memoQuickies are back!
A tutorial stream of sometimes concise text, screenshots, video and practice examples
Addendum on June 14, 2024: The Substack platform has surprised me with its versatility and scope, and with how well it adapts to the display of my iPhone 13, even with full laptop screenshots. And as I have tested the authoring features, I’ve realized that many of the functions for which I paid a small fortune on Teachable and other platforms to build mostly free e-course content can be reproduced in a more flexible way that can better serve my purposes to support some university translation departments. Many posts will be longer than I originally anticipated; the memoQ world has changed a lot in the twelve years or so since I introduced 150-word “memoQuickies”, and I’m long overdue to update a textbook I wrote for a summer course I taught in Lisbon almost a decade ago, so some of the longer posts will be me working out the presentations for what may become book chapters or alternatives to a course textbook, of which I have yet to see anything good covering CAT tools. So enjoy, and I welcome any feedback, suggestions and requests.
The world of memoQ translation has changed a lot since I first introduced the “memoQuickie” on my blog, Translation Tribulations and later released my first book of tips for users of memoQ version 6 shortly before Christmas in 2012.
The current version of memoQ is 10.6, and so many of the original guidance offered is no longer relevant to recent versions. Over the years I’ve tried in various ways to offer updates, but the sometimes fast pace of development and the evolution of the translation and localization professions and technical environment have presented a Sisyphean task of documentation maintenance. And now there are so many people working in so many roles with the memoQ Translation Management System (TMS) that even expert trainers have a hard time defining what should constitute the basics.
So here’s the plan for this publication:
All new and updated tips based on memoQ 10.6 or later, though I may display or link tutorials based on earlier versions if nothing of substance has changed. Much of the content will apply to earlier versions as well, and I’ll try to indicate where backward compatibility stops if I can.
Concise written tips with necessary illustrations (screenshots). Maybe not the original 150 words or less of the original memoQuickie concept, but I promise not to overdo it. The long slogs will be reserved for my blog or the Translation Tribulations Substack. In most cases, I would like readers to be able to print a tip on one or two A4 pages to keep close by as a reference so they don’t have to keep looking up web pages for things they may need help with frequently.
Concise video where I think it will provide a useful illustration of a written tip. These might be added after the original post in some cases.
Two or more memoQuickies posted each week, targeted for Tuesday and Thursday by the end of the day, Lisbon time, inshallah.
Some posts will be viewable by all, some will be paywalled, after a time at least. Questions and topic requests are welcome at any time. Posts may cover any aspect of memoQ TMS use with which I’m familiar; as an experienced teacher of all classes of users for local and online project work and configuration, that’s a reasonably wide spectrum, and not every tip will be useful for everybody.
And here I am, way over the intended word limit… mea culpa. Drop by for the shorter follow-ups!