software - 2

This post is rather technical and will only be of real interest to other users of memoQ, which is the main computer-assisted translation tool I use. Software bugs can be minor annoyances, but from time to time, a major one appears in a new software build that can play havoc with your workflow and productivity. So much for CAT tools saving you time! Don't believe everything you read on the glossy pages of CAT-tool websites!



Over the last week or so (middle/end of March), a serious bug has appeared in memoQ 2014 (build 71) and R2 (build 58) that has been causing many users headaches, it seems (including me). It stops you from exporting your translation back to the original .docx file format – you get a puzzling error message like this:



..............

TYPE:

System.InvalidOperationException



MESSAGE:

Die Sequenz enthält kein übereinstimmendes Element.



SOURCE:

MemoQ.Project



CALL STACK:

   bei MemoQ.Project.TranslationDocImportExport.LocalExportController.<DoJob>b__12(ExportUnitBase eu)



..............



[The equivalent English version is this, apparently:





TYPE:

System.InvalidOperationException



MESSAGE:

Sequence contains no matching element



SOURCE:

MemoQ.Project



CALL STACK:

   at MemoQ.Project.TranslationDocImportExport.LocalExportController.<DoJob>b__12(ExportUnitBase eu)]



.............

... and can't get your translation out of memoQ! There is a simple way of dealing with the issue, however – if you happen to know how.



First of all, don't panic, as your translation is safe and sound inside memoQ; nothing has been lost. One way of getting your translation back into the original file format (only Word files are affected) is to re-import the source file, pre-translate it – in which case everything will be inserted automatically if the segmenting has been done the same way – and then simply export the file as usual. Voilà! And it's all done in a matter of minutes.



So why does this work if the export didn't work before? Well, it's because your original translation will have contained comments, apparently. (Comments can be inserted deliberately, but they are also added by memoQ by default if you happen to mark a word or phrase to highlight it and return to it later.)



To get things working smoothly again until the bug has been fixed (which will probably be the case shortly in the next build), change the settings to export .docx files without any comments:



- go to 'Options' in R2 (use the icon in the top menu bar)(or go to 'Tools' > 'Options' in memoQ 2014) and select the 'Miscellaneous' category. 



There are five options in the middle that you can set to define which type of comment you want to export (e.g. 'Export information-level comments to final file'):

- uncheck all of them, click on 'OK' to save the setting and then try to export your documents again. It ought to work now.



Thanks to Technical Support at Kilgray for this advice, which I am passing on here to spread the word faster. (Once the bug has been fixed, you will need to go back to these settings and tick them again to re-activate them if you want comments to be exported, otherwise they won't.)



Last but not least, despite all the enhancements that Kilgray's developers keep on adding to memoQ, which, like any piece of user software, is a work in progress, it's always worth remembering you can re-install a previous, stable build of memoQ and work with that until the major bugs in the latest build have been rectified. Just double-click on the installation file and it will get installed 'on top of' the current installation. That will also save you a few headaches.



It's a wise idea to keep the last few builds on your computer for this reason rather than deleting them soon after installing them – that way, you will always be able to access them, no matter where you are and what your internet access is like (sometimes it can be poor or even non-existent, especially if you're travelling somewhere and trying to work at the same time). Alternatively, you can just ask Kilgray's Support team for a particular build and they will send it to you.



Hope these pointers prove helpful.



Carl

 

Useful links and addresses



E-mail Kilgray's Technical Support team at support [@] kilgray [dot] com



The thread about this particular issue on the memoQ user group at Yahoo! Groups, where memoQ users can discuss issues they are having with memoQ and sometimes resolve them with each other's help (you will need to have a Yahoo! account to be able to access this).

 

This short post is about a selection of keyboard short cuts I find particularly useful in memoQ.



There are actually quite a number of blog posts on this topic already, which are either quite detailed or just brief lists of short cuts the writer has found to be useful personally. My post here falls in the second category. Perhaps you'll also benefit from using these combinations of keys in your own work with memoQ.



Five useful "F" keys (in the top row of your keyboard)

• Press F1 to call up memoQ's help documentation
  
   


• ... F2 to edit a source segment, e.g. to correct a spelling mistake
  
   


• ... F4 to auto-assemble a target segment, i.e. automatically insert matching target terms from your project TBs into the target segment to assemble a preliminary translation (using your own resources, not MT)
  
   


• ... F7 to do a spelling check
  
   


• ... F9 to insert the next tag into the target segment.

Five other useful functions called up by pressing Ctrl and another key simultaneously



Ctrl + K: calls up the concordance window so you can search for a word or phrase in all the TMs attached to your current project. To use it, double-click on a term to mark it, then press Ctrl and K at the same time. You'll then see a list of occurrences of the term in your TM entries if it crops up there.



Ctrl + Enter key: confirms the current target segment and sends it off to your primary TMs



Ctrl + P: look up a term in your project TBs



Ctrl + Q: save a source and matching target term to your primary TB instantaneously (remember, Q = "quick")



Ctrl + E: save a source and matching target term to your primary TB and then change or supplement either entry in a term-base dialogue (remember, E = enter a term)



------------------



On a final note, it's helpful to know that quite a number of keyboard short cuts used in memoQ are identical to those used in the popular Office programs made by Microsoft. One example is Ctrl + F (or H) to find (and replace) a phrase (F = "find"). Pressing F1 to call up the program's help documentation is another.



A full list of keyboard short cuts is included in memoQ's help documentation, both offline (press F1!) and online (http://kilgray.com/memoq/2014/help-en/index.html).



Try some of the short cuts out and see if you find them handy. There are far too many of them for users to be able to remember them all, unfortunately, but the ones you use most often will obviously be the ones you recall best. Whichever short cuts you pick up, they'll save you time and improve your productivity.



Incidentally, did you know you can customise a lot of short cuts in memoQ? To find out more, see Kevin Lossner's blog post and Kilgray's help documentation on the subject (see the links below).



Regards



Carl

Related links



Kilgray has a detailed list of short cuts in its online knowledge base (there's a PDF file you can download from there, too)



Here's a nice overview of memoQ's short cuts arranged in practical groups



Kevin Lossner's post on customising keyboard short cuts

For the sake of comparison, here's one on SDL Trados Studio 2014:

Translator Emma Goldsmith has written several blog posts on keyboard short cuts found in this CAT tool. This one is on basic commands



and this is one on short cuts for more advanced users of Studio 2014.

For anyone interested in computer-aided translation, which has become as omnipresent in the translation world as Microsoft Office has in business generally, it's always intriguing to hear when a major new release of a CAT tool appears on the market. MemoQ has become very popular among freelance translators and translation agencies in recent years and has been evolving at a very fast pace – faster than the product documentation, in fact. This week (the second week of December), a new version of the tool is going to be released called memoQ 2014 R2.



What exactly's new about it? Well, the most obvious change is that it now has a ribbon interface. This aligns it with Microsoft's Office products as well as with a number of memoQ's competitors like SDL Trados Studio 2014 and Déjà Vu X3. Although memoQ's current interface (I'm referring to memoQ 2014 "R1" and memoQ 2013 here) has been around for a while and users have got used to it and can find functions reasonably easily on it, there have been plenty of calls for a better menu bar from users.



The new menu bar is now divided into sections of related functions. This makes the interface more intuitive to use and less cluttered, which is also due to the fact that the functions that used to be available in the bottom half of the screen have now been moved up into the ribbon as well. The groups of features have been designed to reflect a typical translation workflow:

The ribbon bar can be reduced in size just like Word's menu bar to save space if you need more room to view your translation or other windows in the interface. This is also useful if your list of projects is quite long as more of them are now displayed. At the moment, the ribbon can't be customised by removing or adding any features, however (which I personally like about Word). What it does do, though, is change its contents, depending on whether or not you have opened a project to work on. Besides having a "memoQ" tab and "Project" tab, it then adds one called "Documents", another one called "Preparation" and one called "View". If you click on an icon like "Translate" in the "Documents" tab, four more tabs appear: "Translate", "Review", "Edit" and "Quick Access", all of which contain functions of particular interest for that step of the translation workflow. So this is a nifty way of putting a lot of functions at a user's disposal as and when they need them.



The ribbon toolbar displays tooltips whenever you move your mouse over specific icons, which can be instructive en passant and may even help you re-discover features you forgot about in the old interface, where many of them were hidden from view.



Another new aspect of memoQ 2014 R2 is that its translation memory editor has been pepped up and made more convenient to use. Meta-data (e.g. the name of a customer) can now be altered, for example, and tags can be handled better (e.g. they can all be removed from the segments you select just by clicking a button). It's also possible to edit an unlimited number of segments at one go, whereas that was limited to a hundred in the past. Filtering has been enhanced as well: you can now select specific groups of segments (those translated by a particular person, say) and then search for certain segments in that group (e.g. those containing a particular term). To make it easier to resume your editing work later, it's now possible to mark segments with a flag as well. A short video on these points is now available on YouTube.



Segmentation of source files has also been improved by making it easier for users to add abbreviations to the list of existing segmentation rules and even re-segment a file on the fly after doing so, giving better segmentation results in the translation grid.



Compatibility with other software formats has always been an important aspect of memoQ, which supports a large number of formats and makes working with files processed by users with different CAT tools relatively simple. In memoQ 2014 R2, Kilgray has improved compatibility with WorldServer by improving how it deals with SDL WorldServer’s file formats, XLZ and WSXZ.



To help you learn more about this new version, Kilgray is offering a number of free webinars on it in December. These are intended for both freelance translators and project managers (as each user group works with a different version). To see which webinars are being staged and register for them, go to their webinar page.



Regards,



Carl

Related links



- Overview of memoQ 2014 R2 on Kilgray's website



- Kilgray's blog



- A recorded webinar on memoQ 2014 R2 by Kilgray on YouTube



- Translator Dominique Pivard explains how to create a project and translate a file in memoQ 2014 R2



- Kevin Lossner's blog post on the first project he did using memoQ 2014 R2



- A post of my own on the introduction of SDL Trados Studio 2014, which also features a ribbon interface.

"What do you mean 'it's identical'?"



1. Matches



One of the main marketing arguments for buying a CAT tool is that it is capable of "translating" files that contain a lot of repetition very quickly, thus saving you time. This statement is basically true, but it ignores the fact that it may still be necessary to check the "100% matches" and other very close matches to see if they fit the context, which also takes time and calls for great care on the translator's part.



Kilgray has made this easier for users by introducing the concept of a "101% match" in memoQ, which simply means that the segments directly adjacent to the 100% match are also taken into account; if they match up, too, then you have a highly dependable 101% context match.



2. Auto-propagation



Matches get copied – or "propagated" – throughout the text you are translating if you have set memoQ to do this. The setting is accessible via "Translations" > "Auto-Propagation..." in the main menu bar at the top of the screen when you have a document open in a project, as the following screen shot shows (auto-propagation is the fourth item down):

If you click on the item, the following dialogue will appear:

As you can see, you can set memoQ to propagate translations of identical segments in a particular direction: (a) "only forward", i.e. downwards from the cursor or (b) "backward and forward", i.e. upwards as well as downwards (= throughout the document you're translating). Various other settings can also be made.



Translations that have been propagated, i.e. copied to "identical" segments, are indicated by a dotted green arrow pointing downwards:

3. No go!



Before you choose an option, though, you might want to ask yourself if auto-propagating translations of "identical" segments is actually a wise idea; there are cases where it isn't, namely if a source segment needs to be translated in different ways, depending on its position in the overall text (= the context).



I encountered this situation in a recent translation in which a short source segment was used as a heading in one place and as a bullet point in another, which called for capitalisation in the first case, but not in the second one. It's also in cases like this that you might want to pick different translations for the same source text. But beware! If you set memoQ to propagate "identical" segments automatically upwards and/or downwards, it will insert one translation wherever the source text occurs, regardless of its contextual function.



To prevent this from happening, you need to de-activate auto-propagation altogether, after which you can handle seemingly identical segments on an individual basis rather than as a group. To do this, just unclick the box at the top, next to "Allow auto-propagation":

When you decide to re-activate the function afterwards (don't forget!), just go up to the menu again, select the item, click on the box again and a tick will re-appear. Close the dialogue and then memoQ will be set to propagate identical translations automatically again. (It would be nice if auto-propagation could be switched on or off with a single click on an icon in the main toolbar one day...)



Regards



Carl

 

Related information on the topic

• Kilgray's online help documentation on auto-propagation


• More details about the auto-propagation settings dialogue

And a quick look over the fence...

• Changing SDL Trados Studio 2014's auto-propagation behaviour (a blog post by Jayne Fox)


• Auto-propagation and "one-to-many" matching in OmegaT

Over the last few weeks, I've been busy working on a big translation and editing project for a customer. There were a lot of Microsoft Word™ files to translate, and during the project, I wanted to measure the length of the translations in order to issue a preliminary bill for the work that had been completed by then.


Obviously, I could have opened each file in Word and then measured it using the program's own word-count feature, but that would have taken ages to do for so many files. What I really needed was a dedicated program for counting the amount of text automatically in a number of files, and more or less simultaneously. What's more, I wanted it to go a step further and calculate the figures I needed for invoicing: the net amount to be invoiced, the amount of VAT due and the grand total.


This is where dedicated text-counting programs come in. One of these tools is AnyCount, a program with three different versions made by Ukrainian software producer Advanced International Translations, aka AIT (also the developer of Translation Office 3000, in which it has been incorporated). As its name implies, AnyCount can count a large number of file types (I made it 36 in the latest version of the Enterprise edition, v8.0.8, including images, HTML, XML and exchange formats like .mif for FrameMaker™ files). Needless to say, this range also covers Microsoft Office™ formats (PPT, DOC, XLS and the more recent XML-based ones), but PDF and OpenOffice™ formats have been included as well, which makes AnyCount very versatile. Even Microsoft Visio™ and compiled help files (CHM) can be processed. A full overview is available on AIT's website (click here).

The workflow with AnyCount

Before you measure a file with AnyCount, you can make a number of settings in it to specify what gets counted and what doesn't. Under "Settings" in the menu bar, you can say whether headers and footers should be included and even how often (once per page or once per section). If there are footnotes or end notes in the file you want to count, you can also specify which of these it should cover, as the screen shot on the left shows.

Objects that are embedded in files, such as Excel tables in Word or PowerPoint documents, can be measured, too, along with a number of other (albeit rarely needed) options like shapes and hidden text.

Under "Settings", you can also choose the unit of text you want to be measured, a feature that includes words, characters with (or without) spaces, lines and pages, and define how many units make up a line or page, for example:



Select the files you want to measure under "Files", check you've made the right settings and then count the files by clicking on the "Count!" icon in the menu bar.

The whole workflow is summarised by this screen shot from the interface:

Putting it to the test


It took AnyCount less than two minutes to count the number of characters in 16 Word docx files and calculate the overall figure and resulting cost. You can either process this data yourself or get AnyCount to export it to a file format like Excel to make a printout. If you have configured a template for invoicing in the program, you can even get AnyCount to create an invoice automatically using the data. It can save you a lot of time by automating such data-processing steps.

What I like about version 8 of the tool is that...

• it's simple to use


• it measures the amount of text in files quickly and seems accurate (I want to check this more closely, though)
  


• the interface is attractive (a nice shade of blue!) and intuitive to work with
  


• you can configure a good number of settings yourself to suit your own way of counting
  


• and it lets you output the results as reports in a number of common formats such as Excel, HTML or Word (these can also be printed out without much editing).

Some of you may already have heard of Heartsome, a firm that produces computer-assisted translation software. Its two main products these days are TMX Editor and Heartsome Studio, a suite of translation tools. The company is based in Hong Kong and has partly been catering to the Chinese-language market in Asia and partly to speakers of English. What's unusual about it is that it's about to close its doors for good. And it's making its products available for further development in an Open Source environment.



Heartsome says it's doing this in the hope that other software developers will pick up where its own developers left off and make the two tools more helpful to translators and agencies (see the farewell note on their website [which may get discontinued]).



Development and technical support at Heartsome is going to stop tomorrow, on 31 July. This is an unusual move in the CAT-tool industry, or at least one that doesn't happen very often. But like any business, if the sales figures just won't offset your business costs, you can only keep going for so long before drastic action is called for. Other companies in the field have seen bad times, too (like Atril, the makers of Déjà Vu), but they may manage to consolidate their business and carry on (which Atril did with a French financier's help).



I'm sorry to hear about this step as the more producers there are on the CAT-tool market, the better, at least in terms of competitive product development and pricing in the interest of users. It will be interesting to see what becomes of Heartsome's products in the future. I also hope the Open Source move is a positive one and that competent developers will step in and not let development stagnate.



Anyone who wishes to try out Heartsome Studio 8.0 and/or TMX Editor 8.0 now (à la Heartsome) can do so by downloading them from the GitHub site Heartsome has set up (see below) or from other trustworthy software platforms (even so, please make sure your PC is well protected from web-based viruses before downloading the packages; the software links are sound as far as I can tell, but you never know...).



The products can run on several operating platforms: not just Windows and Mac OS, but also Linux, for example.



I haven't tried out Heartsome Studio yet, but I know it can create bilingual XLIFF files, which can be easily modified for importing into other CAT tools (such as memoQ and SDL Studio 2011 or 2014). For more details about the Heartsome Studio suite, check out the features listed on GitHub.



I'll have a go when I get a chance and see what it's like in terms of usability. As for TMX Editor, that's a useful program you can use to edit and modify TMX files created by other CAT editors if their own TMX editing features are lacking. Why not try them both out and see what you think?



Regards,



Carl

images: © Heartsome

Related links

- blog post in German by Torsten Rox-Edling: "Heartsome wird Open Source"



- Dominique Pivard's short e-training video on how to translate using Heartsome Translation Studio 8 (it lasts 8.5 mins)



..........................

Kilgray, the maker of memoQ, my main CAT tool, is going to be holding a series of virtual events that might interest you on Wednesday 28 May (just five days from now). In fact, this is their third "Virtual Conference" on Proz.com, and like past events, it's free for anyone to attend. All you have to do is register for it beforehand; you don't need to be a paying member of Proz.com to do so.



Here are some of the benefits of attending at least some of the events in Kilgray's view:

• learn first-hand about the firm's most recent development, memoQ 2014, which will be released after the conference [more on this in a moment]
  
   


• attend various sessions and download training videos [to watch at your leisure on your own PC]
  
   


• learn the ins and outs of memoQ
  
   


• hear about some useful tips & tricks
  
   


• chat with Kilgray’s support team
  
   


• take advantage of special offers on memoQ
  
   


• get some hints on how to become a well-employed translator [presumably from LSPs that employ memoQ] and on dealing with customers.

The programme of events includes various presentations (live and on-demand webinars), discussion panels and live chats with staff at Kilgray in which you can ask questions of your own about memoQ and the firm's other products for translators. The on-demand presentations are likely to be particularly interesting for intermediate and advanced users of memoQ:

The highlight at this conference, however, is definitely going to be the preview you can get of memoQ 2014, a revamped release which includes a number of new features and productivity enhancements. These include:

• project templates, which will save you a lot of time when setting up projects [this might sound old-hat to some, but it's new to memoQ]
  
   


• automated steps in a workflow, which can be set in your project templates to simplify certain operations during a project (e.g. pre-translation, X-translate or export to MQXLIFF or a two-column RTF)
  
   


• productivity improvements such as better tag handling, grammar checking (not just spelling checks) and presenting several documents in a single view
  
   


• automatic assignment of files to specific translators working on online projects
  
   


• the ability to process embedded files and localise images
  
   


• easier terminology import from third-party packages (Studio and STAR Transit)
  
   


• project-management integration with Language Terminal (tracking projects)
  
   


• and many other productivity boosters (e.g. a built-in stopwatch feature for gauging the time it takes you to edit assignments).

The Virtual Day is due to take place between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. GMT (12 noon to 7 p.m. CEST), but may run a bit longer because of the live chats. Those participants who attend it will be able to watch the recorded webinars again afterwards for a certain period of time.



More on memoQ 2014 in a later post; like memoQ 2013, this version really does seem to help translators and make many operations easier. (You can also read about memoQ 2014 on Kilgray's blog and Kevin Lossner's excellent Translation Tribulations.) As mentioned earlier in this post, the version is due to be launched after the virtual conference (in June).



Bye for now,



Carl



P.S. A free webinar dedicated to the new features that memoQ 2014 includes is going to be held by Kilgray on 11 June (at 3 p.m. GMT/5 p.m. CEST). All you need to do is register to attend it (click here).



As of 10 June, you can download a copy of memoQ 2014 from Kilgray's website. Try it out for free for 45 days or simply upgrade to it if you already have a current licence.



To hear what users of the new version have to say about its strengths and weaknesses, it's a good idea to follow the discussions about it in the memoQ user group hosted by Yahoo! (You need to sign up to use the list, but it's free and can be very informative.)