Get a Q about translation!

Once again, my friends at memoQ Ltd., the software artists formerly known as Kilgray, are offering a great deal:

30% discount

on new licenses for the Translator Pro edition of memoQ, the most versatile professional platform for organizing and performing translation work. The relevant sales page can be found HERE.

Many people who use memoQ these days are only familiar with the limited WebTrans versions linked to a server for slavelancing; with your own desktop edition of memoQ Translator Pro, you need no licenses allocated by server operators and have far more control over the resources used in projects based on remote servers. And, of course, total control over all the projects on your local computer, without dependence on sometimes unreliable online connections.

A memoQ license often makes a lot of sense for translators and reviewers who prefer to work with other tools as well. Each platform for computer-aided translation has its own unique set of characteristics, such as the file formats it can process (a major, major point) and the kinds of operations it can perform to translate, edit, review and quality check texts. This is why, for example, I keep a license of Trados Studio on hand, because certain types of files can be prepared better with that tool, but the actual translation after preparation works better for me in memoQ. Conversely, if you are a user of another tool, such as Trados Studio or Wordfast, file formats which cannot be handled easily in those tools can often be prepared in memoQ as an intermediate stage and then translated in your preferred tool. And powerful features like memoQ's Regex Text Filter, which is basically a build-you-own-filter toolkit for any sort of crazy client-cooked text-based data format, enable memoQ to "serve" a wide variety of other platforms. Just a week ago, for example, I used that feature to build an import filter for the *.ctm format used in Community Trade Mark information in the EU so that XLIFF files could be prepared for memoQ, Trados Studio, etc. and translators and reviewers would no longer have to suffer nightmare's from the EU's badly programmed translation software.

This special price on new licenses is also relevant for current users of memoQ who have not had a support and maintenance agreement (SMA) for some years. The annual SMA cost of memoQ Translator Pro is 20% of the list price of the software (€620) or €124 per year (or the equivalent in other currencies). This entitles the user to deeper-level support and access to all upgrades released during the term of the SMA, even if these are not installed by the time an SMA lapses. Some think there is no "value" in that, because they ask all their questions on a listserve or a Facebook user group, but I've had too much personal experience with corrupted customer files rescued by my Hungarian Heroes to give much credit to that opinion. The memoQ Support team is honestly the best in its class. I have five decades now of experience with software support teams on which I base that opinion. On more platforms than most people can or should imagine.

There is some confusion and occasional resentment about memoQ's policy of cumulating costs for the SMA if someone wants to renew in order to access features in a new version. If you "skip" two years, the cost of those "missing" years is added to the cost of your renewal, and at some point it's just cheaper to buy a new license. What's that point? Let's do the math. There is usually at least some opportunity to get a 30% discount deal at least once a year, and some professional organizations have continuous access to that rate, which would currently be €434 (or about US$ 515 according to xe.com, but if you are in the US or somewhere else and plan to pay in US currency, please check the sales page for the actual price). So...

(434 new license cost)/(124 SMA per year) = 3.5 years

In other words, if you feel you don't need support from the dedicated experts who make the software and need to eat and pay their water and electricity bills just like you, then upgrade (pay the SMA) only every five years (one free year of SMA comes with each new license) and you'll save a little bit of money. This approach actually works best for people who are only occasional users or who rely on other tools for their routine work. The memoQ license continues to work indefinitely with or without the SMA under any Windows operating system with which it is compatible. Unlike a Wordfast or Memsource license, for example, it isn't a subscription which lapses after some period. I still run into memoQ users with ten year old software, and it works just fine for them, and they don't do the SMA. I've heard discussions of possible memoQ subscription (SaaS) models, and there is a cloud-based server that uses that model, but that's not what this special Translator Pro deal is about.

memoQ has a lot to offer, and the user community is full of really great people who offer mutual support for a lot of really tough challenges, as one also finds for many other leading commercial and Open Source tools. As a consultant for translation technology with over 5 decades of IT experience now, I try to make fair comparisons of usability and value and invest what personal time I can afford (or someone pays me to afford) to see what works best for a given individual or organization. And more often or not, the answer UI find is "memoQ". Even when my friends in the company piss me off with some awful bug in a new or old release or disappoint me with some policy with which I vehemently disagree, and in a fury I think, "Damnit, I am going to switch to X!", I never find that X > Q.

So for all of us in translation, even those without a clue, maybe it's time to get a Q. It also matters to me that the people behind it all actually do care about what we do.