1. Introduction
Why translate in memoQ (and not in Word)?
Because memoQ knows much more about translation than any word processor.
- memoQ remembers earlier translations: it can recognize if something was already translated, and dig up the translation from the past.
- memoQ can read and save documents that you cannot work with otherwise: you don’t have to be an expert in editing web pages or desktop publishing – you can still translate web pages or complex documents that come from sophisticated programs like InDesign or FrameMaker.
- memoQ can work from your previous documents: if you have a document and its translation, memoQ can pair them and recycle the translation when a similar document comes along.
- memoQ can hold your glossaries: you can build glossaries of terms – and when you’re translating, memoQ will highlight the terms it recognizes, and insert their translations at the click of the mouse.
- memoQ connects you to your peers: you can work with others on the same job – for example, your client may have a task for you on their server. You can directly connect to this server, and receive, work on, and deliver the job without sending e-mails.
Let’s learn some names
- A translation memory is a database where memoQ saves previous translations. You can tell memoQ to use a translation memory or two (or three, or more) while you are working. When memoQ finds something that is similar to the segment you need to translate, it will offer to use the stored translation. This will speed up your work and make your translation more consistent with previous translations.
- A term base is a glossary. It’s a database where you can collect terms and their translations. A term is a word or an expression from the subject field of the document you are translating. When you translate a sentence that contains one or more terms from your glossary, memoQ will spot them, highlight them, and offer to insert their translations at the click of the mouse.
- A segment is a meaningful unit of text; a passage of text you translate at a time. memoQ tries to break the text into sentences, but sometimes the meaningful unit is smaller or larger than a sentence. This is why these are called ‘segments’ and not ‘sentences’ in memoQ.
- A LiveDocs corpus is a collection of documents that you can re-use for your future translations. It behaves like a translation memory. The most important piece of data you store there is a document pair that memoQ can use in the same way as a translation memory.
- Alignment is what happens when you pair up documents in a LiveDocs corpus. memoQ will break the source document into segments, and try to find the translation for each segment in the target document.
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