QA Checks

QA → 🔎 Run QA Checks… runs a set of saved checks over the whole project and lists everything they find: double spaces, doubled words, a space before a full stop, a deprecated term, the wrong decimal separator, or any other pattern you care about. Think of it as a linter for your translation. The checks only find; nothing in the project is changed.

The same window can also check that every translated segment has the same inline tags and codes as its source (see Tags & codes below).

How QA checks work

A QA check is an ordinary Find & Replace operation with its QA box ticked. That means:

• Checks live in F&R Sets, in the Find & Replace dialog. You can keep several sets, for example a “patent QA” set and a “marketing QA” set.
• A check can be plain text, Whole words, Entire segment or a Regex (regular expression), in the source, the target or both, and case-sensitive or not – exactly the options Find & Replace has.
• Sets are shared the same way as other F&R Sets: 📤 Export and 📥 Import of .svfr files.
• ▶ Run All in F&R Sets never runs a QA check as a replacement. A check usually has an empty “Replace with”, which would otherwise delete every match.

The starter set

If you have no checks yet, click ➕ Add basic checks in the QA Checks window. It creates a set called QA - basic checks with four checks switched on, all on the target side:

• Double space
• Space before a full stop or comma
• Doubled word (such as “the the”)
• Space inside brackets

Three more checks are included but switched off, because they are useful only for some jobs:

• Space at the start or end
• Repeated punctuation (this also catches ”…”)
• Straight quote (where curly quotes are wanted)

To switch one on, open Edit → Find… (Ctrl+F), expand the F&R Sets panel, select QA - basic checks and tick the ✓ box in front of the check. The ➕ Add basic checks button disappears once the set exists.

Adding your own checks

1. Open Edit → Find… (Ctrl+F).
2. Type what to look for in Find what, and set Search in, Match, Case sensitive and Regex as needed. Leave Replace with empty.
3. Click Find all to try the check out on the project.
4. Expand the F&R Sets panel, select a set (or create one with + New Set) and click + Add Current to Set.
5. In the list of operations, tick the QA box for the new check.

To change a check later, edit its text in the Find column of the list, or double-click it to load it back into the fields above. Untick its ✓ box to leave it out of the QA run without deleting it.

Tip

A few useful patterns, with Regex ticked: {2,} (two or more spaces), \s+$ (trailing spaces), \d\s+% (a space between a number and a percent sign). For a term the client no longer wants, type the word and choose Match: Whole words – no regex needed.

Running the checks

1. Choose QA → 🔎 Run QA Checks….
2. Pick a set under Check set. Only sets that contain at least one switched-on QA check are listed, with the number of checks in each.
3. Click ▶ Run.

The window stays open while you work, so you can fix things in the grid and click ▶ Run again to refresh the list.

Note

If you change a set in Find & Replace while the QA Checks window is open, choose QA → 🔎 Run QA Checks… again to pick up the change.

The results list

Each finding is one row:

Column	What it shows
Segment	The segment number
Check	The check that found it: its name for the starter checks, its Find pattern for your own
In	Source or Target
Found	The text that matched, with spaces shown as · so stray spaces are visible
Context	The text around the match, with the match itself in [brackets]

• Double-click a finding to go to its segment in the grid.
• Click a column header to sort by it.
• The line under the list says how many findings there are, in how many segments. A check with a regular expression that isn’t valid is named there in red, and the other checks still run.
• 💾 Export… saves the findings as a CSV file, for example to send to a reviewer.

Tags & codes

Tick Tags & codes match the source (it is on by default) to also compare each translated segment’s inline tags with its source. This lists:

• Tag/code missing from the target – a tag the source has but the translation lost;
• Tag/code not in the source – a tag in the translation that its source doesn’t have.

It covers the usual inline tags (<b>, </b>, <1>, [2}, {2] and so on) and also your own inline codes: the placeholders such as {playerName} or %s that you describe under Settings → 🏷️ Inline Codes. Tags are counted, so a tag that appears twice in the source but only once in the translation is reported too. Segments with no translation yet are skipped.

Note

The check recognises tags in angle brackets (<b>, </1>, <x id="3"/>) and memoQ’s bracket tags ([2}, {2]). Numbered placeholders in curly brackets, such as Phrase’s {1}, and short self-closing tags such as <2/> are included only when one of your inline code patterns matches them. The ready-made {placeholder} pattern under ➕ Common patterns covers {1}.

You don’t need any saved checks for this: if you have no QA check sets yet, ▶ Run runs the tag and code check on its own. Untick the box when you only want your saved checks.

See also Tag Validation.

Related

• Find & Replace – where checks are created and stored
• Check with LanguageTool – grammar, spelling and style
• Spellcheck · AI Proofreading