Tags

Uninterpreted formatting tags

When the source segment contains formatting other then the three basic types, bold, italics and underlined, memoQ does not display it in the source text. Instead, it identifies parts of the original document that are formatted in the same way, and every time this uniform formatting changes it puts a placeholder, a tag, into the text. However, they  do not only appear when formatting changes. memoQ also displays them to represent inline images, or certain types of whitespace (notably, line breaks and tabulators).

The name uninterpreted formatting tag refers to the fact that once the document is imported into memoQ, the actual meaning of the tags (precisely what type of formatting change they stand for) is ignored until the document is exported. Tags such as {1}, {2}, {3} etc. are displayed in the translation grid, and you need to insert the same tags into the translated text where you think the change of formatting is appropriate.

You can insert them by placing your cursor to the appropriate position in the target cell, and pressing F8. You can also press F8 while typing the translation. Please note that you cannot change the order of the tags:pressing F8 will always insert the next tag. If you move the insertion point backwards and press F8, memoQ renumbers the tags in the target cell. The actual meaning of the tags is retrieved only when the document is exported.

Make sure that you inserted all source document tags into the target document before exporting the document. To help you in performing this task, the segments containing formatting tags are marked by a red circle with a white exclamation marks. The notification will remain there until all formatting tags are inserted into the target cell.

You will not see translation tags for every change in formatting. If a segment is formatted in a uniform way but differently from the previous or the next segment, the segment boundary itself is an invisible tag. If you decide to join two segments with different formatting into one, you will see that a tag appears – the invisible tag becomes visible.

Inline tags

XML and XML-like documents are special because by their very nature their content is structured through the use of tags. To import them, memoQ makes a distinction between two types of tags: structural and inline. Structural tags determine which sections of an XML document contain translatable content, while inline tags represent addition markup that can appear inside segments.

memoQ uses XML-style inline tags when importing and displaying XML, HTML, INX, MIF, XLIFF and TTX documents.

Display

memoQ displays inline tags (opening tag: ; closing tag: ; empty tag: ) differently from uninterpreted formatting tags. You can see their type, name and attributes, and you are free to rearrange, add or drop them. The information they include can be specified with the help of commands on the Edit ribbon.

In XML documents, the inline tags can be marked as non-translated. This means that the text in the inline tag should not be translated. memoQ replaces these inline tags and their contents with a single inline tag, so that the translator can insert these inline tags by a single key shortcut (i.e. copying a single inline tag to the target cell).

Inline tags in the document are verified against the XML format used to import the document, which means that you can only specify tags and attributes that are listed in the format. For specific formats (such as INX and MIF) memoQ uses predefined XML format settings. A set of menu commands and shortcuts is provided to manipulate them. memoQ will also automatically convert special character sequences into tags, allowing you to freely type them.

XML quality assurance

Because inline tags can be freely manipulated, translators can accidentally produce invalid documents. memoQ can perform a number of checks that produce warnings if there is a chance that the resulting document will be invalid. These are described in greater detail in XML Warnings. The checks result in warnings, indicated by a sign in the translation document. To view a collected list of all warnings and errors and resolve each of them, you can use the Resolve errors and warnings tab.

See also:

Special tags

memoQ works with "special" inline tags, e.g., mq:ch for characters. These tags have a darker red background color that can be changed in Options, under Appearance. By default, the special tag color is grey.

The following special tags are created by various filters when you import documents.

Special tag list:

  • tw:it: inline tags of TTX and Trados bilingual RTF files
  • st:it: inline tags from Star Transit if the Treat markup as XML option is disabled (otherwise, tags come through as "themselves")
  • mq:nt: placeholder for inline non-translatable text in RTF/DOCX files
  • mq:it: tags from memoQ table RTF files if the input doesn't make sense, and HTML tags from the Java properties filter
  • mq:ch: general placeholder tag for special characters, used e.g. in DOCX to represent tabs, and characters from the Symbols or WingDings fonts in the input
  • mq:gap: used during chained filter import in some document import cases, this tag is no longer used.
  • mq:rxt-req: required tags created by the Regex Tagger
  • mq:rxt: normal (not required) tags created by the Regex Tagger
  • mq:txml-ut: TXML tags when you import a Wordfast file
  • mq:pi: HTML and XML tag for processing information

    Tags produced by the generic XLIFF filter if the Mask with bpt, ept, ph or it inline tags option is selected in the XLIFF filter's General tab:

  • bpt (only if the tag has a "val" attribute)
  • ept (only if the tag has a "val" attribute)
  • ph (only if the tag has a "val" attribute)
  • it (only if the tag has a "val" attribute)

    Note: You can filter for tags. For instance, you have edited a Regex Tagger tag or turned text into a tag, you can filter for the "mq:rxt" tag to find your tagged text.