Memsource Cloud 4.10 is scheduled for release on Sunday, 19 April 2015 at 9:00 AM GMT. These are some of the most notable improvements:

Project Dashboard

We have had a project dashboard for some time. However, we felt it needed to be improved. The current release includes the first version of a completely redesigned project dashboard. The dashboard is visible to administrator, project manager and guest users. We hope that it will make the life of project managers easier. These are the main components of the new dashboard:

• Progress
  • The dashboard lists target languages as rows and displays a progress bar for each target language (% of characters confirmed) and the total word count for each target language.
  • Warnings
  • When issues related to job status arise, warnings are displayed at the top of the “Progress” section. Currently, the following issues are flagged here:
  • Overdue jobs
  • Declined jobs
• Quality Assurance
• This section displays useful information related to the quality assurance feature:
• Indication whether quality assurance has been launched at all
• Percentage of segments checked by the quality assurance feature
• The number of unresolved QA warnings
• MT Usage
• If MT is enabled for a given target language, we display here the percentage of segments in which raw machine translation was used (the linguist used MT without any additional post-editing)

Additional Project Management Features

• Net Rate Schemes Applied Automatically
• Each linguist can now be linked to a specific net rate scheme and price list. If you run an analysis with the “Analyze by Linguist” option selected, not only that the analysis is assigned to the linguist in question, but also the corresponding net rate scheme is applied.
• Linguists Automatically Activated on Job Status Change
• With the setting “Activate/deactivate linguists automatically” enabled, an inactive linguist user will be automatically activated if a job’s status is changed from Completed or Delivered to e.g. Accepted.
• New Email Template Macro
• A new email template macro {job.previousWorkflow.dateDue} lets you add information on the job due date in the preceding workflow step. This is useful for situations when you assign a job to a reviewer and you want to let them know what the deadline is in the preceding workflow step, i.e. when approximately they can expect the “Next step ready” e-mail to arrive.
• Cost Centers
• A cost center can now be entered for a project.
• Raw MT Usage
• The job metadata now include information on the percentage of segments in which raw machine translation has been used.

File Conversion

• Maximum Target Length for XLIFF
• Maxwidth defines segment length.
• We now interpret the maxwidth value in XLIFF file as the specification of the maximum number of characters per segment.
• When the limit is exceeded, a red indicator is displayed in both Editors as a warning.
• This is also covered by the QA check.

• TMX Improvements
• TMX files can also be imported as files for translation (as jobs in a project).
• We have now substantially improved our processing of TMX files as translatable files and included the support for the <note> element.

Miscellaneous

• Kurdish Alphabet
• Memsource now supports the Arabic version of Kurdish, in addition to the Latin one.

Integrations

• tauyou
• We have significantly improved our integration with the tauyou MT engine.
• The improvements should lead to better performance.
• Gengo
• A new option has been added when ordering Gengo-powered translation from within Memsource:
• “Use preferred translator”
• XTRF
• XTRF-Memsource integration no longer relies on IFrames and introduces a better approach.

Memsource Cloud 4.11 is scheduled for release on Sunday, 31 May 2015 at 9:00 AM GMT. These are some of the most notable improvements:

File Conversion

• MS Word Filter Redesign
• We have completely redesigned our MS Word file filter which is the most popular file type used in Memsource Cloud (and probably in the translation industry in general) and so this is a big change.
• The new filter is better and faster. Here are some of the improvements:
• Footnotes and comments are now displayed right below the “parent” segment (the segment to which they are related to). Previously, they were displayed at the end of the bilingual file for translation.
• Special fields with automatic update and tables of content are now automatically updated in the completed target MS Word file.
• Formatting tags are expandable and editable.

• Changes in tag order (target tags need to be ordered differently from source tags) are handled much better.
• RTL text mixed with LTR is handled much better.
• New File Import Options:
• Import hyperlink target (select when there are tags that include a hyperlink and the hyperlink needs to be edited).
• Minimize number of tags (select for e.g. scanned documents with excess formatting).
• Target font (select a font in which the completed target file should be exported).
• Convert to Memsource tags (convert arbitrary text to Memsource tags using regexp).

• Tracking/Kerning Support for Adobe InDesign
• We have introduced two new file import options for Adobe InDesign files:
• Keep kerning
• Keep tracking

• Improved \n tags handling in .PO gettext files
• We have introduced a new file import option for .PO files:
• Export multi-line strings
• This option is selected by default and improves handling .PO files with \n tags

Quality Assurance

• Checking “No Text between Tags” for XLIFF Files
• Our current QA check “No Text between Tags” has been extended to also cover a situation when there is no text between bpt and ept tags in XLIFF files
• Checking Line Breaks
• The current “Tags & Formatting” check has been extended to also check for missing or redundant line breaks between source and target.

Machine Translation

• Introducing CrossLang
• We are introducing CrossLang as one of the out-of-the-box MT connectors available in Memsource.
• CrossLang is really a proxy that can provide access to multiple MT engines (custom, generic, etc.).
• Microsoft with Feedback
• Microsoft with Feedback, the free MT that comes with Memsource, continues to be available free of charge. However, it is not available for batch pre-translation anymore (to pre-translate a file in one go via the Pre-translate menu in Memsource Cloud).
• It continues to be available in Memsource Editor and Memsource Web Editor for segment-per-segment pre-translation.
• We think that pre-translating files in advance is typically not the best practice. However, if this approach is needed, any of the commercial MT engines can be used of course.

Security

• Login History
• Administrators and project managers can now view and/or download 3 months of login history for all users.
• Login history is available from the Users page and by customizing the displayed columns via this icon at the top right of the page and selecting Login History.
• This information that gets logged for each user looks like this:

• Forwarding to HTTPS for Custom Domains
• Organizations that use their own custom domain to login to Memsource Cloud can select to always forward their traffic to the encrypted HTTPS (just like in the standard Memsource Cloud scenario).
• This feature is of course only useful for those organizations that use an HTTPS domain. To activate this feature, please contact Memsource Support.

API

• Introducing Callbacks
• We have introduced callbacks as an alternative to the currently available polling for our API asynchronous requests.
• The callback method brings a number of advantages:
• Reduction of complexity for 3rd party integrators.
• Compliance with the SOA pattern of “fire and forget.”
• Better scalability.
• This is how it works:
• API customers provide a callback_url.
• A queue/consumer pattern is used.
• As soon as a Memsource async worker finishes its work, it adds its async_id into the queue.
• The consumer grabs the async_id messages from the queue.
• The consumer retrieves the work related with the async_id (via directly accessing data storage or by making an http call).
• The payload is prepared and sent to the customer’s callback_url.

Miscellaneous

• Memsource UI in Turkish
• Memsource Cloud UI is now also available in Turkish, as part of the Memsource crowdsourced localization project.
• Big thanks to the students of the Yeni Yuzyil University for their contribution.

• New Language: Papiamento
• We have introduced new language into Memsource: Papiamento (pap), spoken on the Caribbean ABC islands.

Memsource Cloud 4.12 is scheduled for release on Sunday, 12 July 2015 at 9:00 AM GMT. These are some of the most notable improvements:

Your Services

• We have introduced a brand new section under Setup – Your Services.
• You will be able to define your services, for example “Professional translation” or “Crowdsourcing translation”, which you will be able to use with your Instant Quote widgets, in combination with Project Templates. (Only “Professional translation” is available at the moment).
• Set your Price list to the service
• Add a workflow steps
• You can also set a Buyer, if you plan to use Instant Quote widget for one specific buyer only
• We will continue to improve this feature in our next releases.

Instant Quote Widget Redesigned

• The Instant Quote widget has been redesigned and users should find it more intuitive and simpler.
• Use the new “Your Services” feature to create IQ widget faster
• Use project template as additional information for creating projects
• It will be possible to drag&drop files directly into IQW
• Once a sender’s e-mail is verified, there will no longer be a need for the intermediary “approve” step.
• The word counts and prices are displayed before the IQ request is submitted.

Linguists MUST Change Status to Accepted before Starting to Translate

• This is an important change that will affect a lot of users and it should be well noted by all Project Managers
• For the time being, translators can start translating even if they leave the job status as New. In order to make the whole process more transparent, we have implemented the following changes:
• If a job IS NOT assigned to any linguist, then any linguist who gets access to the job can edit it. You may therefore distribute a link to the project or send mxliff files to your translators, even without assigning the files to the specific linguists.
• However, if a job IS assigned to a linguist, the linguist will only be able to open the job in a “read-only mode” and will not be able to start translating before changing the job status to “Accepted”. There are messages and links to guide the linguists to take the necessary action before starting the translation process.

File Conversion

• Improvements to New MS Word Filter
• We introduced a new filter for MS Word files in version 4.11. Based on user feedback and live experience, we have made more improvements to it.
• New option to “Import document properties”

• Friendlier Import of MS Excel files
• For Excel documents, you can now specify which columns contain which data for the translation process. Similar to what is currently available for CSVs, you can now specify the following for Excel files:
• Source text
• Target text (to be replaced with the translation)
• Context note (will be displayed in Memsource Editors as context)
• Maximum length (maximum translation length in characters)

• New import settings for iOS string format
  
• Additional features:
• use HTML subfilter
• convert to Memsource tags

• IDML filter improved
• Cross-reference definitions are now automatically imported for translation.  The definitions are imported as the first segments in bilingual Mxliff file.
• Bilingual XML filter improved
• New options added:
• Option “Segment bilingual XML” is now available.
• There was a slight change in the import XPATH settings. The opening slash character is no longer needed (see tooltip at Import Settings)

Mobile Friendly

• Memsource Cloud is now made even more mobile friendly
•  Memsource Cloud will look better on 5″ screens

New QA Check

• New QA check added: “Newer version in a preceding workflow step available.”
• The purpose of this new QA check is to give users warnings whenever a segment is by any mistake edited in the previous workflow step after it is edited/confirmed in a later workflow step.

Miscellaneous

• New Project / Job  Status
• We have added a new project status and new Job status: Cancelled.
• Metadata in TM Export (XLSX)
• If you export your TM into Excel, it is now possible to choose which metadata you wish to be included in the exported data.
• New Language: Tibetan
• We have introduced new language into Memsource: Tibetan (bo).
• New macro for Email templates
• {linguist.email} can be now added to the CC field of “Job Status Changed” template, so the linguists can have email confirmation of their action.

API

• API for Multiple TB Search
• It is now possible to search through multiple TBs with one call.
• API for Listing Deleted Users
• There is a new API call to list the deleted users.
• Terminologist Attribute included in API
• The “Get User” and “Get By User Name” API calls now return the terminologist attribute in the JSON response.

The Memsource Cloud interface is now available in Korean. Project managers in Korea can switch to their native language under Setup – Language. Translation company 1-StopAsia has carried out this community translation, and it is committed to maintaining the Korean version through future releases.

Don Shin, CEO and founder of 1-StopAsia, said: “We are glad to give something back”.

Don explained that 1-StopAsia mainly serves other translation companies. This is a customer base with extremely diverse workflows and projects. Project managers at 1-StopAsia use Memsource to adapt to varied needs of their clientele, and they love the platform because it is very customizable and easy to use.

The Memsource team, and David Canek, the company CEO, would like to express our gratitude for this outstanding contribution and commitment.

1-StopAsia is a translation company that specializes in Asian languages. Its headquarters are in Los Angeles, California, and it has offices in Seoul (Korea) and Shenyang (China). 1-StopAsia employs 150 full-time employees worldwide providing a 24-hour service.

Memsource Cloud 5.0 is scheduled for release on Sunday, 27 September 2015 at 10:00 AM GMT. These are some of the most notable improvements:

Assign Jobs to a Pool of Linguists or Vendors

• The single greatest improvement in this release is in job assignment. Jobs can now be assigned to a pool of linguists or vendors.
• Previously, jobs could only be assigned to a specific linguist or vendor.
• Now project managers can assign jobs to a pool of linguists or vendors, order them by priority and let them be notified automatically by Memsource in the selected time interval. The first linguist available will be able to accept the job.
• This feature can be made part of a number of automation scenarios. A pre-selected pool of linguists/vendors can be saved into a project template, the project template can be further associated with an automation widget and so on.

The “Instant Quote Widget” Is Now The “Automation Widget”

• We have renamed the Instant Quote Widget to “Automation Widget.” The reason is that the widget’s functionality now covers much more than just generating instant quotes. A number of automation scenarios can be designed combining the widget with project templates and various other settings.
• Specifically in this release we are introducing several new features that can be useful when building automation scenarios for the widget:
  • The new Analysis settings (described below) can be part of a project template and linked to the widget so that files submitted through it are analyzed in the desired way.
  • The new Pre-translation settings that can also be part of a project template make it possible to launch pre-translation right after files are submitted through the widget.

New User Interface

• This is something you will notice immediately and can spot from the screenshots above. We have launched a facelifted UI. It is lighter and in our opinion prettier than our old UI.
• In terms of usability, you will find most buttons at the same spots, so we hope everyone will get used to the new design quickly.

Project Management

• New Analysis Settings
  • We have introduced new project and global analysis settings.
  • It is now easier to set default settings when analyzing files in a project. The settings can be set globally under setup or per project by editing the project settings. And the analysis settings can of course be changed right before launching an analysis too.
  • The analysis settings are also part of project templates. This can be useful when you set up project templates for e.g. your key customers. Now you can include any specific analysis settings into the customer project template.

• New Pre-translation Settings with New Options
  • We have introduced new project and global pre-translation settings that can be set globally under setup or per project by editing the project settings.
  • Also these settings can be part of a project template and can reflect customer or other specific pre-translation needs.
  • In addition, we have introduced completely new options that make it possible to set a job to the completed status once the pre-translation has finished.
    • These new options can be useful, for instance when used in a scenario that involves the automation widget and machine translation.
    • A translation agency can offer a customized machine translation service to their enterprise clients, let them submit files for translation and have them instantly machine pre-translated by this custom MT engine. Once the pre-translation is finished, it is precisely these new options that set the pre-translated jobs and then the entire project to the completed status. This will trigger the notification to the enterprise client with a link to the machine translated files. This entire process requires no human interaction and can be provided as an additional service for the agency’s enterprise clients.

• New Pre-translate Option when Creating New Jobs
  
  • When creating new jobs, there is a new Pre-translation option. When selected, the newly created jobs will be pre-translated right away, using the project’s pre-translation settings (see above).
  • Again, this new option is also part of project templates and so can also be linked via the project template to an automation widget.

• Empty Recycle Bin
  •  This new feature makes it quite easy to clear data from your organization’s recycle bin. Be careful…

• Many Tags: A New Warning for DOCX Files
  •  Sometimes when you import a MS Word file and that file happens to have some problematic formatting, it can result in tons of tags – making the translation of such a file quite painful. Memsource will now display a warning and suggest to re-import the file with a file import setting that should reduce the number of tags.

Quality Assurance

• A New QA Check on Locked X Tags in SDLXLIFF
  • Locked x tags that can be sometimes found in SDLXLIFF files can cause problems. We now make it possible to check for their presence through the “XLIFF tags” QA check (needs to be selected in the QA settings for the check to be executed).

Miscellaneous

• New UI Language: Korean
  • We have introduced Korean as our new user interface language.
  • Localization has been provided by (지역화 작업자 1-StopAsia)

• New Supported Language: Matu Chin
  • We have added Matu Chin (htl) as a new language supported by Memsource.
• cloud.memsource.com
  • Previously (and mainly for some historical reasons), the main url to login into Memsource was: https://cloud1.memsource.com/
  • Now, the main url will be just “cloud”: https://cloud.memsource.com/. However, “cloud1″ will continue to work too.

Machine Translation

• Apertium
  • We have updated our Apertium connector. This update makes it possible to use a 3rd party (or your own) Apertium engine without a key. Therefore, we have made the key parameter optional.
• SDL Language Cloud
  • We have added SDL Language Cloud as one of the out-of-the-box engines that can be configured in Memsource.

API

• Set Project Owner via API
  • It is now possible to set a project owner for a project using the edit project API call.

Memsource Cloud 5.1 is scheduled for release on Sunday 25th October, 2015, at 11:00 AM GMT. This is a minor update after version 5.0, and it contains a number of small improvements:

Goodbye to Old Instant Quote Widget

• With the introduction of a new Automation Widget we decided to remove the old widget. This change will make the old UI inaccessible. The existing URL links will now be redirected to the new UI. No actual IQ will be removed. This will not require any action from the user because the iFrame will be redirected to the new UI. Therefore, users that still use the old type of our IQ widget will simply start getting the new Automation Widget form. This has an improved user interface to provide an even better user experience.

Spellchecker for Finnish

• Finnish is now fully supported for spellchecking in Memsource Editors.

New Languages

• We have added support for more languages and language locales:
  • Kurmanji
  • Uighur (Arabic)
  • Sindhi (Arabic)
  • Ilonggo
  • Arabic (Israel)
  • Russian (Latvia)
  • Russian (Ukraine)
  • Russian (Israel)
  • German (Belgium)

Usernames Displayed with Full Names

• When selecting linguist users from the Edit Job menu, you will now see the linguists’ full names, plus their username in the tooltip.

API

• Set Project Owner via API
  • It is now possible to set a project owner for a project using the edit project API call.

Memsource Cloud 5.2 is scheduled for release on Sunday, 29 November 2015, at 11:00 AM GMT. This release introduces multilingual XML, more job-related info in projects, new API calls and other improvements.

Multilingual XML

• Multilingual XML files include a source language and multiple target languages. They are now supported out-of-the-box in Memsource:
  • Previously, when you needed to import a multilingual XML file into Memsource with for example English as the source language and German, Spanish and Korean as the target languages, you were able to make use of our bilingual XML filter but needed to manually create separate jobs for each language pair (in this case English – German, English – Spanish and English – Korean)
  • From now on, you can work with just one file, using our new Multilingual XML filter
  • All you need to do is map the corresponding target language elements in the file import settings
  • This will lead to the automatic creation of separate jobs for each language pair, while in the background the file will remains as one and when you download the completed file after translation, you will have a single XML containing all languages

Connect Sitecore, AEM, WordPress and other CMSes with Memsource via iLangL

• iLangL, a provider of CMS-TMS integration, now supports Memsource out of the box.
  • The combined solution of iLangl and Memsource makes it quite easy to connect the below Content Management Systems and automate file logistics between the CMS and Memsource:
    • Adobe Experience Manager
    • Sitecore
    • DNN Evoq
    • Drupal
    • EPiServer
    • Umbraco
    • WordPress
  • To learn more, contact us. Or, stay tuned for more information. We will be providing more info on the integration shortly.

More Job-related Information for Project Managers

• Info on job status changes and other job-related metadata can now be viewed by project managers
  • We have removed the blue info icon that would pop up when hovering over a job in a project and moved the information into two new tooltips and added even more details.
  • For each job, PMs can now view details about each job status change:
    
  • Also, PMs can view even more job-related data in a tooltip displayed when hovering over the percentage completed:

Project Managers Can Set Time Zone for Linguists

• The time zone setting is not new but now it can be set by project managers for their linguist users
  • The time zone setting is not new by any means and every user can set it under Setup – User Settings in Memsource Cloud. In this way, all dates/times get fully converted based on the local time zone of each user (especially important for deadlines!).
  • From now on, PMs can set time zone for their linguists when creating or editing a linguist user:
    

Context for CSV and Excel Files from More Columns

• Context from multiple columns can now be imported from bilingual Excel files
  • Multiple columns containing context information can be selected in file import settings in order to be displayed to translators. Context info from each column will be displayed on a separate line:
    

New Languages

• We have added a few more languages/language locales:
  • Arabic (Algeria)
  • English (Lebanon)
  • English (Saudi Arabia)
  • Greenlandic

New Macro for Email Templates: {project.internalId}

• A new macro was added to the list of macros which can be used in email templates.
  • {project.internalId} will display the internal project number that users can see at the top of their projects:
    

Improved Term Recognition for Hebrew and Arabic

• Term-base recognition of words with typical prefixes in Arabic and Hebrew has been improved.
  • Term base entries will now be recognized even if you enter the root of a word that is preceded by a standard prefix, for example ה in Hebrew.

API

• New API calls have been introduced:
  • transMemory/getRelatedProjects
    • Get a list of projects in which a specific TM is used.
  • JobService.splitFileBySpecificRange
    • Split jobs after specific segments.
• New optional parameters added to the Search Segments by Task API:
  • maxSegments
  • maxSubSegments

Memsource Cloud 5.3 is scheduled for release on Sunday, 17 January 2016, at 11:00 AM GMT. This release introduces a new analytics capability, Adobe InDesign previews, multilingual Excel file support and other improvements.

Multilingual Excel Files

• Multilingual Excel files include a source language and multiple target languages. They are now supported out-of-the-box in Memsource:
  • Previously, processing multilingual Excel files involved a lot of manual pre- and post-processing in Memsource. When you needed to import a multilingual Excel file into Memsource with, for example, English as the source language and German, Spanish and Japanese as the target languages, you were able to make use of our bilingual Excel filter but needed to manually create separate jobs for each language pair (in this case English-German, English-Spanish and English-Japanese).
  • From now on, you can work with just a single file, using our new multilingual Excel filter.
  • All you need to do is map the corresponding target language columns in the file import settings.
  • This will lead to the automatic creation of separate jobs for each language pair, while in the background the file will remain as one. When you download the completed file after translation, you will have a single Excel file containing all languages.

InDesign Preview

• Adobe InDesign files can now be previewed from within Memsource Web Editor.
  • We are bringing this new feature thanks to our integration with Frontlab, a leader in InDesign preview and proofing tools.
  • To use this new functionality, first sign up with Frontlab and then enter your Frontlab credentials into Memsource under Setup – Integrations – Frontlab.
  • When you are done, a new menu item, “PDF Preview”, will appear in the Web Editor under the Document menu.
  • After clicking on PDF Preview, the InDesign preview will be downloaded to your PC as a PDF file.

Business Analytics

• Translations processed through Memsource have exceeded 1 billion words in the last quarter of 2015. We are now launching business analytics so that our users can track translation volumes, costs, productivity and other metrics.
  • We have deployed a dedicated data warehouse to serve all of our analytics needs. With the warehouse in place, we can now start launching new analytics features.
  • Initially, the new analytics features are only available for Memsource customers with one of our enterprise editions.
  • To start with, we are now releasing a set of pre-configured charts that can be set up in the new Home page. 
    
  • A number of additional features and improvements are on the way in our analytics domain.
  • And most importantly, we will extend these new features also to our translation agency customers (Team Start, Team Ultimate editions) – we hope by the end of Q1/2016.

Home Page

• The Home page is a new dashboard-like page with customizable widgets. 
  • Currently, analytics and automation widgets can be added to the page.
  • The Home page is currently only available to our enterprise customers:

A Custom Welcome Message for the Automation Widget

• A custom welcome message can now be set for the Automation Widget.
  • The current message can be customized by going to Setup – Automation Widgets.

  Job Board

• We have made a few improvements to our Job Board (still in beta).
  • It is now easier to submit new job postings. Try for yourself:

Custom Domain for the Team Edition

• A number of our customers have uploaded their own logo to Memsource Cloud. Team edition customers can now take this one step further. 
  • A custom domain is now supported also for the Team edition (previously only for the Ultimate edition).
  • Read the support article on how to setup a custom domain for your Team or Ultimate editions.

Quality Assurance

• A new QA check has been added to our quality assurance module::
  • Target identical to source

API

• Translation memory maintenance:
  • We have added two new API calls that can be helpful when global changes (e.g. find and replace) need bo applied to a translation memory.
    • Advanced translation memory query
    • Export results generated by the query

On February 23, 2016, at 17:00 CET (New York 11:00, London 16:00, Moscow 19:00), we invite you to join Memsource CEO, David Čaněk , for a special update on the integrations between Memsource and its technology partners.

REGISTER HERE

PROGRAM

Introduction:

– David Čaněk, Memsource CEO

Presenters:

– Ib Nikolaj Tørsleff, Frontlab CEO

– Adam Emsley, Head of Partnerships and Integrations at ‎Gengo

– Sergey Yuryev, Founder at iLangL

– Pascal Boivin, Business Development Manager Americas at Plunet Inc.

– Hubert Krenz, Business Development Manager at XTRF

At the end of the webinar, there will be a short Q&A session.

Nihon iPrism is a translation company based in Hyderabad, India, that offers Japanese-to-English translation services across various industries, with a focus on the industrial, legal, medical and pharmaceutical fields.

When choosing Memsource, Nihon iPrism set to achieve two major goals:

• Increase productivity by better leveraging translated content
• Improve collaboration among in-house staff and vendors.

Nihon iPrism found an all-encompassing solution in Memsource Cloud.

Productivity boost

After running 200 projects in Memsource Cloud, Nihon iPrism has witnessed a productivity increase of up to 50% as well as a cost saving of up to 20% for its customers.

Nihon iPrism’s (project) teams can now maintain translation memories and glossaries in real time and share them among all the team members.

As the majority of the company’s translation projects come from industrial fields and have a high percentage of repetitions – as well as domain-specific terminology – Nihon iPrism can leverage on its language resources to significantly boost its productivity.

Collaboration across the team

Together with Memsource translation management tools, translation memories and terminology databases are fully integrated in the workflow and contribute to consistency within one specific translation job as well as through every localization project of every single customer.

Nihon iPrism’s team has also benefited from another core element of Memsource Cloud – Memsource Editor. This web-based editor is seamlessly connected to translation memories and termbases allowing, therefore, linguists to conduct quick searches and leverage on the linguistic data.

Nihon iPrism’s Director, Sunil Bhanap, states: “Thanks to the thoughtful design, intuitive user interface and user- friendly features of Memsource Editor, we could get our team members up to speed in a short span of time.”

Memsource Editor is easy-to-use and presents a short learning curve to Nihon iPrism’s translation professionals. This short learning curve translates, in turn, into less training costs for the company and a quick productivity increase for the language professionals.

Further readings:

–  Text&Form GMBH Delivers Translations 2X Faster with Memsource

–  Semantix: “Improvements by Memsource Go Beyond the Operational Side of the Tool.”

– Yuri Melnikov, Mark Business Translations: “We Use Memsource for 90% of Our Projects.”

Clear communication between project managers and translators is essential for a project timeline, the translation deliverables, and the general performance of the project team.

Because nowadays communication happens mainly through email, there are few things that you as project manager should keep in mind to make your work and your freelancers’ work easier.

Few things to keep in mind

Time difference – If you are in Europe and your translators are in Japan, for example, consider that when your day is just starting, your translators might be ready to call it a day. So, you might have to wait up to 24 hours to receive a reply to your email.

Project planning – This might not always be possible, but if do know the start date of a translation project, plan the job together with your translators and give them as much information as possible on what it’s expected of them (e.g. tasks, deliverable, deadline etc…).

Check-ins – Freelancers are usually good at planning their own work and at balancing more jobs at once. Don’t expect them to report to you on their progress every single day. For projects longer than a week, simply request a progress report every 2-3 days to make sure that there are no queries left unanswered.

By the way, to help you monitor more closely the progress of the translation project, the Memsource Cloud Dashboard includes useful statistics sorted by target language, e.g. completed segments, overdue jobs, usage of machine translation.

So, how should you write a translation job email?

Be concise, accurate and clear. No one is willing to spend time reading a long email. To make your communication more efficient, provide all the necessary project information in a clear and to-the-point text. You should include the following information:

• Project name/number
• Domain
• Language combination(s)
• Task(s) – Translation, revision, proofreading or post-editing
• Number of words – Include, if possible, a fuzzy match analysis
• Status – New, ongoing, completed, waiting for approval etc…
• Due date
• Rate – per word or hourly rate

Do not forget to include instructions, like any specific reference material available, the link(s) to the end client’s website or to other useful website. In case of a collaborative project, you might want to include the name of the language lead who acts as point of reference for linguistic queries.

Translation Job Email Templates in 14 Languages

To help you automate the various steps of project management, Memsource Cloud provides you default email templates.

You can also create new templates or modify the existing ones with some template macros. You can add variables for the project manager name, the linguist name, email address and any additional information you might deem important.

At the beginning of this blog post you’ll find a PDF file with default email templates in 14 major languages.

Should you need to translate the translation job email templates into more languages, simply copy and paste the text into a .txt file, then translate the file in Memsource.

One small tip: When creating a project, go to import settings for .txt and add the following regular expression:
\{[^\}]+\}

This regular expression will isolate tags from the text, so that you don’t have to see or translate them. After the import, there will be only a few words to translate. Be careful not to leave spaces in the regex expression field.

Memsource Cloud 5.4 is scheduled for release on Sunday, 28 February 2016, at 11:00 AM GMT. This release is literally packed with new features including some major improvements. We are extending Memsource API support to all of our customers. And the recently introduced business analytics features will now also be available for our translation agency customers.

API for All Customers

We are extending our API to all of our customers.

• Memsource API is necessary to integrate Memsource with any 3rd-party software. Previously, API was only available to our Ultimate and BIZ Ultimate editions customers. We are now extending the API to all paying customers (this excludes the free Personal edition).
• The Ultimate and BIZ Ultimate editions will continue to offer unlimited API calls to its subscribers. All other editions will enjoy full API functionality but with a daily limit on API calls which we will start enforcing during March 2016:

Clone Jobs

Cloning jobs can prove extremely useful for multilingual projects.

Typically for large projects with multiple target languages, it may make a lot of sense to prep the translation jobs before they are assigned to linguists. This may include modifications that will be identical in all target languages. It is quite tedious for project managers to have to apply the same modifications job by job for all the target languages. For instance, copy source to target for segments with non-translatable content. Or, lock some segments because they should not be touched, etc.

With the new clone feature, jobs can be prepped in just a single target language and then cloned to any number of the project’s target languages.

INDD Supported

Native Adobe InDesign files (INDD) are now supported.

We have supported IDML, the translation-friendly Adobe InDesign file format, for a long time. However, not the Adobe InDesign’s native INDD format. It is always possible to convert INDD into IDML or ask your customer to provide IDML. However, it adds an extra step.

We have started supporting INDD directly in Memsource. Thanks to our partnership with Frontlab, this feature is available for everyone in Memsource.

How it works exactly: Simply select the INDD file when creating a new translation job, it will be converted into IDML in the background and the new job will be created using the IDML file. When you are done with the translation, you will receive IDML as the output target file (not INDD – as this would be unnecessary). The translated IDML can then be directly imported into Adobe InDesign.

Business Analytics for Translation Agencies

We have recently completely redesigned our business analytics component and introduced the first set of analytics features in our previous release, Memsource Cloud 5.3 (and just for our enterprise customers). We are now extending business analytics also to our translation agency customers on the Team and Ultimate editions.

To start with, we are now releasing a set of pre-configured charts that can be set up in the new Home page. The business analytics functionality will be significantly extended in our next releases.

Home Page for Translation Agencies

The Home page is a new dashboard-like page with customizable widgets. It has been introduced in our previous release, Memsource Cloud 5.3, just for our enterprise customers. We are now making it available also to our translation agency customers.

Currently, analytics and automation widgets can be added to the page. The Home page is available in our Team and Ultimate editions and all enterprise editions.

Project Management

Pre-translate on job creation.

The project’s pre-translate settings have received a new option: Pre-translate on job creation. When enabled, every new job will be pre-translated automatically, based on the project’s pre-translate settings.

This new option can be very well used also in project templates and automation widgets, associated with those templates.

Entering a pool of linguists and/or vendors into a project template.

In one of our previous releases, Memsource Cloud 5.0, we made it possible for project managers to assign jobs to a pool of linguists or vendors, order them by priority and let them be notified automatically by Memsource in the selected time interval. The first linguist available would be able to claim the job.

We are now bringing this exact same feature also to project templates which opens up a number of additional automation scenarios. For instance, creating an automation widget, associating a project template with a pool of linguists/vendors and letting the translation automation flow…

Linguist relevancy data.

Relevancy data for linguists can be entered already in the user creation page.

Original file extension added to MXLIFF.

Our MXLIFF files now include the file extension of the original source file which should help project managers for better orientation, especially when dealing with lots of files.

• Previously: ABC.mxliff
• Now: ABC.docx.mxliff

Set net rate schemes by workflow steps.

It is now possible to set specific net rate schemes for each workflow step. For instance, a different net rate scheme for translation and revision.

New language added.

We have added Russian (Estonia) to our list of supported languages.

New Memsource Cloud default url.

Memsource Cloud has a new default url: cloud.memsource.com (previously cloud1.memsource.com).

File Conversion

Multiple columns for translation in multilingual MS Excel.

It is now possible to enter multiple columns for translation, e.g.

• Source – A,B,C
• Target(de) – G,H,I
• Target(cs) – J,K,L

There is also a new file import option that makes it possible to import specific rows only. Entering 2- will import all rows except the first row:

A new file import setting allowing to specify a context key.

It is now possible to select the location of a key in a file for translation which will then be displayed to linguists during translation in order to provide more context information. Newly available for these file types:

• XML
• Multilingual XML
• Multilingual Excel
• CSV.

Improved handling of index markers in FrameMaker.

We have started placing index markers following the paragraph where they were used in order to separate them better from the translatable text. This should be more translator-friendly.

New HTML file import option: Translatable meta tags.

We have introduced a new file import option for HTML files which relates to translatable content in the meta section of HTML files. Previously, Memsource would only import description and keywords for translation. Now it is possible to specify (using a regular expression) what content should be imported from the HTML meta section.

Identify translatable text in text files using a regular expression.

We have introduced a new option, Translatable text, that makes it possible to extract just translatable text in plain text files using a regular expression.

Maximum target segment length for JSON.

A new file import option, Max. target length, makes it possible to restrict maximum target length for JSON files.

XLIFF 2.0 improvements.

We have introduced a number of improvements to our XLIFF 2.0 handling:

• Standalone file import settings for XLIFF 2.0 (previously the settings were shared with XLIFF 1.2).
• srcLang and trgLang attribute support.
• Better handling of translatable content in nested elements.
• Better file-validation check when exporting a completed target file (to check whether the XLIFF file conforms to the XLIFF standard).

Chaining context note parameters for XML files.

Multiple parameters can be chained and entered into the context note field in XPath file import settings for XML files. For instance:

• @comment|@refId|@note

New file import settings for Multilingual XML files.

We have added new XPath file import settings for multilingual XML files:

• Context key.
• Context note.
• Max. target length.

Conditional text from Adobe InDesign files extracted.

Conditional text is now extracted for translation from Adobe InDesign files.

Translation Memory

Segments can now be saved to two translation memories in a project.

Previously, we only supported a single translation memory to be set up in the “write” mode in a project (the TM into which segments are saved when they are confirmed). From now on, it is possible to select the write mode for up to two translation memories in a project.

This means that we now support up to 2 TMs in the write mode and up to 10 TMs in the read mode.

Navigating search results from TMs with multiple languages got much easier.

Viewing TM search results from within Memsource Cloud got a bit more user-friendly, especially for TMs with multiple target languages thanks to a few UI tweaks we have deployed. And by the way, it is possible to drag-and-drop each language column in the TM results page to re-order the languages for better viewing.

API

New API call to list users by email address.

• api/v2/user/list

New API call to clone projects.

• api/v3/project/clone

New API call to clear all translation memory segments.

• api/v4/transMemory/clear (be careful, this action cannot be reverted!)

Since 1995 Intertranslations has been serving major international clients, mainly in five verticals: pharmaceutical, gaming, software localization, manufacturing and consumer electronics.

With headquarters in Greece and offices in the United Kingdom, Intertranslations offers translation services in all European and Asian languages. In addition to the in-house staff of people, the company works with a global network of industry professionals using the InLance® production platform.

In the last few years, Intertranslations has developed a technological edge to stay ahead of the competition.

The company has developed its own Language Quality Inspection (LQI) tool, that identifies suspicious segments in a translation memory during production and sends them to the LQI specialists for further evaluation. Another significant investment has been a customized ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system fully integrated with Memsourse API.

A Lean Quality Assurance Process

Leveraging the specific features of Memsource Cloud, Intertranslations has acquired a major gaming company as new client.

To guarantee consistency in all elements of a game, terminology databases and translation memories need to be updated in real-time. The collaborative features for terminology and translation memory management offered by Memsource have helped Intertranslation to win – and retain – an important customer active in the gaming industry.

Michael Xynos, CEO at InterTranslations: “Our client can access the terminology management features in Memsource Cloud to make changes to the translation memories and the terminology databases, thus consolidating terminology and making sure mistakes are never repeated.”

Other Points Scored

Flexibility and contained costs are two other points that Memsource scored with Intertranslations.

Michael Xynos explains: “We like Memsource’s flexibility as can we integrate it with our own ERP system. We’re also trying to minimize the cost of the translation by integrating and streamlining technology: Memsource is a simple tool to use, and  provides value for money.”

According to Mr. Xynos, Memsource also scores in terms of stability, user-friendliness and a short learning curve for the translators.

Upgrading software to a new version can bring lots of improvements, but at the same time can cause disruption to its users. In the pre-cloud era, a system administrator would need to install the upgrade. The software would need to be at least restarted. Sometimes data would need to be migrated, hardware re-configured. All sorts of issues could come up. For that reason, software publishers would try to minimize the number of new releases to just a few per year. This is still true for most non-cloud software.

A cloud setup makes it possible to remove most of these drawbacks. For this reason, users of a cloud-based software product will typically get upgrades much more often. At Memsource, we typically deploy 2 minor releases per day and a major new release once a month. Our minor deployments include bug fixes and minor features. The major deployments include major new features.

Our daily minor deployments cause no disruption to Memsource users: Memsource is available without interruption and users are not even logged out. This used to be different for our major deployments that would take place once a month on Sundays: Our users understood that, in exchange for the new features, Memsource would not be available for a limited period of time (30-60 minutes) once a month.

However, it has been our goal for some time to deploy our major monthly releases without any service interruption. And we have recently succeeded: Our latest release, Memsource Cloud 5.4, has been deployed without any downtime. Users may have just noticed periods of increased network latency. 

So how did we do it? The idea sounds simple: Each and every server, one by one, is removed from the cloud production environment, upgraded to a newer version and then inserted back.

The difficulty starts with the realization that, for a certain period of time, one part of the infrastructure runs an older version and the rest runs a newer version. Without the right precautions, incompatibilities between the two parts may undermine the whole process.

Preparations for a zero-downtime deployment of our latest version actually started immediately after the release of our previous version, Memsouce Cloud 5.3, over a month ago. From that point on, we had to make sure that every new feature, change or bug fix was going to be implemented in a backwards-compatible way at multiple levels – from the database, through internal service communication, all the way up to the user interface.

A few days before the deployment, long-running DB operations were initiated to update the tables and relations to the expectations of the new version. Finally, after all the preparations, it took us less than an hour to seamlessly bring you all the new and exciting features of Memsource Cloud 5.4.

And guess what? We plan to deploy our next major release with zero-downtime too. Keep your fingers crossed for us…

On Friday, April 15, during LocWorld30 in Tokyo, Memsource CEO David Čaněk is going to hold a joint presentation with Gengo CEO Matthew Romaine. 

The presentation – Technology For The Crowd in The Cloud – will describe the challenges faced by cloud-based companies when attempting to marry innovation with tradition.

Gengo is a leading player in the crowdsourced translation space. It turned translation provided by lay translators into a professional service. Gengo’s technology developed as an alternative and often in opposition to the established paradigms of the TMS or CAT tools. As its customer base grew, requests to support more traditional approaches intensified. In 2015, Gengo integrated Memsource translation memory service, provided over the Memsource API.

Technology For The Crowd in The Cloud
Track: Technology | TC8 |
Friday, April 15, 2016, 2:00pm – 2:45pm
Held in: Fuji
Presenters:
David Čaněk – Memsource
Matthew Romaine – Gengo, Inc.

You might also be interested in:

Memsource and Gengo Partnership Update

Memsource webinar With Integration Partners (recording)

Memsource API for All Memsource Cloud Customers

Translating a Memsource project with Gengo

Memsource Cloud 5.5 has been released on Sunday, 10 April 2016, at 11:00 AM GMT with zero downtime. This release brings a number of improvements of which these two stand out: A) Custom data visualization and exploration using Kibana, a free data visualization workbench. B) Advanced API improvements, such as webhooks as well as opening up our API to linguist users (our API was previously limited to administrator and project manager users).

Kibana – Data Visualization Workbench

Users of the Memsource BIZ Ultimate edition will be able to visualize data from their accounts through Kibana, an open source data visualization workbench.

Kibana allows you to visualize and explore all data indexed by our analytics data warehouse. Each organization only has access to the subset of its own data. Currently, all project-related data have been indexed. There is an almost endless number of queries that can be visualized using Kibana.

Sample Visualizations

These are some of the queries that can be built and visualized using Kibana:

• Projects/jobs by the project manager
• Projects by the machine translation engine used
• Jobs by the linguist/vendor, including overdue jobs
• Jobs by file type
• Top language pairs, etc.

Project-level Data

As mentioned above, currently all of our project-related data have been indexed. This includes data, such as:

• Project
  • Project creation date, last modification, created by, last modified by, source language, target languages, project settings, client, domain, subdomain, business unit, project status, due date, etc.
• Jobs
  • Job creation date, last modification, created by, last modified by, source language, target language, assigned to linguist/vendor, due date, workflow step, file type, etc.
• Analyses
  • Total wordcount, net wordcount, translation memory matches, machine translation matches, etc.

Segment-level Data

We also plan to index all of our segment-level data (translation data) in the near future. This will make it possible for our customers to obtain unique insight into their translation productivity and visualize data, such as:

• Translation memory leverage by customer
• Translation productivity by MT engine
• Translation time vs. translation memory and/or machine translation leverage based. Kibana also gives you the details on each individual job/file in your account, including when it was created, who was the author, who  processed, and perhaps deleted it.

API

Memsource APIs have seen some major improvements in the current release.

Webhooks

• Webhooks (or callbacks) for monitoring status changes have been introduced. Previously, users needed to call GetJob in order to see if the reply contains any information about the status change. Now, as soon as a job status changes, we will send a call directly to the user’s integration.

API extended to Linguist Users

• APIs are now available to linguist users, in addition to all paid editions. Linguists can for example take advantage of the Memsource/XBench integration for extended quality assurance.

Miscellaneous

• Linguists can now be assigned based on project templates when creating projects from APIs.
• Multilingual MS Excel files can also be imported via APIs.
• It is now possible to delete clients, domains and subdomains (metadata) using APIs.

XLIFF 2.0

Memsource now has separate file import settings for XLIFF 1.2 and XLIFF 2.0. Both include the corresponding import and export attribute mapping.

Indexes in InDesign Files

It is now possible to translate indexes in InDesign files without any need for post-processing in Adobe InDesign.

New UI Languages

We have added three more languages in which the Memsource user interface can be viewed:

• French (translation by Semantix)
• Finnish (translation by Semantix)
• Dutch (translation by ProLinguo)

We would like to take this opportunity and thank all our localization partners for their continued support.

Machine Translation

TildeMT

• We have made improvements in the way users log in to the service from Memsource.

New Languages

We have started supporting the following languages:

• English – Hong Kong
• English – Indonesia
• English – Malaysia
• Buryat

Thanks to assistance from translation company TextMinded in Copenhagen, the Memsource Cloud interface is now available in Danish. Project managers and users in Denmark can switch their language preference under Setup – Language.

The Memsource team and CEO David Canek would like to express our gratitude for this outstanding contribution and commitment which will assist over 630 companies in Denmark who use Memsource. TextMinded is committed to maintaining the Danish version through future releases.

TextMinded has been successfully helping clients communicate their value globally for over a quarter of a century. They translate millions of words each month and provide unique language solutions for organizations to engage and empower communities and clients.

Interested in trying Memsource Cloud? Sign up for a Free Trial.

Memsource has introduced support for QuarkXPress file formats.

QuarkXPress is a tool for creating and editing simple or complex pages in a WYSIWYG environment. Out of all the possible file formats the tool can generate, the TAG and XTG file are currently supported (since these are the formats containing translatable text).

The import settings for Quark Tag files allow for removal of kerning and tracking tags.

The option to “convert to Memsource tags” has been added for RESX files.

A faster Web Editor, connectors to Dropbox, Google Drive and FTP, and seamless PDF translations via TransPDF are the most notable improvements in this autumn release.

All of the features are already live, along with a number of bug fixes. Since we switched to continuous deployment on June 22, there is no more maintenance required, and no more system downtime.

Connectors to Dropbox, Google Drive and FTP

Users can now sync Memsource accounts with online repositories, such as Dropbox, Google Drive, and FTP folders. The integration allows for both manual and automatic file import.

Features:

• Ability to create translation jobs from files on Dropbox, Google Drive, or an FTP folder
• Automatically checks the folders for new files on a regular basis and retrieves them for translation
• After a file is translated, Memsource uploads it back to the online folder with a modified name

The connector to online repositories can eliminate manual file handling between content and translation management systems. If you can set up your CMS to upload files for translation into an online repository, and grab translated files from it, it becomes much easier to handle large amounts of material or constantly updated content.

To set this up, connect your FTP, Dropbox or Google Drive to Memsource under Setup – Integrations – Connectors.

Faster Web Editor

Since the introduction of the Web Editor, we have been progressively making it more fluent and user-friendly. In this release, there has been a considerable improvement in speed.

After optimizing the spellchecker and introducing other improvements, Memsource Web Editor now operates faster and is smoother when typing and scrolling.

While Memsource Editor may still be the faster option in some scenarios, the Web Editor experience has improved dramatically, including on projects with large files. Please post your feedback in the comments.

Translate PDF Files with TransPDF

You can now import a PDF, translate it into Memsource Editor or Web Editor, and rebuild it in the target language without desktop publishing (DTP) work through another program.

PDF > editable XLIFF > PDF in a new language

This is possible due to the integration of Iceni TransPDF, a tool that converts PDF files to XLIFF formats and back. While a DTP quality check is still required, this integration brings Memsource users one step closer the seamless translation of PDFs.

With the TransPDF connector, users can:

• Import and process PDF files normally
• Download translations as PDFs from Memsource Cloud, or as RTF from your Iceni account to correct layouts
• Post-edit PDFs in Iceni Infix PDF Editor

Setup:

To use this function you will need your own account with TransPDF topped up with credit. Iceni charges between €0.12 and 0.41 per final page (you can still import as many as you like), and the first 50 pages are free. A preview for translators working on the file is available for free directly through the Memsource editors.

PS: You can still translate PDF in Memsource without buying TransPDF credit, and after your translation is finished you will get text files that can be used to rebuild the PDF manually.

Job Board Redesign

The Job Board has a new look which more clearly indicates available offers and responses to them.

Buyers:

• You can now add a sample paragraph of text for translation when publishing a new job posting;
• Setting a delivery deadline is now mandatory. When the deadline is reached, the job post is automatically closed;
• You can filter projects published on the job board in the Projects tab;
• You can now see the number of organisations notified about the new job posting, and the number of responses in a tooltip.

Vendors:

• Open job postings are now always displayed at the top;
• Job postings you have responded to will be grayed out;
• Project offers now show the buyer organisation name;
• When a project published on the Job Board is deleted from Memsource Cloud, it is marked as Closed on the job board.

Globalese MT Integration

You can now add custom Globalese machine translation engines to your projects. While working in the Editors, translators will receive suggestions from a MT engine trained in a specific subject matter area. Engines can be created from a translation memory corpus of 100,000 segments and more.

Globalese is a Moses-based statistical machine translation system that is available as SaaS or a private installation. It is developed by MorphoLogic Localisation, an LSP in Hungary.

Globalese MT evaluation, Memsource connector setup, and stats screen. Click to enlarge screenshots

Setup:

Add the engine under Setup -> Integrations -> Machine Translation Engines. You will need an API key and an engine ID.

Tip: Check “Include tags” to allow the engine to automatically add tags from source to translations.

Support for QuarkXPress file formats TAG and XTG

Memsource has started supporting QuarkXPress file formats.

QuarkXPress is a tool for creating and editing layouts in a WYSIWYG environment. Out of all the possible file formats the tool can generate, the TAG and XTG files are currently supported (since these are the formats containing translatable text).

The import settings for Quark Tag files allow for the removal of kerning and tracking tags.

Salesforce.com Integration

Our new integration with Salesforce allows users to download files and import them for translation from a link with content hosted on salesforce.com. This change will be useful primarily for LSPs that use Salesforce as a business management system in conjunction with Memsource as their translation management system.
Another possible function is the ability to download reports directly. This would be useful when preparing personalized mass email campaigns. Hundreds or thousands of names can be translated into another alphabet (Latin into hieroglyphic, Cyrillic, or Arabic) quickly with the help of translation memory.

Option to Edit TMs and TBs in Existing Project Templates

It is now possible to edit existing project templates to add or remove translation memories and term bases. This replaces the need to create a new project template every time such a change is needed.

Setup:

• Navigate to Setup -> Project Templates;
• Open the template that needs change;
• Scroll down to the bottom of the page to access this option.

Download CSV files with Character Information

It is now possible to download the Analysis in an additional format, a CSV file with character information.

API Improvements

There are several important developments with Memsource API:

• Human translation engine supported by APIs.
  It is now possible to run translations via Gengo using APIs, and completely automate delivery. The call is documented in our API manual.
• Webhook for a new job in project.
  When a new job is created, a URL with the corresponding parameters can be sent via webhooks.
• There is a new API to copy source to target.
• The Response for the Get User or List Users API calls will now contain the following data:
  • Creation date
  • Last Login Date

Convert to Memsource Tags for RESX Files