Proofreading LiveDocs bilinguals, recycling versions in memoQ

(These tests were performed with memoQ 2013 R2 but should, in principle, work the same in any version of memoQ 6.0 or later.)

I really like memoQ's versioning features, and I use the X-Translate function fairly often when a document I'm translating has been updated or a new version comes sometime later. However, I don't keep documents in my projects forever. I use "container projects" for particular clients or subject domains so that I don't have to keep reattaching the same translation memories, terminologies and LiveDocs corpora and various light resources (non-translatables, autocorrect lists, segmentation rules, etc.) all the time. These can get rather full, so I send my old translations off to a LiveDocs corpus after a while. And then if a new version of a document shows up, well... I'm sort of out of luck if I want to use the X-Translate function with the previous version.

Or so I thought. And then a friend rang me and asked how she can export a LiveDocs alignment she did to an RTF bilingual file to make it more convenient to proofread in Microsoft Word and pass on to one of her partners with tracked changes. With that the answer to both problems was clear.

Select the corpus and the file in it to export:

Click Export and choose a location in which to save the MQXLZ file:

In the Translations window of any memoQ project with the correct source and target language settings, select Import and choose your MQXLZ file:

After the file exported from LiveDocs has been imported as a translation file, it can serve as "version 1" for a new file version to be translated using the Reimport document and X-translate features. It does not matter that the file types are different. A bilingual RTF file can also be exported for external correction and commentary.

Here is an example of an exported bilingual RTF file with changes tracked. The changes do not have to be accepted before the bilingual file is re-imported to update the translation using the Import command.

Here is the updated translation:

Changed are marked with blue arrows. Only text changes were implemented in this case, no format changes such as italic text, because the XLIFF file does not support WYSIWYG text formatting. (MQXLZ is a Kilgray-renamed ZIP-package with XLIFF and a chocolate surprise inside.)

Now I've got a new version of my text to translate in a DOCX file. I use the Reimport document function, answer No to the dialog so I can select the new version at a different location:

I'm curious what the differences from the original text are, so I use the History/reports command in the Translations window to find that out:

Then using Operations > X-Translate in the working window, followed by pretranslation to get the changed "exact matches" (like "Aussehen und Gewicht" above) and the fuzzy matches, I end up with this:

If you make it a point to store your important versions in a LiveDocs corpus, this procedure will allow you to recover your archived texts and re-use them for more controlled, reference-based translation. It would be nice, of course, if some day Kilgray would enable specific LiveDocs files to be used as the basis of a reference translation, perhaps even scanning a corpus or a set of corpora to identify the best-matching document or documents. It would also be nice if bilinguals stored in LiveDocs could be exported to other formats and perhaps even be updated with something like an exported bilingual RTF. However, those bilinguals can simply be imported directly to a LiveDocs corpus as new documents, and any corrections made to a document in the Translations list can be sent back to LiveDocs using the relevant command in the Translations window.

Kilgray training resources: is this what you need?

Some years ago I was relaxing at an informal occasion with one of Kilgray's directors, who expressed concern that the growing number of features might lead to confusion among users and obscure the basic simplicity of memoQ, which at the time was the company's only product. I think version 3.5 or 4.0 was the current release at the time of our chat. I disagreed with him at the time, because compared to other tools at the time, memoQ was easier to understand, more ergonomic than any of the leading tools. It still is.

But as most users of the software know, things have gotten a lot more complicated since then. As memoQ has taken a forward position in the market for translation environment tools, many features have been added (by necessity one could argue) to accommodate various interest groups. Some of these features I find very good and useful, others inspire a response that cannot be expressed in polite company, because they support server workflows which I personally find exploitative and offensive in the hands of some companies. But any tool can be used for good or bad purposes, and one of my favorite tools for planning my time accurately - the homogeneity analysis - is sometimes abused by Linguistic Sausage Producers to put further economic pressure on individual translators, yet I would not wish it to go away.

Many, many features to master for a wide range of work challenges. Even the so-called "experts" often don't have a clear overview. This problem is, of course, common to almost any popular software application: the situation with SDL Trados Studio is similar, and look at Microsoft Word, my God. An "expert" might understand 10% of Word's features.

Kilgray, it must be said, does try to go the extra mile and provide information to users in many ways so that they can work effectively and avoid frustration when navigating the sometimes tricky paths one must follow in a complex project. Each month the company offers free webinars, and recordings of these are available for later reference in most cases. There is also a knowledgebase (which is quite a challenge to keep up to date given the software's rapid pace of development). The company has also produced a number of shorter instruction videos. The Kilgray YouTube channel has a wide mix of material, including some recordings of past conferences, which are not always easy to understand but which contain a lot of interesting and useful material for some groups. There is also an extensive collection of user guides and white papers on the Kilgray site.

More recently Kilgray as taken its first steps with integrated e-learning, adopting the Moodle platform popular with many educational institutions. I think this is a very interesting new direction; since late spring I have been researching and testing such platforms myself, and I expect very good things to come of this in the future.

The first Kilgray e-learning course was a memoQ basics course, consisting of ten recorded PowerPoint lectures, each about 10 to 15 minutes long. There is a short review quiz at the end to give learners some feedback on what they have retained, and a certificate is offered for those who get a certain number of questions right. Although this course structure uses only a small part of the potential of the Moodle platform, it is easier to navigate and find particular information than it might be in a webinar, for example. The basics course is free to any memoQ user with a current support contract and is worth a look. Others can take the course for a fee of €90 (which is close enough to the cost of annual support that you might as well update your contract and enjoy the updates it includes). Feedback and suggestions should be sent to support@kilgray.com to help in the planning of further courses to help users.

More recently, another Moodle course was published for project managers working with the memoQ server. I know from my own experiences as a consultant and someone who occasionally has to deal with the frustrations of misconfigured server projects set up by my clients that there is a real need for better training for those who work with the memoQ Server. Many of my clients who have adopted this solution have had very little prior experience with CAT tools at all, and given the many pressures of a production environment, they may find visual media a more effective form of support than "RTFM".

The structure of the PM training course is similar to that of the memoQ basics course: ten recorded PowerPoint lectures in English. There is also a quiz at the end. The course is available free to all licensed memoQ server users, who should contact their Kilgray support representative to arrange access.

As the screenshot above indicates, Kilgray has moved its e-learning resources to Language Terminal, and along with all the other plans for that platform, there are many under consideration to expand the scope and quality of learning resources available, not only for Kilgray's products, but perhaps for other knowledge which can contribute to their successful use in the complex world of real projects.

What is your experience so far with Kilgray's training resources? What has worked for you? What has not? What kind of resources do you think would help you and those with whom you work to master the challenges of your daily routine?

Games freelancers translate

ames are no longer a big part of my world despite years spent collecting, playing and developing them ages ago. In the world of translation, I am an interested observer, fascinated a little by the technical peculiarities I hear of in that domain as well as what appears to be a diversity of opinion and working methods even greater than one finds in my familiar areas of work.

I always enjoy a close look at the working processes of colleagues and clients; often I learn new things from the observation, and I like to ask myself as I see each stage what approach I might take or whether there are changes in the available tools which might make a process more efficient.

An Italian freelance team (leader?) put together a series of seven YouTube videos showing how jobs are prepared and distributed, as well as some particulars of their translation process and QA. The main working tool is Kilgray's memoQ - one of the 6-series versions it seems - as well as the Italian version of Dragon Naturally Speaking and Apsic Xbench, which also make a brief appearance. Altogether 22 minutes of show and tell, which I find mostly interesting and recommend as a nice little process overview.

I've made a YouTube playlist compilation here so it is easier to view the clips in sequence, since I had a little trouble navigating them myself in the somewhat random YouTube suggestion menus. I'm not embedding them here, because the interface for navigating a playlist is much easier to cope with on YouTube itself.

I wish there were more overviews like this available for common translation workflows in other areas as well, such as patent translation, financial report translation in the midst of the "silly season", web site translation or just about anything else. It's doubtful that any of these would betray great trade secrets, but they might offer clients and prospects a little more realistic view of what some might think involves little more than "retyping in another language".

Some content notes on the individual videos of the playlist:

#1 Discusses background research and style guides in the team's approach

#2 Covers the import of the source files (Excel) and the selection of ranges

#3 Term extraction

#4 Statistics, handoff packages and sending out the jobs with the project management system

#5 Creating views of multiple files, voice recognition in Italian, concordances and term lookups

#6 Receiving translated project packages; text to speech reviewing!

#7 QA in memoQ, export to XLIFF for final QA in Apsic Xbench