Edit term base entry

While you're translating a document, memoQ looks up terms in the term bases of the project. When memoQ finds a term in the current segment, it appears on the Translation results list.

You can edit the entry in the term base directly from the Translation results list. If the term base is on a memoQ TMS, you must have modify permission over it.

How to get here

Open a project.
From Project home, open a document for translation.
In the translation editor, start working on a segment.
On the Translation results list, memoQ displays the terms it finds. Right-click a term that you want to edit and choose View/Edit form the menu.

The Edit term base entry window opens:

Term base pop-up window allowing to add and edit entries for selected language pair.

On some computers, the Edit term base entry window may open in a compact view:

An expandable compact view of the term base pop-up.

To work with the term-level descriptive fields, click More.

To work with all the details in the term base entry, click More again, until you see this:

A full version of term base pop-up with additional information.

What can you do?

Add new terms or edit existing ones

The terms appear in two fields at the top of the Edit term base entry window.

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

A source term: Type the term in the text box below the source language. (In the example, it's English.) Then click the Add new term icon next to the text box. The term appears on the list. Repeat this to add variants of the same term here.
A target term: Type the term in the text box below the target language. (In the example, it's Hungarian.) Then click the Add new term icon next to the text box. The term appears on the list. Repeat this to add variants of the same term here.
To change the letter case, click the Toggle Case icon next to the term. 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:

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, and click the Change icon next to the text box. The term changes on the list.
A target term: Click the term on the right. It appears in the box below the target language (in the example, it's Hungarian.) Make changes there, and click the Change icon next to the text box. The term changes on the list.
To move a more common or preferred term up in the list: Click the Move Up arrow. To move a less preferred term down the list: Click the Move down arrow.

To delete terms (from either side) of:

A source term: Click the term on the left. Click the Delete icon next to the text box. The term disappears from the list.
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 finds a word in the source text if there is an exact match for it - or when a suffix is added, 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'.

Enter descriptive details about a term

Creating a term base entry is not just about adding a term. It is also about details you can specify about a term itself that help your TB work perfectly - like matching rules, usage details, and grammatical properties.

You can set them in the fields directly below the term list.

If you don't see four tabs with settings (Matching, Usage, Grammar, and Definition) under the term lists, go to the bottom of the Edit term base entry window and click More.

Set up matching and case sensitivity

These two settings control how memoQ recognizes a term's variants in the text:

Matching is about recognizing the term's grammatical variants - such as prefixed and suffixed forms.
Case sensitivity is about recognizing the same term if the uppercase and lowercase letters are different in the term and the text.

These settings serve two goals:

more terms highlighted in the translation editor and offered in the Translation results pane
less false positive hits when checking terminology with QA

You can set term matching and case sensitivity separately for each term within an entry.

To do that: Select a term in the term list. Under the list, click the Matching tab and set matching or case sensitivity in the drop-down boxes.

Here are the options you have for term matching:

Term matching options.

Note:a blue background shows recognized terms. Terms without a highlight are not recognized with the current setting.

50% prefix: This is the default setting. memoQ compares your word from its very beginning (letter by letter) and finds a word if it starts the same way as an entry, and a suffix is added to it. This option suggests terms for words in the text where at least the first half of the word matches the term. Let's see it in use:

Term base entry: review

Use suggestion: it allows various endings and suffixes, but not if the ending or suffix is longer than the base entry – in other words, if it is more than 50% of the whole word.

Examples of 50% prefix matching:

the term 'cat' will match 'cats', but not 'catnapping' (cat - 3 + napping - 7)
term 'review' will match 'reviewer', but not 'reviewability' (6+7)
the term 'man' will match 'manner', but not 'maneuver' (3+5)
term 'Projekt' will match 'Projekte', and 'Projektion', but not 'Projektverwaltung' (7+11)
the term 'noc' will match 'nocnik', but not in 'nocowanie' (3+6)

Fuzzy: Use this if there are variants where the beginning, middle, or end of the term changes. memoQ recognizes the term if a phrase in the source text is at least 80% similar. In this case, memoQ looks at the whole phrase, not its starting letters as in the case of 50% prefix matching. It also recognizes incorrectly typed terms.

This setting gives a lot more matches than the others. It will also find a lot of false positives when checking terms during QA, so use it with caution. Let's see it in use:

Term base entry: translate

The word can start with an additional prefix compared to the base entry ('pretranslate') or have a suffix ('translated'), but the it needs to contain the base entry unchanged.

Use suggestion: for languages where both prefixes and suffixes contain grammatical information, or for expressions containing several words.

Examples of fuzzy matching:

the term 'Mutter' will match its plural form 'Mütter'
the term 'Baum' will match its plural form 'Bäume'
the term 'Anleitung' will match 'Gebrauchsanleitung'
the term 'board of directors' will match 'boards of directors'
the term 'manteau' will match 'porte-manteau'
the term 'system operacyjny' will match 'systemu operacyjnego' or 'systemie operacyjnym'
even 'superwoman' will match 'superman'

Exact: Use this if there can be no variants of a word. memoQ will find a word in the source text if there is an exact match. Let's see it in use:

Term base entry: spell

Use suggestion: useful for languages with fixed word forms (for example Arabic), or to avoid too many matches (but you may miss matches you need).

Custom: You can have more control over how memoQ finds terms in the text. Your most powerful ally is custom matching. Use this to allow slight changes in the stem when a word gets suffixes. Matches need to start with the base term, but wildcards – pipe ('|') or asterisk ('*') characters – allow variations. If you enter at least one wildcard character in the term, the Matching drop-down box will automatically switch to Custom.

In this document, "stem" means the root of the word, but not in the linguistic sense. It is simply the word part before the wildcard.

Use wildcards to increase the accuracy of the term base and produce fewer false positives during the QA.

What's the difference between '*' and '|' ?

asterisk '*'

will match any number of characters after the stem
only the stem is visible in the translation results
can be placed at the end of the word to match the word's suffixed forms

pipe '|'

will match any number of characters after the stem
the full matched term is visible in the translation results
can be placed in the middle of the word to mark the stem
allows to define alternative endings
will match any term that begins with the stem but not the stem itself

If the stem is the same, using a pipe or an asterisk will match exactly the same words, but will highlight different parts and produce different suggestions in the Translation results pane.

Let's see it in use:

Term base entry: text*

Term base entry: program|ming instruction|s

Use suggestion: for languages with flexible and long endings to recognize different word forms, also for languages that tend to write composite words together.

Examples of custom matching:

with a pipe '|':

the term 'glorif|y will match 'glorify' or 'glorifies' or 'glorified'
the term 'articula|tion' will match with 'articulations', 'articulaire', 'articulatoire'
the term 'Wassert|urm' will match with 'Wasserturm', 'Wassertürme', 'Wassertropfen', but not Wasserschutz
the term 'flick|a' will match with 'flicka', 'flickor'
the term 'wrażliw|ość sensoryczn|a' will match with 'wrażliwy sensorycznie', 'wrażliwości sensoryczne',

with an asterisk '*':

the term 'tid*' will match 'tid', 'tider', 'tidning'

You can also use pipe '|' and asterisk '*' at the same time:

term: 'beautiful* writ|ing' will match 'beautifully written'
term 'program|mer guide*' will match 'programmer's guide', 'programming guides', and 'program guide'
term 'gul|t hårstrå*' will match 'gult hårstrå' and 'gula hårstrån'

Click to see more notes about custom matching

In some cases, you can simply list variants: If you have nouns that change form in plural (for example), it may be useful to just add every possible form. Let's use the word 'analysis'. It's plural is 'analyses'. The best you can do is type 'analysis' in the source-language text box. Click Add icon_add_term_interface . Then type 'analyses', and click Add again. The alternative would be to use Custom matching, and type 'analys|is', which matches 'analyses', too.

In languages that use extensive case-marking, try using Custom matching, and mark the end of the stem with the pipe '|' character.
In agglutinative languages - that use excessive case-marking, but almost always in the form of suffixes -, it may be enough to use the 50% prefix matching, and list the potential stem variants. For example, 'occasion' means 'alkalom' in Hungarian. In the 'alkalom' form, it can receive more than ten different case markers. But its plural is 'alkalmak', and its accusative is 'alkalmat'. You wouldn't add 'alkal|om' because it would match wildly different words, too. So, the best you can do is add both 'alkalom' and 'alkalm', and let prefix matching do the rest.

Multi-word terms where the first word changes are perfectly legitimate: When you have a multi-word term where the first word (or more than one word) can change, you can use the asterisk and the pipe in those words as well. Use the Custom matching option, and enter the source terms like in the examples: 'bankovn|í operac|e' will match 'bankovních operací' or 'bankovními operacemi'; 'passage|s à la valise' will match 'passage à la valise' or 'passages à la valise'.

Set up matching in the target language, too: In the above example, the target language of the document is Hungarian. While you're translating, memoQ won't try matching Hungarian terms in the text. But you can use the same term base for projects where Hungarian is the source language. In addition, when you run QA, memoQ will check if the source-language terms were translated correctly. And for that, memoQ will try to match the target-language terms to the translated text. If matching is not set up properly, you may get false positive QA warnings.

Case sensitivity

When matching terms, memoQ can be strict about matching capital letters - or it can be insensitive to them. You can set case sensitivity separately for each term.

Choose case sensitivity on the Matching tab below the term list, from the Case sensitivity drop-down box.

Case sensitivity options.

Here are your options for Case sensitivity:

Permissive - This is the default setting. The term matches the text if their capital letters are the same. Lowercase letters in the term can be capitalized in the text. Use this setting for most proper names.

Term base entry: Editor-in-chief

Other examples:

‘it’ will match 'it', 'IT', 'It'
‘sample’ will match ‘sample’, ‘Sample’, ‘SAMPLE’
'memoQ' will match 'MEMOQ' or 'MemoQ' but won't match 'memoq' or 'Memoq'

Yes - The term matches the text only if it has the identical case as the word in the text. Use this for abbreviations like 'TBD' or 'XML'. Let’s see it in action:

Term base entry: memoQ

Other examples:

"IT" in the term base appears only if the source text has "IT" in uppercase, not for the word "it".

"Can" in the term base appears only if the source text has "Can" with an uppercase C, not for "CAN" or "can".

No - The term matches the text if they are the same or the only difference is in letter case. Use this setting for common words.

Term base entry: CAT

Other example:

'translation' will match 'Translation', 'TRANSLATION' or 'TranslatioN'

Always set this to No when importing glossaries with initial capital letters. If you use Permissive case sensitivity, memoQ will not recognize the all-lowercase forms of these terms. The same problem occurs if you add the first word of a sentence (with an uppercase initial letter) to a term base.

Set grammatical properties

You can set these separately for each source-language and target-language term. In the source-language or target-language term list, select a term. Under the list, click the Grammar tab.

grammar_tab

Here are the options you have:

Part of speech: Choose the part-of-speech of the selected term from this drop-down box.

------: The part-of-speech is not set.
Noun: The selected term is a noun.
Adjective: The selected term is an adjective.
Adverb: The selected term is an adverb.
Verb: The selected term is a verb.
Other: The selected term has a different part-of-speech.
Gender: Choose the gender of the selected term from this drop-down box. Depending on the language, the gender may not be applicable.
------: The selected term doesn't have gender, or it's unknown.
Masculine: The selected term is masculine.
Feminine: The selected term is feminine.
Neuter: The selected term is neutral.
The same term may have masculine, feminine, maybe even neutral variants: For example, the French terms 'directeur' and 'directrice' should go into one term base entry. But 'directeur' must be marked as masculine, and 'directrice' must be marked as feminine.

Number: Choose the number (singular or plural) for the selected term from this drop-down box. Use this when the plural and the singular variants of the term are too different to be listed in one term. Or, use it if the concept of the term base entry exists in singular or in plural only. (memoQ doesn't support the dual number for the time being.)

------: The number of selected term isn't interesting or isn't known.
Singular: The selected term is singular.
Plural: The selected term is plural.

Set descriptive details for the whole entry, or add an image

These details belong to the whole term base entry. They are the same for all languages and all terms within the entry.

To set them, use the fields at the bottom of the Edit term base entry window.

If you don't see the Entry-level data tab, go to the bottom of the Edit term base entry window and click More.

tb-entry-metadata

On the Entry-level data tab, you have these options:

ID: This is the unique identifier of the entry in the term base. It's a number. memoQ fills it in automatically. You can't edit this.
Note: Type a general note about the entry.
Project: The umbrella project that the entry belongs to. Normally, it's the same as that of the project. You can change it.
Domain: A general category descriptor. Normally, it's the same as that of the project. You can change it.
Client: Name of the client the term base entry was created for. Normally, it's the same as that of the project. You can change it.
Subject: Subject field of the term base entry. Normally, it's the same as that of the project. You can change it.
Created by: Name of the user who created the entry. You can't edit this.
Modified by: Name of the user made the last change of the entry. If the entry was just created, it's the same as the Created by box. You can't edit this.
Created at : Date and time when the entry was created.
Modified at: Date and time when the last change was made to the entry. If the entry was just created, it's the same as the Created at box. You can't edit this.
To add an image, click the Image tab:

image_tab

Use this to add an image that depicts the physical object or the concept that the entry is about.

Here are the options you have:

To add an image from a file: Click Import new image.
To remove the image: Click Delete image.
To take a better look at the image: Click Show full-size image.

When you finish

To save the changes to the term base entry, and return to the translation editor: Click OK.

To return to the translation editor, and not change the term base entry: Click Cancel.

After you click OK, memoQ automatically updates the term in the Translation results list.

The term may disappear from the Translation results list: This happens if you change the source term that was originally found in the text.