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Your experience with MemoQ
Thread poster: Ken Fagan (X)
Jared Tabor
Jared Tabor
Local time: 10:16
SITE STAFF
To Ken: removing thread tracking May 12, 2009

Hello Ken,

It looks like you were tracking this particular thread (the green "Email tracking" box to the left of the thread). I'll de-track you, but you can do the same with any thread you are tracking by de-selecting the option and clicking on the "Save changes" button.

Best regards,

Jared


 
Gergely Vandor
Gergely Vandor
Hungary
Local time: 14:16
English to Hungarian
could you please write to support? May 12, 2009

I'm somewhat afraid that as you dive deeper, a long-long list of new tricky questions and issues could turn up, which might not be that interesting for everyone. (Ken is already trying to escape it seems.) I'm also not convinced that the problems are the software's fault in all cases. I think we should keep this thread for what it has been: discussing more general opinions/impressions about MemoQ. Thank you in advance.

But here is a quick list of answers:

-switching to
... See more
I'm somewhat afraid that as you dive deeper, a long-long list of new tricky questions and issues could turn up, which might not be that interesting for everyone. (Ken is already trying to escape it seems.) I'm also not convinced that the problems are the software's fault in all cases. I think we should keep this thread for what it has been: discussing more general opinions/impressions about MemoQ. Thank you in advance.

But here is a quick list of answers:

-switching to Japanese input: thank you for the details. This is a tricky issue, which I haven't been able to reproduce. I also beleive that it is specific to your system or setup somehow, since I haven't heard of similar problems from anyone else.

-QA and terms, numbers: depending on your settings, QA can check the use of terminology against your termbase, or check numbers for proper "national" format and consistency (same numbers) between source and target side, etc. From what you have said, it could be that it is simply doing its job. With terms, the so called "prefix matching" option can affect the QA results as well. There are many kinds of different QA checks and too many factors that affect how they work. I feel a little lost trying to say anything concrete without seeing what segment text caused what exact type of QA warning with what exact QA settings or term settings. That said, there could be problems like false positives, and our QA module is awaiting a significant overhaul. I just don't think we should discuss this here, because it would probably take dozens of questions and replies to get to a conclusion. But I can confidently say the problems should have nothing to do with single and double byte characters, because all of MemoQ is based on Unicode from the ground up.

If you write to our support address, we are happy to solve all your complex issues like this.
Collapse


 
Gergely Vandor
Gergely Vandor
Hungary
Local time: 14:16
English to Hungarian
to Kevin: for feedback, please use our support address May 12, 2009

Currently we accept problem reports on our support address (I don't want to write it out in full here to avoid further spam, but it should be easy to guess).

Gergely


 
Rod Walters
Rod Walters  Identity Verified
Japan
Local time: 22:16
Japanese to English
OK! May 12, 2009

Fair enough. I'll email you.

Thanks.


 
Rod Walters
Rod Walters  Identity Verified
Japan
Local time: 22:16
Japanese to English
Getting back to the basics May 13, 2009

Gergely Vandor wrote:

Personally, I very much disagree with you on the ease of use of Word + Trados Workbench for complex documents. In a tagged format (in DVX, MemoQ, or TagEditor, etc.), at least the problem is limited to tags. In Word, you need to pay attention to and recreate all kinds of funky formattings directly, not to mention fields, index markers, etc. There are unlimited opportunities for mistakes there. Also, it is quite easy to completely mess up the document in Word by overwriting the Trados segmentation codes for example. The way I see it, Word is in fact a very-very complex program, and every translation tool is simpler and safer than that.


A common scenario for me goes like this -

A client gives me a Word file to translate. They want me to deliver a memory with it. The Word file is a fantastic mess involving every 'hard layout' no-no that you can imagine, with eccentric use of text boxes, and English text entered with double byte characters. (I get the impression that document management is light years behind other countries.)

I immediately negotiate an agreement that my fee only covers translation, and that it would be nearly double if I were to be involved in remedying the layout in any way. Most clients are quite happy with this suggestion.

So I blast through the translation in Workbench, freely eliminating hard returns as I go, and shoving inconvenient text boxes out of the way with my mouse. Then I clean up the file and deliver it exactly as Trados leaves it. While it grieves me to deliver something so ugly looking, I don't feel inclined to take the economic hit in remedying somebody else's mistakes. Trados allows me to ignore the complexity, and for that I'm very grateful.

I learned early on that Trados tags need to be protected, but even if you delete a few accidentally, it doesn't matter that much. They can be fixed easily. Otherwise, where's the hazard? Trados in Word for my purposes actually seems very forgiving and usable. The same applies to TagEditor when all tag protection is turned off and you can delete tags at will. This freedom allows me to focus all my attention on the quality and accuracy of the English.

Sometimes I get the impression that the handling of formatting in MQ and DVX is stressed too heavily, especially for the Japanese market. For your marketing here, you may need to emphasize the pure translation and ergonomic strengths of your software. If I could have a CAT tool that let me ignore complexity as Trados does, and that had more intelligent matching, I'd buy it right away.

So in short;

Gergely Vandor wrote:
In Word, you need to pay attention to and recreate all kinds of funky formattings directly, not to mention fields, index markers, etc.


No I don't. My business model solves that problem. I'd just like the tool to get out of my way there.


 
Kevin Lossner
Kevin Lossner  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 13:16
German to English
+ ...
Dealing with those damned format tags May 13, 2009

Rod Walters wrote:
Sometimes I get the impression that the handling of formatting in MQ and DVX is stressed too heavily....


We could probably swap stories of formatting nightmares all night and not manage to find a point of disagreement. However there are a few tips that might be relevant to your attempts to use DVX and possibly MemoQ (though I haven't tested MQ yet for what I'm about to mention).

You can in fact delete a lot of the codes in the source (segment boundaries) and target (lots of stuff) if you use a combined workflow with Trados TagEditor as I often do. Note that I say "Tag Editor" - you are asking for major trouble if you trash segment boundary tags with a pre-segmented Word file in DV. Although an "error" is indicated because of the missing tags, you can ignore it in most cases, and your document will export just fine. No need to shove the stupid text boxes anywhere while you work; deal with resizing them later if you must.

This is a fairly recent discovery of mine and was a bit of a surprise, but this combined workflow allows me to get rid of tags for file formats where DVX alone forbids it. But as I said, I still need to test this for MQ and I won't have time to do that thoroughly for a while....

Your workflow in Word sounds rather efficient on the whole, but to keep it you'll probably have to avoid the new Trados upgrade, as the Word macros are going away. Real advantages for you might be more in working with other formats (the MQ/DVX/SDLX interfaces are ergonomically far more efficient than TagEditor). Whether you'll really see big efficiency gains in Word given the crap source texts you see is anyone's guess, and I wouldn't place a large bet on the possibility. However, I would consider if there are compensating advantages that can keep your income at the desired level. I'm not even vaguely qualified to suggest anything in that regard for Japanese, but you might make contact at some point with Angelika Zerfass, who is a noted Trados trainer here in Germany. I saw her among the participants at the MQ Fest in Budapest, and I was told by others that she will be developing training seminars for MQ. Since one of her working languages is Japanese, she might have valuable insights to share at some point.


 
Ken Fagan (X)
Ken Fagan (X)  Identity Verified
Local time: 14:16
French to English
TOPIC STARTER
please, God May 13, 2009

I'm still receiving this thread, despite Jared's intervention yesterday

 
Rod Walters
Rod Walters  Identity Verified
Japan
Local time: 22:16
Japanese to English
Hi Ken! Sorry to bother you again. May 13, 2009

Kevin Lossner wrote:

Your workflow in Word sounds rather efficient on the whole, but to keep it you'll probably have to avoid the new Trados upgrade


I don't think that will be hard. I quite like the Trados setup I have now, and I'd be very circumspect indeed about changing it. Especially by forking out more slotties.

Whether you'll really see big efficiency gains in Word given the crap source texts you see is anyone's guess, and I wouldn't place a large bet on the possibility.

Indeed, that's the fear. However, slopping all the stuff from my Trados bucket to my MQ bucket was so unexpectedly easy that if I can get the problems with MQ that I mentioned above sorted out, I'd be happy to try a company with more sophisticated language (and people) handling than SDL.

However, I would consider if there are compensating advantages that can keep your income at the desired level. I'm not even vaguely qualified to suggest anything in that regard for Japanese, but you might make contact at some point with Angelika Zerfass, who is a noted Trados trainer here in Germany. I saw her among the participants at the MQ Fest in Budapest, and I was told by others that she will be developing training seminars for MQ. Since one of her working languages is Japanese, she might have valuable insights to share at some point.

Oh, I see Angelika there on LinkedIn. I'll have to drop her a line. Thanks, that sounds like a promising approach. One strength that SDL has is that they do have lots of Japanese staff. I get the feeling that MQ is still quite a European operation.

Today I've had to fall back on TagEditor (I always think of it as FagEditor - Chiefly British Fatiguing or tedious work; drudgery) to do an urgent Powerpoint job, but I'm already imaging how the work would go with smarter fuzzy matching...


 
Arkadi Burkov
Arkadi Burkov  Identity Verified
Belarus
Local time: 16:16
English to Russian
Can I make the fonts larger? May 14, 2009

Hi there

I also did my share of experimenting with MQ and liked it so much that decided to try it on an actual job.

Here is the problem I ran into. I cannot make the fonts for both target and source segments permanently appear larger than they are. That might be a minor distraction but a very annoying one for a short-sighted person working on their laptop.

Your guidance will be very much appreciated.



[Edited at 2009-05-14 11:43 GMT]


 
Ken Fagan (X)
Ken Fagan (X)  Identity Verified
Local time: 14:16
French to English
TOPIC STARTER
please, Jared, I beg of you... May 14, 2009

I'm still receiving these posts...

 
Jared Tabor
Jared Tabor
Local time: 10:16
SITE STAFF
Topic starters automatically receive notification of posts in their thread May 14, 2009

Hi Ken,

My apologies for the mis-information of sorts, but when I answered you previously I did not notice that you are the topic starter here. Topic starters automatically receive notification of posts in their thread. I'm not sure if I can fix this one for you, but let me see what I can do.

Best regards,

Jared


 
Drew MacFadyen
Drew MacFadyen  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 09:16
Spanish to English
+ ...
ProZ.com group buy discount on MemoQ May 14, 2009

ProZ.com is currently conducting a group buy for MemoQ - its a 50% discount for ProZ.com users. You can join here - http://www.proz.com/tgb/235

Thanks

Drew


 
Gergely Vandor
Gergely Vandor
Hungary
Local time: 14:16
English to Hungarian
changing font size May 15, 2009

Hi Arkadi,

In the Tools menu, click Options. Select the "Appearance, locations" category. In the "Font size" and "Translation results font size" drop-down menus, you can change the size of the fonts you see on screen in MemoQ.

Best regards,
Gergely


 
Gergely Vandor
Gergely Vandor
Hungary
Local time: 14:16
English to Hungarian
to Rod: issues specific to Japanese May 15, 2009

Some of our Japanese users have just reported the same problem of the input language changing automatically, so there is hope we will be able to catch and solve this soon.

Also, I can confirm there is a problem with QA number matching when translating from Japanese. (Same numbers on both sides, but still an alarm.) I will report that to the programmer team. I'm not sure what exact error you received from the terminology (?) check.

Gergely


 
Arkadi Burkov
Arkadi Burkov  Identity Verified
Belarus
Local time: 16:16
English to Russian
Many thanks May 15, 2009

In the Tools menu, click Options. Select the "Appearance, locations" category. In the "Font size" and "Translation results font size" drop-down menus, you can change the size of the fonts you see on screen in MemoQ.


Hi Gergely,

Perfect! Thank you!

Best,
Arkadi


 
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