LQA reports

memoQ knows about Linguistic Quality Assurance. This is a way of adding human feedback to documents. The human reviewers can structure and formalize their feedback, and grade the translations if necessary. You use the LQA options - LQA models - to enter these and report about them. An LQA model defines error categories. You can use these to score the errors, grade the translations. Some models allow you to fail a translation.

There are several standards about LQA. memoQ supports three of these: J2450, LISA, and TAUS. In addition, memoQ introduces yet another LQA model of its own.

To learn more about the various settings, see the topic about editing LQA models.

Do not confuse LQA with QA: memoQ can check for some errors automatically. Those checks are called quality assurance checks. memoQ can check for the consistency of terms, or the length or the translations, or the matching of inline tags.

Always add an LQA model to your project before you start importing documents.

If your project has an LQA model, you can ask for an LQA report that contains details and statistics about human feedback.

How to get here

  1. Open a project.
  2. In Project home, choose Translations.

    You can open a document, too: LQA reports work from the Translations pane and from the translation editor.

  3. On the Documents ribbon, click LQA Reports. The LQA reports window opens.

You need an LQA model in the document: The LQA Reports icon will be grayed out if the selected documents don't have an LQA model. To apply an LQA model: From Project home, choose Settings. Click the LQA models icon. Check the check box of the LQA model you need to use.

What can you do?

A scope tells memoQ which documents to look at. You have the following options - choose one radio button:

  • Project: memoQ checks for LQA feedback in all segments in all documents of the current project.
  • Active document: memoQ checks for LQA feedback in all segments in the active document. The active document is the one you are looking at in the translation editor. You can choose this only if you are working on a document in the translation editor.
  • Selected documents: memoQ checks for LQA feedback in all segments in the selected documents. You can choose this only if you select several documents in Translations under Project home. It doesn't work when the translation editor is in the front.
  • From cursor: memoQ checks for LQA feedback in segments below the current position in the active document. The active document is the one you are looking at in the translation editor. You can choose this only if you are working on a document in the translation editor.
  • Open documents: memoQ checks for LQA feedback in all segments in every document that is open in a translation editor tab.
  • Selection: memoQ checks for LQA feedback in the selected segments in the active document. The active document is the one you are looking at in the translation editor. You can choose this only if you are working on a document in the translation editor.
  • Work on views check box: Check this to make memoQ go through segments in the views in the current project. You can choose this only if there is at least one view in the project.
  • Show results for each file check box: Check this if you want a report that has breaks down the numbers for each document in the scope.

Second, choose how the errors must be grouped: Normally, memoQ groups (and counts) the errors by main categories. (For a list of categories, open the LQA model for editing.) You can change this and group the errors by severity. To do that, click the Severities radio button. Or, you can go without grouping, and have a list of all different error types. To do that, click Show full details.

Don't use Trados 2007-like word counts: Normally, memoQ counts words like Microsoft Word does. In the past, when Trados 2007 or earlier (Trados Translator's Workbench) used to be a dominant translation tool, it was important that memoQ could produce similar word counts - so that translation companies could compare them. This is no longer the case. Use the Trados 2007-like word counts only if your client still works with an early Trados version, and they insist on using it.

To count and display the LQA statistics: Click Calculate. The results appear at the bottom of the LQA reports window. The table is different for each grouping. It will contain labels from the LQA model.

For each category and severity (and subcategory if you ask for full details), memoQ will count the errors.

Normalized value means how good the document is with regard to that error: In addition, memoQ will display a normalized value. It's a quality indicator for the entire document (or documents) - practically, it's a percentage of the document that was not affected by that type of error.

To export the report: Click Export. The Export LQA Statistics window opens:

  • You can export the table in an HTML file. It will look exactly the same as the bottom of the LQA reports window.
  • Or, if you need to work on the results in Excel, you can export a CSV file. To do that, click the CSV (reflecting current results) radio button. Then, in the CSV separator block, click Tab. It's not recommended to use anything else: Excel will always be able to open a CSV file that has tab characters to separate cells.

To get - or send - a detailed list of feedback, click the Error lists tab.

A scope tells memoQ which documents to look at. You have the following options - choose one radio button:

  • Project: memoQ checks for LQA feedback in all segments in all documents of the current project.
  • Active document: memoQ checks for LQA feedback in all segments in the active document. The active document is the one you are looking at in the translation editor. You can choose this only if you are working on a document in the translation editor.
  • Selected documents: memoQ checks for LQA feedback in all segments in the selected documents. You can choose this only if you select several documents in Translations under Project home. It doesn't work when the translation editor is in the front.
  • From cursor: memoQ checks for LQA feedback in segments below the current position in the active document. The active document is the one you are looking at in the translation editor. You can choose this only if you are working on a document in the translation editor.
  • Open documents: memoQ checks for LQA feedback in all segments in every document that is open in a translation editor tab.
  • Selection: memoQ checks for LQA feedback in the selected segments in the active document. The active document is the one you are looking at in the translation editor. You can choose this only if you are working on a document in the translation editor.
  • Work on views check box: Check this to make memoQ go through segments in the views in the current project. You can choose this only if there is at least one view in the project.

Second, choose who gets the report. You can use the radio buttons under Export report.

  • If it's the project manager or a master reviewer: memoQ will save all the lists in a single file. This is what normally happens.
  • If you're sending feedback to each translator: Click the Separate files for individual documents radio button. memoQ will save a separate file for each document in the scope.

    After you make your choices, click Update preview. memoQ will display the error lists in the lower half of the LQA reports window, with a summary at the end. (If you change your choices, click Update preview again.)

To export the report:

  1. Choose a format. Normally, memoQ saves Excel (XLSX) files. If you're sending feedback to individual translators, click HTML instead.
  2. Click Export to file. memoQ will ask you to choose a folder. If you're saving just one file, it will be named after the project. If you're saving a new file for each document, they will be named after the documents.

When you finish

To return to the Translations pane of Project home, or to the translation editor: Click Close.