As Kilgray Technologies made memoQ 5.0 Release Candidate available for download right on queue last week, there is another piece of Kilgray news I’d like to share with you.
The lesser-known but aptly named TM repository was launched recently by the makers of memoQ and offers an interesting and fresh approach to Translation Memory server products. This application apparently pre-dates memoQ but wasn’t launched commercially until this year. Since then, Kilgray have been gathering early adopters feedback, which they are planning to include in a version 2 sometime next year.
TM repository is made-up of 3 components: the database, the business logic and the web-based interface. It is built on SQL technology and comes in 2 editions depending on the number of users required.
The idea behind any TM server product is to provide a central location where all users in a supply chain can access the same and latest version of Translation Memories. Different Localisation Managers have different TM Strategies which are often dependent on the CAT tools or even the version of the CAT Tools in use by the Assets owner and their LSPs. Important choices have to be made in terms of Maintenance, most of which have to do with how best to archive TMs for re-use. Working from project-specific TMs only gives smaller leveraging power and little version control ability. Yet it is sometimes the chosen path, simply because it seems more manageable. On another hand building and maintaining Master TMs containing all segments ever translated, or even chunks of them organised by Product lines, Business Units etc. requires a sustained management effort. For instance, when there are terminology updates a linguist should implement global changes by batch editing Translation Units. They may spend time fixing old Translation Units (TUs) which will never be used again. It may also be difficult to find linguists with the skills to directly edit the TMs for all languages. More often than not, Master TMs which are not integrated with a Translation Management System will contain errors, deprecated terms, duplicate TUs with alternative translations etc. and require clean-up. The Project TMs-only route will always underperform in terms of ability to re-use existing translations and ensure consistency, but the Assets owner are still left to evaluate for themselves which option is the best for them.
TM repository is a solution to a lot of these common problems:
- It enables the Assets owner to create a single Online TM Database containing all TUs, for all projects, and all language pairs.
- The flexible descriptive fields (metadata) allow the TU’s to be tagged precisely.
- This metadata can then be used in Queries for smart filtering during Maintenance or Export
- TMX Imports let users add to the database from virtually any system
- TMX Exports permit the extraction of Project TMs, which can be reimported after use and update
- Exports can be customised for the CAT tool in use through customisable Mapping. Query results (i.e. Project TMs) will contain metadata compatible with the target translation tool.
- Refined Maintenance is enabled through features such as Search and Replace of text or metadata, or the use of deprecation settings by which older TUs can be hidden from search results.
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