When Kilgray’s Peter Reynolds asked me a couple of months ago if I’d take part in a panel at memoQfest, I was in two minds. Would I feel like a fish out of water among so many memoQ geeks? Peter assured me that they were a friendly crowd, so I decided to give it a go.

Fast forward to Budapest, 21-22 May. I’m so glad I went: memoQfest was a vibrant, techy, fun event. I learnt more about memoQ itself (XML filters, power features and new Language Terminal options, presented by Angelika Zerfass, Marek Pawelec and Gábor Ugray, respectively). I picked up some non-memoQ tips too – how to dictate on my Android phone in different languages using the Nuance speech recognition engine in Swype (as explained by Jim Wardell). If only I spoke all those 38 languages!

Two other aspects of memoQfest were quite outstanding.

First, the vast majority of the 200-plus attendees were translation companies. Freelance translators were few and far between. I took advantage of this golden networking opportunity and I’m sure the groundwork that was laid will bear fruit in the coming months.

Second, Kilgray’s launch of memoQ 2015 was simply brilliant. Mónika Antunovics and Ágnes Varga had the audience in stitches by reciting a PowerPoint slide monotonously and in unison, before switching to a hilarious video of the “Case of the Missing Button”, starring Gábor Ugray as Sherlock Holmes, with cleverly interspersed glimpses of the new features in memoQ 2015.

memoQ 2015

I’ve been playing with the new memoQ version for a couple of weeks now. Here’s my verdict on four of the many new features (click on the “What’s new” link in the Help file).

MatchPatch. This new feature automatically corrects fuzzy matches using term base entries, non-translatables, auto-translatables and other resources. These corrections are highlighted with an exclamation mark in the Translation Results window. I must admit I haven’t got much leverage from MatchPatch so far, because it works best on segments that differ by just one word compared with the TM match. I wonder if it would be worth creating a purpose-built term base with common words such as days of the week, months, written numbers, etc.

More shortcuts. More options can now be accessed with shortcuts. To add terms to a term base, you can now assign a specific shortcut to each term base, which speeds up this process and makes it much more reliable than the old method. I love it!

Ribbon customisation. This much-requested feature has been implemented in 2015, although only for the quick access tool bar, workflow and quick access tabs. It’s neat and necessary.

Drop files here to start translating. This new dashboard area will be very handy for new users. You can just drag and drop a file or folder here to trigger a quick wizard that automatically detects the source and target language (the target is guessed from the user’s keyboard language) and adds a new TM and TB to the project. Simple.

After meeting the dynamic team behind memoQ, seeing how keen they are to listen to users, and trying out memoQ 2015, I have to say the grass is looking very green on the other side.