Setting the default term base(s) for new terms
Adding new terms to memoQ term bases typically happens using the Add Term or Quick Add Term commands (default keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl+E and Ctrl+Q respectively) found in the Store group on the Translation, Review and Quick Access ribbons in a memoQ project:
But where do those terms actually go? If a memoQ project is created with the original project wizard, for example, one term base is designated as the "target" or destination for new words and their translations to be added. The line for that term base in the list is shown in bold type.
Other project creation methods typically also designate a single term base as the default recipient of new terms, and selection of a destination term base on the Term bases page of the Project home also makes only a single term base the recipient of new entries as a default.
The term base designated as the target for new terms can also be changed in an open project. This can be done in several ways. If you go to Project home > Term bases, the Term Bases resource ribbon will be shown, and there in the Project group, a different term base can be selected and set as the target for new terms.
But... you can also have more than one term base set as a target for new terms that you add while working in the project. This is done in the Add Term dialog:
In the example shown above, the new term (German "Zielhafen" and English "destination harbor") will be written to three different term bases with marked checkboxes in the dropdown list of project term bases at the top of the dialog. If a term is already in any of the selected term bases, the Duplicates tab of the dialog will indicate the possible redundancy and provide more information.
After multiple term bases have been designated in the Add Term dialog as the default targets for new terms, when you use the Quick Add Term command, the new term will be added to all three selected term bases.
Note that for Quick Add Term, both a source language term and a target language term must be selected or the command is disabled. For the Add Term dialog to be invoked, source and target side terms can be selected, but the command will also work if a term is selected on only one side or even if no term is selected at all. Selected terms are copied as entries in the dialog, and any number of new entries (for synonyms or forbidden terms, for example) can be made on both source and target sides. Thus the Add Term command can be used to enter new terms which might not even appear in the source text!
But what about adding terms to other term bases as I translate or review (or align)?
Yes you can! Very simply in fact, with a little bit of keyboard shortcut configuration magic. The good news: since memoQ 2015 (version 7.8) nine keyboard shortcuts have been available to allow you to write directly to one of the top 9 ranked term bases attached to your project. The bad news: memoQ developers and project planners never thought to assign any actual keys to these shortcuts.
The other good news: I have a couple of videos on YouTube showing how to configure these shortcuts and use them effectively with multiple term bases (one is below), and you can download a keyboard shortcuts resource below that has those nine shortcuts already configured. Just import it and make it the default in your memoQ Options.
This is completely separate from the means of adding to the default new term destinations with the Add Term and Quick Add Term commands, but if you have multiple default term bases selected, you can use these extra keyboard shortcuts to write directly to only one of those term bases if it has a rank of 1 to 9.
These new commands for writing directly to specific ranked term bases are found in the Global category in a keyboard shortcuts setting. These settings can be accessed in the relevant part of the memoQ Resource Console or under Options > Keyboard shortcuts.
In a project where the text may contain relevant terminology for different subject matter (such as law, finance and medicine), this feature allows me to send a medical term straight to my medical term base, a legal term to the legal term base, etc. thus avoiding confusion and “content contamination” or any sort of complex juggling to transfer the terms which might also be written to a dedicated project term base for QA purposes.
My old video on managing multiple term bases in a memoQ project shows how these special keyboard shortcuts for writing to specific term bases work. It also shows a lot of other things related to adding terms to a term base, so either watch it on YouTube where you can use the hotlinked time codes in the Description field to skip to the bits you want to see, or scroll manually here to the times of interest:
00:08
- Introduction 00:32
- Attached term bases in the project 00:57
- Specific term base selection for QA 02:16
- Applying a source text filter 02:58
- Adding terms to existing entries (1) 04:07
- Removing the applied filter 06:00
- Adding terms to existing entries (2) 06:56
- Writing to a specific ranked termbase 07:56
- Custom keyboard shortcuts (Options) 09:00
- Shortcuts for specific term bases 1-9 10:03
- Summary of 3 ways to add terms
Here you can download a memoQ keyboard resource (MQRES) file in which the default keyboard shortcuts included with the memoQ installation have been updated to add the hot key combinations necessary to write directly to one of the term bases 1 through 9:
After the *.mqres
resource is extracted from the *.zip
file, it can be imported in the memoQ Resource Console or Options dialog (with Import new); in the Options it can be selected as the keyboard shortcut set to use:
How do you keep track of which term base is assigned what rank in the project? Good question. I usually write the ones I need to keep track of on a Post-It note stuck to my monitor or on a piece of paper somewhere nearby on my desk. There may be a little potential here for memoQ developers to refine this feature in the future - or at least put assignments into the default keyboard settings installed with the software!