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MemoQ employs projects to provide a unified, flexible environment, streamlining your work, speeding up the translation process

What is Project Manager in MemoQ?

MemoQ employs projects to provide a unified and flexible environment, streamlining your work and speeding up the translation process. To allow for manipulating projects, administering various resources and configuring settings, MemoQ's user interface contains a powerful component - Project Manager.

What is MemoQ server?

Server MemoQ is available in a server version (MemoQ Server), which can be used to establish a server, functioning as a single repository point for various kinds of resources, such as translation memories and term bases, shared by multiple users over a network - LAN (Local Area Network) or Internet. The server can be just a single Windows machine or even laptop with internet connectivity.

Server projects
The server project is a server alternative of the regular MemoQ project, i.e. a collection of resources that include translation documents and alignment documents, translation memories, term bases and project-level settings (segmentation rules, auto-translatables, non-translatables, etc.), created on a MemoQ Server. When a translator opens a server project file using his/her local installation of MemoQ, MemoQ will automatically create and configure a local workspace, download all documents added in the project and connect to the specified translation memories and term bases. The user therefore does not need to set up anything manually and can focus on his/her work instead.

Tailoring the Workflow in MemoQ?

It is very rare that translation is a stand-alone activity. Most of the time busy translation vendors assign jobs to translators and proofreaders whilst trying to maintain the consistency of their own translation memories. Although MemoQ does not come with a project management system (it is available separately, though - please enquire), it enables you to work efficiently in teams.

Different Roles in the Workflow
Without attempting to cover all possible roles, here's a list of people who work on the successful delivery of translations:

Project Managers: Project managers are the relay centers of the workflow. They recycle resources, balance time and cost, do the forwarding of the resources between the various actors and track the progress of the job. MemoQ sees project managers as the most computer-savvy people in the translation process and therefore enables them to use the power features and create settings for other users. The project manager has direct access to all the translation resources utilized in a job.
Translators: Translators are responsible for producing a proper target-language version from the source-language document they receive. A translator needs translation documents, translation memories, term bases and settings. MemoQ, unlike other applications, does not expect translators to have an in-depth knowledge of using computers.
Proofreaders: Proofreaders are responsible for comparing the source-language version with the target-language version, checking consistency and other factors. They need exactly the same resources as the translator.
Revisers: Revisers are native speakers of the target language who check and correct the style of the text. Revisers need the target language text only.
DTP Specialists: While all the others deal with the content, DTP deals with the form. DTP specialists finalize the documents and ensure that all formatting is correct.

In freelance situations, the translator and the project manager is often the same person.

What is the compatibility of MemoQ with other CAT tools?

memoQ is compatible with most other translation tools. You can import, translate and export the proprietary files of other translation tools as well as use standards aimed to improve compatibility.

SDL Trados Workbench / SDL Trados Studio

SDL Packages	memoQ can import and export SDL Studio packages (*.sdlppx). SDLPPX files are ZIP files and contain a descriptive XML, the documents for translation in SDLXLIFF format, the translation memories and term base.
SDLXLIFF	XLIFF is a bilingual file format for the interchange of translatable content. SDLXLIFF is the flavor of XLIFF used by Trados
TTX files	TTX are bilingual files used in Trados TagEditor. memoQ can import and export these files. Please be aware that this may require pre-segmentation by your customer (Tools \| Translate \| Segment unknown sentences in Trados).
Trados bilingual RTF	Bilingual DOC/RTF was the primary bilingual document format of older version of Trados. memoQ can import and export such files.
Terminology	memoQ can import and export MultiTerm XML files. It can also import terminology which is stored in the Excel, CSV or TBX file formats.
Translation memory	memoQ has special tools to import Trados-generated TMX files and improve the leverage.

Wordfast

Wordfast Classic bilingual DOC files	memoQ can import and export bilingual DOC files from Wordfast Classic. When exporting a bilingual DOC for use with Wordfast you should treat them as Trados bilingual DOC file.
TXML	TXML is an XML-based bilingual document format used by Wordfast Pro. memoQ can import and export TXML files.
Translation memory	memoQ has special tools to import Wordfast-generated TMX files and improve the leverage.

STAR Transit

STAR Transit packages (*.pxf, *.ppf)

A STAR Transit package can contain one or more documents for translation, as well as reference materials consisting of previously translated documents and terminology. These files can be imported to and exported from memoQ. Transit does not use a centralized translation memory: instead, it reads previously translated documents directly for this purpose. Transit reference material can be imported into a memoQ translation memory when the package is imported.

SDL Worldserver

Worldserver bilingual documents (*.xlz)

memoQ can import and export bilingual documents coming from SDL Worldserver, together with segment status mapping and other workflow-specific improvements. Support for WSXZ is already in the making and will happen during 2014.

Other tools

XLIFF	The majority of translation tools allow for import and export of XLIFF files which contains the source and target content. memoQ can import and export these XLIFF files.
Translation memory	memoQ can import translation memories using the TMX (Translation Memory eXchange) format. It is also possible to import a translated blingual file and save the contents to a translation memory.
Terminology	memoQ can import terminology in a number of formats including TBX (Term Base eXchange), Multiterm XML, Excel and CSV.

What is alignment?

The alignment is a way to build translation memories from previous translations by matching the corresponding segment pairs. Translation documents are segmented on import. Segmentation is a process of splitting the text contained in a translation document into segments, i.e. translation units. In most cases, the segments correspond to sentences and MemoQ is capable of performing the segmentation on its own. However, to accommodate specialties and deviations present in most languages, MemoQ allows users to modify the segmentation rules.

What are regular expressions in MemoQ?

Regular expressions are a powerful means for finding character sequences in text. In MemoQ, they are used to define segmentation rules and auto-translatables.

MemoQ - similarly to SRX - uses regular expressions to define the segmentation rules. This makes MemoQ the most flexible CAT tool on the market. You can convert all SRX rules into MemoQ segmentation rules. With the help of segmentation rules and TMX and CSV export/import, you can ensure seamless migration from other tools with their own translation interface.

Pretranslation in MemoQ?

Pre-translation enables the user to (partially) translate segments using the active translation memories associated with the given project. Whenever a translation for a specific source segment is available in the translation memory, it is used to fill in the relative target segment. By default, an exact match is required, but the settings of the pre-translation process can be changed using the Pre-Translate dialog.

How to make a bilingual document?

Monolingual documents such as simple Microsoft® Office(TM) documents or the documents of different desktop publishing packages usually only contain the text in one language. Bilingual documents are specific to the field of translation and localization, and contain all text segments in two languages. In a bilingual document, segments with the same meaning are always linked. If you want to make a bilingual document out of two monolingual documents, you have to use alignment and then insert the hits from a translation memory. Bilingual documents are needed throughout the workflow, but are usually exported back into a monolingual format.

Statistics and homogeneity in MemoQ?

Statistics is the way to quantify the productivity enhancement of using MemoQ. The better you can estimate your cost or time requirements for a given job, the more competitive you can be on the market. MemoQ includes enhanced statistics - the ability to set different options enables you to estimate your human resource costs more precisely, and thus you will have a bigger area of freedom in pricing your services than the users of competitive products.

One of MemoQ's power features is Homogeneity. Enable it if you want to emulate building a translation memory during translation, and see the savings that will result from the internal similarities within the project. Using homogeneity, you are able to see the benefits of your future contribution - i.e. the contribution while you will be translating - to the translation memory.
Using homogeneity, you are able to give a much better estimation of your resources to be spent on translation than without homogeneity.

What is the translation memory in MemoQ?

Translation memory is a database containing pairs of translation units (segments) of the original text (source segments) and their translations (target segments). CAT applications use these databases for fuzzy translation look-ups to simplify and speed up the translation process, eliminating the need to translate text that had already been translated before.
Types of Translation Memories
Depending on their physical location, MemoQ recognizes two types of translation memories:

Local Translation Memory is physically present on a user's hard drive.
Remote Translation Memory is located in a remote computer and can be accessed through the Internet.

To be able to use a translation memory, you need to add it to your project (use project-level translation memory management or global-level translation memory management).

Creating Translation Memories
There are several ways to create translation memories:
1. When you use MemoQ and have at least one translation memory added, the program stores segments you translate to this memory. If multiple translation memories were added to the project, the primary translation memory is used.
2. If you have previously used another CAT tool, you can export your translation memories from the application you are migrating to MemoQ. Translation memories can be exported to a TMX file and then imported in MemoQ.
3. You can also add entries into the translation memory by using the alignment function or create them manually by means of direct editing of the translation memory.

Translation memories help you recycle previous translations, thus increasing your productivity. During translation, translation segments are compared against segments stored in the translation memories added to your project. When this comparison produces a hit, i.e. when a certain level of similarity is found, results are automatically displayed, so that you can see how you (or another translator) has previously translated similar or identical segments.
Depending on the level of similarity of two segments (also called hit rate), hits are divided into several categories:

weak match
good match
exact match

Segments obtained by means of alignment or negation can also be penalized, i.e. a specific percentage (penalty) can be defined, which is automatically subtracted from the given segment's hit rate to indicate that such segment was not created manually by a translator.

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