How to use the alignment Automatic Action
The basic workflow involving the Align automatic action is illustrated below.
- The Align Step
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In short, the workflow has three primary steps – the
Alignautomatic action step, theReviewhuman step, and aSaveautomatic action step.TheAlignaction has two outputs or transitions defined.- Partial – denotes that the asset was not completely aligned, and that some segments need to be translated and reviewed.
- Perfect – denotes that all of the segments in the source document were successfully aligned with the segments from the translated target asset.
Alignautomatic action requires two parameters to be configured.These parameters define the base locations for the source assets and the translated assets to be used during the alignment process.- Source Asset Base AIS Path – specifies the AIS base path for the assets to be aligned. This workflow can be used only with assets for which the base path is the first part of their AIS path. In the example above, the base path is set to
/XML/en_US. - Previous Translations Base AIS Path – specifies the AIS base path for locating the translated version of the source assets. In the example above, this is set to
/XML/fr_FR. The translated files must match the name and relative path of the source assets. For instance, if the source asset to be aligned is located at the AIS path of/XML/en_US/release1/index.html, then the system would expect the corresponding translated target asset to be located at/XML/fr_FR/release1/index.html. (This example assumes that the base directories are defined as above.)
- The Review Step
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The review step allows for a user to check the results of the alignment process. In the workflow defined above, the review happens only when there is a partial alignment. However, typically, the review would happen regardless. The alignment process is not flawless, even when it reports a perfect alignment. Additionally, this step also provides the opportunity to perform additional translations for the unaligned segments.
Another variation to the above workflow is to define a translation step to follow partially aligned assets. The translation step and the perfect align transition would both then flow into a review step. If the reviewer rejects the work, it could be sent back to the translator instead of simply finishing.
- The Save Step
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The basic idea is to save the results, and if desired, update the TM with the newly aligned and reviewed translations. Saving the results merely causes the actual target file to be generated. This is not the same file that is used during the alignment process. It is the normal AIS target file based on the defined AIS target linkage definitions. Optionally, this step can update the TM with the provided translations. To do this, set the
Update TM?parameter of theSaveautomatic action toYes.