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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

  • Suitable when the source files you are aligning are not exact translations of your target files.
  • The alignment result files open in the Alignment view. Here you can heavily edit the connections and the segment content.
  • You can then also open the alignment file in the Editor view for extra editing or QA checks.

Align without Review

  • Suitable when you just want to create TM matches for your project and return to your translation work.
  • The translation units generated from the alignment open in the Translation Memory view. Here you can make small edits to the TUs before importing them into the translation memory.

Align Single File Pair

  • Suitable when you want to pair one source document to its corresponding target document and generate one single alignment result (*.sdlalign) file.
  • Sends the translation units resulting from the aligned source and target document to your specified translation memory.

Align Multiple Files

  • Suitable when you want to align several pairs of files at the same time. This generates an alignment result (*.sdlalign) file for each pair of source and target document.
  • Sends the translation units that result for all the generated alignment result files to the same translation memory.

Align Retrofit Files

  • This is an additional case where alignment is used. Studio performs an automatic alignment while updating the changes from an external reviewed target file. You can also choose to review and manually adjust this alignment.
  • The alignment result files open in the Alignment view prior to adding the review changes to the project files. You can edit the connections, but you can only connect segments that are in the same paragraph.

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