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Selecting TM and folder for alignment results

Before starting an alignment, specify the translation memories (TMs) where you want SDL Trados Studio to send the alignment results. You can choose to send the results to a new or to an existing TM, whether it is a file-based or a server-based TM.

Select TM for the alignment results

Procedure

  1. In the Welcome or Translation Memories view, click Home tab > Align Documents > Align Single File Pair. Studio opens the Align Documents wizard.
  2. Choose the TM you want to use for the alignment results:
    • click Create to use a new TM.
    • click Add to use an existing TM.
  3. Specify the type of TM to use:
    • click File-based Translation Memory to select a TM that you have stored on your computer.
    • click Server-based Translation Memory to select a TM stored on a TM Server.
  4. Optionally, click Settings to edit translation memory settings such as custom fields, language resources, access rights and performance.

    By default, Studio tags each translation unit generated from the alignment with three custom fields: Quality, Source File and Target File. The Quality field shows how confident Studio is that the source and target segment are aligned correctly. The quality score is calculated based on the internal alignment algorithm which considers linguistic and contextual dependencies between the source and target segments in the document. The Source and Target File fields show the location of the documents that generated the translation unit.

Select the folder for alignment result files

About this task

By default, Studio saves each alignment result file in an Alignment Results folder under %UserProfile%/My Documents/Studio 2015. Click Browse for folder to save the *.sdlalign files to a different folder instead. Studio names each alignment result file that it generates after aligning multiple files [name of the source file].sdlalign.

If you want to review the result of the alignment that Studio performs automatically, make sure to select the Save Alignment result files for later review option on the Select Translation Memory page.

When Studio finishes aligning your files, you can open the saved alignment results file in the Alignment view. Here can edit the connections and the segment content and open the alignment file in the Editor view for extra editing or QA checks.