Free memoQ "Light" Resources

(feel free to share with anyone)

Please note: this online course platform limits the types of files which can be made available for download, so resources here are contained in ZIP files. These will have to be unpacked to use them after download.

Keyboard defaults with term base rank 1-9 shortcuts added

memoQ 2015 introduced a superb term management feature by allowing direct writes to ranked term bases 1 through 9 via keyboard shortcuts. Unfortunately, the new default keyboard shortcut set left these new features unassigned! This configuration can be uploaded in the memoQ Resource Console or Options and enabled under Options > Keyboard shortcuts by marking the checkbox for the configuration.

Download the ZIP file below and unpack it to access the MQRES configuration file. Then go to the Keyboard shortcuts in the Resource Console or Options and select Import new to get started.

QA profile examples to facilitate faster, focused quality assurance....

The Quality Assurance features of memoQ are, unfortunately, not well understood by a majority of users. Part of the problem, I think, is that too many rely on the "Default"/"Standard" profile that ships with the software, and there are no examples given of more targeted approaches to QA. Configuring custom QA profiles to achieve such specificity is too often a PITA, because so many enabled settings need to be deactivated in most cases, so it is easy to overlook important details and end up with confusing checks and results of no interest.

So I created the "empty" QA profile.

Inside the ZIP file to download below is an "empty" QA profile (file name: QA empty.mqres), with no options at all selected. Using this as your template to clone (and rename), it is usually quick and easy to configure focused QA runs that look only at terminology, or at tags - or both - or which use regex to perform some sort of complex QA screening of a target text.

Other targeted QA profiles in the set.

Sometimes I just want to a check for missing or incorrect tags in a document (this frequently makes it impossible to export translated documents with certain file types or causes distressing format errors in the target files). So I made a QA profile to check only the tags. There are many possible ways to check tags in memoQ's QA, and what I do might not cover your needs accurately, but the file QA Tags only.mqres can be a convenient starting point for where you want to go.

Often I want to do a check just for compliance with terminology agreed with a customer. I've got my QA profile that checks only terms in the term bases marked for QA use (in memoQ versions 8.x or later or in all attached term bases in older versions of memoQ).

I do a lot of work with special auto-translation rules for currency formats, dates, legal citations, abbreviations, bibliography citations and more. So I have a profile to check only the text fitting selected auto-translation rules.

As you can imagine, the three types of checks can be combined, and other desired quality checks can be added to any profile. So I combined these checks in a few more profiles provided, and I use these as-is or customize them in many projects. Now you can do the same.

There is often little or no understanding of how to manage memoQ configurations like these QA profiles. Such portable configurations are also referred to as "light resources", and it is important to get a grip on the differences in Project settings, the Options and the Resource console with regard to what is accomplished by editing or changing settings in each place. Years ago I did a video (here on my YouTube channel) explaining the three different places in memoQ where QA settings can be dealt with, and the scope of each of these places: the Resource console, the Options and the Project settings. Though the interface of the software has changed a bit in the meantime, all that information remains fully relevant.

Improved, re-organized "EnglishGroup" numbers auto-translation rulesets....

The first downloadable ruleset recognizes more variations of negative signs, expands the scope of numbers covered and is re-organized to serve as a better basis for creating currency expression rules.

There is a second version of the same rules which uses thin non-breaking spaces for digit grouping rather than the usual commas in English. This is for compliance in those jobs where clients expect spaces to be used in numbers. (Thank you Tim Barton for asking about this.)

And last but not least, there is a set using ordinary non-breaking spaces (U+00A0) as called for in the EU DGT English style guide (see page 37 for example).

A fixed numbers autotranslation ruleset for French and Portuguese....

This one fixes the flaw in the shipping "FrenchGroup" ruleset, which fails to use non-breaking spaces as separators in large numbers.

Date format conversions (auto-translation rules)

The rules in the ZIP files below convert international short format dates (YYYY-MM-DD) to various combinations of long and short dates for UK and US English and Portuguese, and there is also an example date ruleset to convert the usual DD.MM.YYYY or variants with other separators into a form of abbreviated English date; these can be adapted easily for other target formats and languages.

memoQ Web Search examples

As of memoQ version 9.7, the example web search configurations provided with the installed software are a bit of a mess. There are quite a few resources for various languages, but the search strings in some are defective or obsolete, and the names of the configurations themselves imply that they are somehow for German and English. Well...

... not always it seems. Keyword: chaos.

When the web search feature was first added to memoQ, I could make little sense of it until I began to build my own configurations from scratch, i.e. by creating a new resource with nothing and then adding my favorite search sites configured as I want them. These in turn were helpful to explain to colleagues working with the same language combination and search sites how memoQ's web search works.

When it came to teaching university classes in Portugal, I found it helpful to get the students started with a limited set of sites configured in their working languages. And one class had a colleague from Kenya in it, so I made a Swahili configuration to get him started.

The web search examples below are perhaps better starting points for understanding and using memoQ Web Search. Feel free to download, adapt and share these as you like. If some of the search sites have changed their retrieval parameters, you may need to edit and adapt the search string (my books and the memoQ Help explain this adequately), but last time I checked, everything worked.

Please note: this section will change as resources are added, updated, and - in some cases - removed. This will occur at least once a month, so it may be worthwhile to check back before your access expires.

You should also visit:

• My blog, Translation Tribulations and
• My YouTube channel

both of which teach about a lot more than memoQ.

I have many gigabytes worth of teaching and resources from over a decade of memoQ use, consultation, training and development.

If you need something specific, contact me privately.