Tool category: memoQ Translators' Essentials

What is LiveDocs?

LiveDocs is a built-in feature of memoQ, an alternative to Translation Memory. With LiveDocs, you can align multiple files in just a matter of seconds and later use them as reference files. As opposed to TM, LiveDocs preserves whole translated documents, not just segments. 

How Does LiveDocs Work?

To leverage existing translated documents, you first need to create a LiveDocs corpus and import your preferred reference material. A LiveDocs corpus can handle all file formats that memoQ supports for translation.

Now imagine you have a source document and its counterpart translated in Microsoft Word. Import both documents into your new LiveDocs corpus. memoQ will automatically align your files, therefore, every sentence in your source document is matched with the equivalent in the target document.

Next time you translate, memoQ will offer segments from these documents the same way as it does from translation memories. 

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A LiveDocs corpus can contain monolingual and bilingual documents, alignment pairs and binary reference materials.

What Are the Benefits of LiveDocs?

Automatic alignment: LiveDocs automatically aligns your source and target documents. You can also easily check reference files during translation.

HUB: Store monolingual documents in your LiveDocs corpus to find the right terminology without leaving memoQ. Moreover, you can also store third-party files for references.

LiveDocs corpus: During translation, memoQ will offer you suggestions coming from matches in your LiveDocs corpus. You can even use these matches to pre-translate your file.

Next: Translation Quality Assurance

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Learn more About LiveDocs

What is translation memory? / Translation Memory explained

Translation Memory (TM) is a database for sentence pairs (matching source and target segments); in other words, the heart of translation technology. It speeds up translators’ localization processes while maintaining consistency, and increasing translation quality.

Translation memory, unlike machine translation, offers the possibility to reuse previous translations and handle language repetition across a project. 

How does translation memory works?

Translation memory works in the background of your CAT tool, offering sentence suggestions as you translate. Its memory consists of your previous translations and only identical or similar sentences are suggested.

The similarity between the source and target segments is indicated with percentages (100% is the perfect match) while differences are highlighted with colors.

What are the benefits of translation memory?

Speeds up Translation: A TM offers previously translated sentences that are identical to the current translation, with differences only in numbers, tags, formatting, punctuation or spacing.

Reduces Translation Costs: Translation memory is usually the most effective with texts that include many repetitions, such as website content, games, contracts and product manuals.

Increases Translation Quality: Proactively prevent inconsistencies by storing correct phrases and sentences. It can be extremely useful when several people are working on the same text. 

Next: Term Base

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Translate PDFs with memoQ and TransPDF

Do you often translate PDF files? Do you encounter problems to keep file formatting? Have you ever translated a scanned PDF document? Many companies send out PDFs for translation. However, for translators, PDF is not an ideal format.

memoQ's integration with TransPDF allows you to translate PDF documents (regular or scanned) easily. In the following, we outline how this integration can help your daily tasks. 

To translate PDF documents, first you need to connect memoQ with TransPDF, a paid service for PDF conversions including OCR (Optical Character Recognition).

Benefits of Connecting memoQ with TransPDF

No need for manual preparation

Minimum loss of formatting

Correct sentence segmentation

Smooth integration through memoQ

Alternative to TransPDF

If you are working with a regular PDF file, you may request its source file from your client. However, there are cases when the source file is not available.

If that is the case, you can use memoQ’s built-in PDF to DOCX converter that usually delivers satisfactory results. However, you should always check the Word target file as it may contain unnecessary tags and line breaks after conversion.

If you are not satisfied with memoQ’s built-in converter, please try the integration with TransPDF.

Align PDF Documents with LiveDocs

If formatting is not an issue, you can align PDF documents in memoQ. If the source and target languages are in PDF format, memoQ’s built-in PDF filter is capable of converting them into plain text. This filter does not produce tags and is more tolerant to line breaks.

To do so, you will need LiveDocs, a special module within memoQ that allows you to leverage previously translated material and reference files. Once on LiveDocs, follow these steps:
1. Select Add alignment pair
2. Click Add source documents
3. Click Change filter and configuration
4. Under General, select Import by converting to Plain Text
5. Repeat the same for target documents, or under Import document

During translation, memoQ offers suggestions from your LiveDocs corpus. You can use these matches to save significant time with your translation. You may also have the opportunity to import a single PDF and use it as a monolingual reference to check for expressions or terminology.

Next: What is a Translation Memory?

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