This course will provide a clear summary of six (well... actually seven now) important resources for translation, editorial tasks and project management in memoQ translation environments. 

Each month at least two resource types will be explained for users of memoQ desktop editions and TMS servers. Working examples and test data will be provided for each topic. Content will be available for at least two months after the final month of posting in the course (now January, so availability until the end of March 2024) and may be updated periodically during the course.

Each topic will be presented with an appropriate mix of information which may comprise video, text, images (principally screenshots), PDF notes and handouts, public reference links, and e-mail, and in every case, a significant number of ready-to-use or ready-to-adapt resources will be provided for frequent language combinations (and some infrequent ones). I will try to share this practical content with a focus on the most important language combinations for course participants.

September 2023 was the month for emphasizing auto-translation rules and the Regex Assistant library tool (which was introduced in its present form in memoQ version 9.9).

October 2023 will see some revelations for segmentation rules, particularly but not restricted to those for English, German, Spanish and Portuguese texts. Course participants are encouraged to submit their own segmentation headaches for possible solutions. Special challenges and solutions with memoQ filters will also be taught. Once again, participants are encouraged to present their own unique challenges for this topic.

November 2023 is "terminology month" with a deep dive into how to get more out of memoQ's term bases. We'll also have a look at ways to get the most out of memoQ's web search feature.

Unscheduled topics may also be added as the winds of whimsy and necessity determine. This can be influenced by interesting questions submitted to me in the course lessons or in social media.

There will also be a weekly "memoQ&A" session, usually Thursday mornings or afternoons (Lisbon time) from the beginning of September until the last Thursday in November, and on a more sporadic schedule in December and January (to be announced), which all participants and the general public are welcome to attend, and where any questions about the material for the course or difficulties with it can be handled. If there are no questions about the course, any other questions about memoQ workflows or related translation process management are welcome. Call this "office hours" if you like. The schedule will be posted in the "Schedule and Events" section of the course, which may also have other relevant announcements.

Now about that seventh resource... it's the memoQ "QA profile". This is a very difficult topic for many people, complicated by what I consider to be some design flaws in that feature of memoQ, which require very careful and specific instruction for people to overcome difficulties and take full advantage of memoQ's powerful features for quality assurance.

I believe that memoQ offers the best QA features available in any TMS, but the teaching of this is usually so utterly awful that many long-term memoQ users tell me that "memoQ QA is BROKEN". Trust me, it isn't. What is broken is the communication on how to use it well.

I am going to do my best to address that in December 2023 and January 2024. It's the holiday season, and many of us are very busy with family and/or travel or many other matters beside stupid CAT tools, and I am going to be trying some new approaches to this topic (welcome, guinea pigs!), so I am going to spread it all out to give plenty of time for testing, questions and feedback.

Whether you are an individual linguist using memoQ as a freelancer or part of a larger team in an institution or company, fine-tuned QA profiles applied in the right way, at the right stages of a project, can make an enormous positive difference in your results without plaguing you with a lot of false positives. But this requires careful study and understanding, and one profile does not fit all projects.

QA is also at the end because it will make use of many skills taught beforehand, and without good knowledge of things like auto-translation rules and the use of Regex Assistant libraries, for example, your QA upgrade efforts will be less rewarding.

I hope you'll join this adventure in learning and sharing so that we can all move forward, together, against the difficult headwinds in the language service sector these days.