Look up term

When you work on a document, memoQ automatically gives you some terms it recognizes in the text. However, you may be interested in finding other terms, too.

To find a term that memoQ didn't give you automatically, use the Look up term command.

In the Look up term window, you can find entries that contain specific words. Then you can insert the target-language equivalents of the terms in the target cell. You can also make changes to term base entries. In this window, memoQ will find all entries containing the expression you are looking for.

Searches source and target: You can search both in the source-language and the target-language terms in the term base.

How to get here

  1. Open a project.
  2. Open a document for editing.
  3. On the Translation ribbon, click Look Up Term. The Look up term window opens.

    Or, use the keyboard: Press Ctrl+P.

Selected text is looked up automatically: If you select text before opening Look up term, the selected text will appear in the Search for box. The results will automatically appear.

What can you do?

If you select text before opening Look up term, the selected text will appear in the Search for box.

  • Choose what to look for: In the Search for box, type words you want to search for. memoQ will find all terms that contain these words.
  • Choose the term bases to search in: Either you look in all term bases of the project, or you choose just one term base. From the Search in drop-down box, choose All term bases, or choose one term base.
  • To look in the target language: Normally, memoQ looks in the source-language terms. To look in target-language terms, check the Search in target language check box.
  • To get exact matches only: Normally, memoQ finds all terms that contain the words you typed. The order may be different, and there may be extra words in the terms. To find the exact same expression, click the Only exact matches radio button.
  • Anywhere in term: Select this radio button to search for texts containing the text entered into the Search for field.

    After you make your choices, click Go. memoQ will list the results in the main part of the window.

    If you selected text in the translation editor: memoQ automatically looks up the words, you don't need to click Go.

memoQ lists the matching entries in the main part of the Look up term window.

In the list, every line belongs to a term base entry that matches the words you typed.

In each line, memoQ shows the source-language term, the target-language term (if there is one), and the name of the term base where it comes from.

If two entries come from two different term bases: The order of the entries is the sames as the order of the term bases in the project. In Project home, under Term bases, you can set up an order of priority between term bases.

Click a row in the list of results. At the bottom, click Insert. Or, press Ctrl+I.

At the bottom of the Look up term window, you can edit the selected entry.

See also: This lower part works the same way as the Edit term base entry window. To learn more, see the documentation about the Edit term base entry window.

To add new terms (you can do that independently on either side):

  • To add a source term: Type the term in the text box below the source language. (In the example, it's English.) Click the Add icon next to the text box. The term appears on the list. Repeat this to add variants of the same term here.
  • To add a target term: Type the term in the text box below the target language. (In the example, it's German.) Click the Add icon next to the text box. The term appears on the list. Repeat this to add variants of the same term here.
  • To change letter case: Next to the term, click the Toggle Case  icon. The term cycles through lower case, upper case, title case, sentence case, and the original. Some variants may be missing (for example, in single-word terms, title case and sentence case do not make sense). The term changes on the list, too.

To edit terms (on either side):

  • To edit a source term: Click the term on the left. It appears in the box below the source language. (In the example, it's English.) Make changes there. Click the Change  icon next to the text box. The term changes on the list.
  • To edit a target term: Click the term on the right. It appears in the box below the target language. (In the example, it's German.) Make changes there. Click the Change  icon next to the text box. The term changes on the list.

To delete terms (from either side):

  • To delete a source term: Click the term on the left. Click the Delete  icon next to the text box. The term disappears from the list.
  • To delete a target term: Click the term on the right. Click the Delete  icon next to the text box. The term disappears from the list.

memoQ will match these terms to the source text: Normally, memoQ will find a word in the source text if there is an exact match for it - or when a suffix is added to it, but the term is still at the beginning of the word form, and it's at least one-half as long. For example: The term 'cat' will be found in 'cats', but not in 'catnapping'.

Click More to expand the Look up term window, so that other details appear.

If the window is expanded, you can click Less to collapse it.

To learn more, see the documentation about the Edit term base entry window.

Click the Search EuroTermBank radio button. Fill in the term and the other fields, and click Search.

Or, click the Online lookup link, and run your search on the EuroTermBank website.

When you finish

To return to the translation editor: Click Close.