-2 netbook: a great traveling companion

May 3, 2010
I've been travelling by train from Berlin to Budapest for nearly twelve hours. Last Friday I realized that I couldn't bring my laptop on this trip, because it is being used as a temporary server after our network storage failed recently. It also has a number of programs installed on it which my partner needs to access during my absence.

Since we had been considering a new laptop or a netbook to upgrade our aging infrastructure, I decided there was no better time to take the plunge and discover what a netbook is really like for travel and work. After a bit of root canal work by my lovely lady dentist to get me in the mood, I wandered over to Star 61 for a shot of the best ristretto in Berlin and a look at the selection of hardware. As luck would have it, the Lenovo S10-2 netbooks were on sale for 100 euros less than the week before; with an upgrade to 2 GB RAM I still got one for less than 300 euros. It's small and light - about 1.2 kg - but the keyboard is only a little smaller than the machine on which I usually work.

The power management of this netbook is superb. I've spent a lot of time writing reviews, translating, working on my presentation for memoQfest 2010 and installing software along with food breaks, some light reading of Oscar Cammenici's adventures, and fiddling with the webcam, and I still have 45 minutes worth of power according to the battery indicator. I don't believe it, but I'm quite satisfied with the performance in any case. And it's quiet, cool and faster than the four-year-old laptop on which I've been working.

May 4, 2010
With the release of the second beta version of memoQ 4.2 I now have all the critical work applications I need running on the netbook. The performance of both DVX and memoQ as well as the Microsoft Office 2007 suite on the netbook is excellent.