How to...
Exchange data with SDL Trados

Users of memoQ may receive TTX and other SDL Trados files formats for translation, so they can gain a lot from being ’Trados compatible’. In order to open SDL Trados documents in memoQ, you have to make sure that the source text is divided into segments the same way in both applications. Not dealing with segmentation before opening the file may lead to compatibility problems since memoQ allows users to split and join segments as they like, while Trados does not.

Pre-segmentation involves the following steps:

1.Segment the TTX or bilingual DOC file in SDL Trados by selecting Segment unknown sentences in the Translate dialog.

2.Export the active translation memory as a TMX file. This file now includes the segments of the source document.

3.Add the pre-segmented file to a new memoQ project, along with the TMX file. As the TMX file is the same as you were using for the project in SDL Trados, the uniformity of segmentation is guaranteed.

4.Start translation.

To open the same translation in SDL Trados, do the following:

1.Export the translation in memoQ as a Trados compatible bilingual doc file.

2.Open the file in SDL Trados Workbench by clicking Clean up in the Tools menu.
 

SDL Trados will then export the file and put the content of the segments into the translation memory. This will result in perfect compatibility, with even the formatting tags preserved as they are, unlike in TMX, where XML tags, bold, italics, and other formatting features get lost sometimes.

Apart from enabling the import of TTX files, memoQ also supports the earlier bilingual DOC format so it is 100% compatible with any version of SDL Trados.

If you receive a file created in memoQ, it is advisable to translate it entirely within memoQ and export the result. If you choose instead to use SDL Trados to edit memoQ XLIFF files, do the following in order to have SDL Trados accept the filters set in memoQ:

1.Create and pre-process the project in memoQ.

2.On the Preparation ribbon tab, click Copy source to target where empty.

3.Click Export > Export Bilingual on the Documents ribbon tab, and choose Trados-compatible bilingual doc as the file type.

4.Open the bilingual file in Microsoft Word or SDL Trados Tag editor.

5.Translate and save the file.

6.Open the original project in memoQ and import the file using the Import with options button on the Documents ribbon tab.

7.Export the file to get it into its original format.

Transferring from memoQ into SDL Trados Studio is quite simple – once you have exported the document from memoQ as an XLIFF file, you can easily open it in SDL Trados Studio 2009/2011/2014.

The other direction, using memoQ to work on a file created in SDL Trados Studio is somewhat more complex as you can only save the file in SDLXLIFF format. However, you can always choose Import > Import With Options on the Documents ribbon tab,  memoQ detects the SDLXLIFF format. The SDLXLIFF file will now appear in the list and you can add it to your project just as if it was an XLIFF file. Pre-segmentation is not a requirement here.

See also:

SDLXLIFF file import

Translating memoQ XLIFF files in SDL Studio 2009/2011

If you receive memoQ XLIFF files, you can import them into your SDL Studio 2011 project.

You have 2 ways to do this:

1.You receive memoQ XLIFF files (file extension *.mqxliff). Before importing the files, go to the File Type dialog in SDL Studio, then go to the XLIFF filter. Add the file extension *.mqxliff to it. Now you can import the memoQ XLIFF files.

2. You receive memoQ XLIFF files (file extension *.mqxlz). The MQXLZ file format is a compressed format. Use a ZIP tool such as 7Zip to open the package. You will find a document and a skeleton.xml file. The document is the actual memoQ XLIFF file that you can import as describe under 1.; the skeleton.xml file contains the structure/format information for exporting the document. Unzip the file, import the document.mqxliff file into your SDL Studio project.

Translating memoQ XLIFF files in SDL Studio 2014

If you receive memoQ XLIFF files, you can import them into your SDL Studio 2014 project.

SDL Studio 2014 supports the memoQ XLIFF file extension. You do not need to add it separately as in SDL Studio 2011.

You can use an app from Open Exchange to enable MQXLZ import. Install the app. Then go to the File Type dialog. SDL Studio will ask you to enable the app, follow the steps to enable the app. After enabling the app, you will find a XLIFF MemoQ Kilgray category in your File Types.

Note: You need to go to File Types, then choose the XLIFF filter, and remove the *.mqxliff extension from the supported XLIFF formats. Otherwise, you cannot import MQXLZ files.

Translation memories have three possible formats in Trados – TMW and TXT, which cannot be processed by memoQ, and TMX, which can be made compatible with memoQ translation memories. memoQ is able to convert XML tags in the TMX file into memoQ tags if you add the TMX file to your memoQ translation memory using the Import from CSV/TMX command in the Resource console. A large amount of extra information is retrieved from TMX files during the conversion, even some that would not be prescribed by the TMX standard. There are no standards for server-based translation memory access, therefore memoQ is not compatible with SDL Trados TM Server. Otherwise, basically all translation memories created in Trados can be processed by memoQ, and vice versa – TMs created in memoQ can be leveraged in Trados too, but given that formatting can get lost, it’s better to go through bilingual documents such as XLIFF or TTX .

If you receive a SDL Studio package, use the Import package wizard to import translation memories and term bases from the package. memoQ creates new resources (a new TM, a new TB) and extracts the contents and imports the resources.