Using Workflow to Perform Alignment
If you have produced translations that you created with a translation tool other than WorldServer, and you do not have the translation memory from those translations, SDL provides a way to leverage your legacy translations for use in WorldServer. The process is called alignment and can involve both automatic and human steps to complete.
In brief, asset alignment is a process that matches the segments in a source asset (an asset in its original language) with segments in an asset that has already been translated. The result of performing an alignment is a collection of translation pairs that can be stored in the translation memory (TM). The Translation Memory Administration Guide provides more information about alignment in the section about Translation Memory Migration.
The following diagram illustrates one way to perform alignment using workflow:
Figure 1. Alignment Workflow
The steps are as follows:
- The Align automatic action processes the segments generated for the source and target assets, attempting to align them. On success, the segment is marked as manually translated. For other segments, either a best guess is attempted, the target side is left blank, or the target side is populated with place holders.
The result of this step can be Perfect, if all the segments can be aligned, or Partial, if there are some segments that cannot be aligned. In either case, a human review is warranted.
- The Align human action occurs if the result of the Align automatic action was Partial. In this step, a human user can correct any misalignments.
- In the Review step, a user can perform quality control on the translation and log any issues that arise.
- The Save automatic action saves the translated document to the WorldServer Asset Interface System (AIS). If the Update TM? parameter is set to Yes, then the translation memory is also updated.