Aligning existing translated files
Alignment is a way of making use of previous translations. The Alignment tool in SDL Trados Studio turns previously translated documents into translation units (TUs) so that you can add them to a translation memory (TM). This means that you can build up a database of translations by leveraging previous translation experience. Studio can then use this translation experience to save you time and money on future, similar translations.
Why align existing translations?
You can align existing translated documents to:
- Build up a TM database
If you have just started using Studio and you do not have any translation memories, you can create TM content from existing public translations. For example, you can turn public, bilingual corpora into a TM that you can then use to translate your documents.
- Generate TM for translating similar text
If you want to translate the new version of a document, you can align the source and the translation of the previous version of the document to create a TM from the old translation. You can then use this TM to translate the new document. The translation matches that Studio finds when comparing the new document with the TM content can help you translate faster and maintain terminology consistency.
How does the alignment work?
The SDL Alignment tool matches the segments in the source language documents with the translated segments in the target language documents to determine which sentence pairs belong together. The tool pairs up sentences by looking at the structure of the documents.
Knowing that documents contain unique content that has to be translated and transferred into the target document, Studio divides the documents into sections. Studio then analyzes the two sections by unique features like proper names, numbers, dates, measurements etc. Each time it recognizes a unique element in the source document, the Alignment tool looks for it in the target text in order to create sentence pairs and send them to an *.sdltm TM as TUs.
Types of Alignment
Align with Review
| Align without Review
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Align Single File Pair
| Align Multiple Files
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Align Retrofit Files
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