How to...
Assign documents and hand off jobs

You need to assign individual documents to vendors. Then You can create handoff packages for the assigned vendors.

Assigning documents in a local project

If you are in a language view (that is, a target language is selected in the Target language box of Project home), you can assign documents to vendors by entering the vendor name into the appropriate workflow step box (Translation, Review 1, Review 2).

▪Translator is the person who will translate the document.

▪Reviewer 1 is the person who will review the document and give feedback to the translator. The translator has the final word.

▪Reviewer 2 is the person who will review and make changes to the document. The translator cannot make changes anymore.

Note: You cannot assign documents in the All languages mode.

You can type any name into the boxes. The name can refer both to a person and a company. You can assign multiple documents to the same name by selecting the documents and then clicking Assign below the document list. The Assign selected documents to user dialog appears. Here you can enter a name and select the workflow role.

You can assign both documents and views to users. Views contain segments that are part of other documents. A typical view either splits up big documents into smaller ones or merges smaller documents into a big one. It's not worth assigning the same segment to two people. memoQ will perform this check for you.

See also: For more on views, see Views.

In a multilingual project, repeat this process for every target language.

When you assign a document to a vendor, memoQ displays a red flag next to the vendor name. This means that the document was not sent out in a handoff package.

Checking the assignments

To check your assignments for completeness or conflicts, navigate to the Overview pane of Project home. Then click the General tab, and under Handoff checks, click the Check project now link. You can check your assignments for one language pair or all languages.

During a completeness check, memoQ checks if all segments in the project have been assigned to somebody. In the Overview pane, if you click the Show/hide details link below a workflow step, memoQ will list all unassigned document–target language pairs. If you click the Take me to this document link next to a document–target language pair, memoQ displays the Translations pane with the corresponding target language, and automatically selects the corresponding document. You can immediately assign the document tasks to users.

During a conflict check, memoQ determines if there are any segments that have been assigned twice. This is a typical scenario when you split up a document using views and assign both the document and the views to translators. If you click Show/hide details, memoQ will indicate what segments are duplicated.

Creating handoff packages

If all segments are assigned to a user, and there are no conflicting segments, you can create a new handoff package by clicking Create new handoff. The memoQ handoff wizard starts.

When creating a handoff package, you can select the workflow role you want to export the packages for. You can also specify a deadline for returning the packages. You can select what languages and what users you want to include in the handoff. Under Handoff options, you can specify whether you want to allow joining and splitting segments in the handoff, and you can specify whether you want to include the local translation memories, term bases, previews and skeletons. The more you include in a package, the larger the file size will be, but it is good practice to include as much as possible.

Packages are automatically saved under the package path location, one file is one package. You need to send these out to your vendors by uploading them to your file distribution (for example, FTP) server, or by attaching them to an e-mail. To access this folder, navigate to the Overview panel of Project home, click the Handoff/delivery tab, and then click Open folder. Documents that have been handed off will appear with a paper plane icon under Translations.

Your translators can easily import the project packages into memoQ. Project packages contain XLIFF documents, TMX translation memories and CSV term bases, so they can also use other tools to process the files.

Note: memoQ writes the handoff packages into a single compressed file with the .mqout extension. These files are .zip files in disguise. If you need to process them in a different translation tool, change the file extension to .zip (by renaming the file), then unzip the file. Now you can access the XLIFF, TMX, and CSV files in the package.

See also:

Work from handoff packages