Online workshop plans: memoQ for legal & financial translators

As readers of this blog know, I've spent a good part of the last year or more investigating some instructional practices for translators' continuing education and forming my own opinions about what works, what does not, and what might be improved. I've looked at different approaches to blogging, developed e-mail based tutorials for one company, acquired some familiarity with remote coaching options via Skype and TeamViewer, begun the production of short training videos on a YouTube channel, learned to use Moodle and other online courseware platforms, released a PDF e-book with short tutorial modules, supported the localization of some of the preceding things into Portuguese and... probably a few other things I don't remember at the moment. Somewhere in all of that I moved countries and translated a bit to pay bills and buy dog food.

Now I am considering working with a specialist translator to plan a flexible course on the use of memoQ in an optimal way - together with other technologies as required - to achieve better results in processes involved with legal and financial translation. The intent is in no way to teach anything about legal/financial translation as a subject, but rather how to organize the software and work processes to overcome frequent problems, satisfy particular customer requirements or achieve specific improvements in quality management for the translation work.

I have specific topics in mind based on my own work and questions directed to me from specialist colleagues in these areas, but I would like to have suggestions from others, particularly those who might be interested in involvement in such a course in some way. These suggestions can take any form and can be as simple as an observation regarding a difficulty you find in this area which you suspect might have a solution involving technology or working methods.

The delivery media planned are a combination of e-mail, "live" sessions for about an hour each week for small groups or individuals using Skype or TeamViewer, with these recorded and made available for viewing and/or download in a private Moodle course forum on my server. As it makes sense to do so, supplemental material will be provided as web pages, video clips, practice files for testing, memoQ light resources (such as stopword lists or auto-translation rules), PDF "handouts" from my new book edition and other sources.

I've set up an (experimental) mailing list - "Translate Solutions" to discuss this, other topics related to continuing education for translation technology and education/training resources. You are welcome to join the discussion there with a subscription request to translate_solutions-subscribe (at) lossner.net.

The scheduling and detailed subject matter of the course will be announced as specific content requests are received and assessed.

So let the fun begin.