Moving to memoQ and selling translations

Yesterday was workshop day for memoQfest 2010. Two all-day sessions were offered. In one, Doug Lawrence provided training to language service providers on selling translations. His company is noted for its nuts-and-bolts practical assistance to translators and small agencies in improving their viability as businesses. Training webinars on selling translation services have been offered through proZ and other venues and Doug's company regularly offers introductory and advanced sales courses for individual translators and a three-day master course for translation companies at their locations. The second workshop that day was the memoQ master class on migration to memoQ. This advanced seminar taught by the highly respected German training consultant Angelika Zerfass and Kilgray's CEO Balázs Kis (also a university instructor for 15 years) went into great detail on the best ways to move data for translation memories, terminologies and configurations between memoQ systems and other systems. In some ways it was a far more detailed version of the talk I'll be giving tomorrow on interoperability. Everything you need to know for optimizing the migration process from Trados to memoQ was presented in the session, covering the range from freelancers to large companies with complex translation processes. Balázsalso revealed the new memoQ open interface for external terminology service integration and showed an online service to which all licensed memoQ users will receive free access. Thomas Imhoff, a former senior developer of Trados systems for a decade was present and expressed an interest in using this new interface to allow memoQ desktop and server systems to access online and offline MultiTerm termbases. If this happens you can be sure I'll announce that loudly here, as I believe it will be a great benefit to a huge number of translators and companies who want to maintain the value of their legacy systems and integrate parallel systems more effectively.


LSPs and other companies in German-speaking countries can turn to both Ms. Zerfass and Mr. Imhoff for practical advice, strategic consulting and implementation of system migration from Trados to memoQ as well as establishing new enterprise memoQ systems from the ground up. Both are knowledgeable industry veterans with deep expertise in Trados systems who have joined the Kilgray camp because they know a superior solution for corporate (and freelance) needs when they see it. Competent migration planning and assistance is also available from Kilgray's team as well, and there are several team members currently based in Germany.


I attended the workshop on memoQ data exchange and learned how to correct a number of errors I've made in the past. At the very least, anyone planning a major move from another system to memoQ should get a copy of the presentation from Kilgray or attend a similar workshop offered in the future. (In Germany the two experts mentioned above can provide local training and support.) Migration to memoQ is really easy, but even so there are many subtleties to the process, and knowing these can make the difference between a solution that works with some hitches and a more perfect process.


And now I'm off for a quick breakfast and a great day at the first regular day of the memoQfest conference. Maybe I'll try tweeting the most interesting parts.