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The Asset Alignment Process

The alignment process is accomplished in these steps: automatic alignment, manual align/review, and TM update. These steps are managed through a WorldServer translation project. The critical components of this project are the Align automatic action followed by a human translation and review step, and finally a TM update step.

The Align automatic action processes the segments generated for both the source and target assets. It then attempts to align them based on the implemented heuristics. It identifies the segments that are deemed to be aligned effectively, and marks them as being manually translated. For other segments, it will make a best guess or leave the target side completely blank (or simply populate it with appropriate placeholders.) Those segments for which it makes guesses are not marked as translated in the target asset.

To make the abstraction a little clearer, these assets are in play in the alignment process:
  • The source asset containing the content to be translated.
  • The target asset, which will be generated during the alignment process.
  • The translated target file from which the alignment process attempts to match up to the source asset on a segment-by-segment basis.

After the Align automatic action completes, the next step is the translation step or the review step. Depending on the nature of the project, the translator may review the segments that have been aligned for correctness and then provide translations for the remaining segments. Upon completion, the translator may save the changes only to the target asset or may choose to update the TM as well if there is not a separate reviewer step defined in the workflow.