Aligning multiple-pair files
Align multiple files when you want to generate alignment result files (*.sdlalign) from multiple pairs of source and target files at a time.
About this task
Trados Studio sends the translation units (TUs) that result from all the generated alignment result files to the same translation memory (TM). When the alignment is complete, you can open each resulting *.sdlalign file separately in the Alignment view.
To make sure that Trados Studio pairs each source file to its correct target file, give your source and target file similar names and place them inside folders with similar names. For example:
- Source file: \Desktop\Translated\Archived\Project\MyBook\Chapter1_EN.doc
- Target file: \Libraries\Documents\Reviewed\MyBook_Reviewed\Chapter1_RO.doc
Procedure
- On the Welcome or the Translation Memories view, select Align Documents > Align Multiple Files.
- In the Align Documents wizard, on the Select Translation Memory page:
- Select the Save Alignment result files for later review checkbox.
- Choose the TM you want to use for the alignment results:
- Select Create to use a new TM. Choose the TM type where the alignment results will be stored and fillin the required details.
- Select Add to use an existing TM. Choose the TM type where the alignment results will be stored and fill in the required details.
Note: If your selected server-based TM contains multiple language pairs, Trados Studio enables the Next button on the Align Documents dialog. After you specify your source and target files, select Next to go to the Select Language Pair page. Here you can choose the language pair that matches the languages of the documents you want tot align. - (Optional) Select Settings to edit TM settings such as custom fields, language resources, access rights and performance.
By default, Trados Studio tags each TU generated from the alignment with three custom fields: Quality, Source File and Target File. The Quality field shows how confidentTrados 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 file. The Source and Target File fields show the location of the files that generated the TU.
- By default, Trados Studio saves each alignment result file in an Alignment Results folder under
%UserProfile%/My Documents/Studio [year]. Select Browse for folder to save the*.sdlalignfiles to a different folder instead. Trados Studio names each alignment result file that it generates after aligning multiple files[name of the source file].sdlalign.
- On the Documents for Alignment page:
- Select Add > Source Files/Source Files by Folder depending on whether you want to add source files individually or as bulk. Browse to the location of the file or folder.
- Select Add > Target Files/Target Files by Folder depending on whether you want to add target files individually or as bulk. Browse to the location of the file or folder.
Note: When you add source and target files by folder, Trados Studio automatically tries to match each file in the source folder to its corresponding file in the target folder in order to make sure that you are aligning the right files. Trados Studio matches files by looking at the names of the files and at the names of the folders which contain the files. Each source file is checked against all target files to find similarities between the filenames. The more similar the names of the source file and source folder to the names of the target file and target folder, the easier it is to find the correct file pairs.
- (Optional) Select File Types to change file type settings if you want to use custom settings for the files you are aligning.
Note: Make sure that the file type settings and the segmentation rules that you define for your source documents mirror in the settings that you define for your target documents. This enables Trados Studio to extract the same amount of content from the target and source documents, in the same order and to then break the extracted texts into correct sentences. For example, if you want to align a Word source file with a PDF target file and your Word filter also extracts hyperlinks and document properties, make sure that your PDF file type settings also extracts this type of information. Otherwise, Trados Studio will extract more information from the source document and will not be able to pair it with information from the target document.
- You can remove files matched incorrectly. To remove source files, select the required file or folder, and select Remove > All Source Files/Specific Source File. When you remove source files, Trados Studio automatically removes the associated target files. To remove target files, select the required file or folder, select Remove > All Target Files/Specific Target File.
- Select Finish to start the import, and then select Close to close the Align Documents wizard.
Note: When the alignment is complete, Trados Studio shows the Completed status and the number of TUs that have been imported into the TM. If an alignment task did not run successfully, an error is displayed next to the name of the source file. Select Show Error Details to view more information about the problem.
- In the pop-up dialog, select Yes to open the folder with the results of the alignment. Double-click the
*.sdlalignfiles that you want to open in the Alignment view.Note: You can also align a set of files without review if you just want to create TM matches for your project and return to your translation work. This sends the alignment results directly to the specified TM, without saving the alignment result file for later review.
- Adding multiple files to align
After selecting a translation memory (TM) for importing the alignment results, add the folder structures containing the target and source language files to align. - Changing file type settings for alignment
When you are aligning multiple files, you can change the default file type settings for your selected files. - Processing alignment files
After you have selected the files to be aligned and you have set the alignment options, select Finish on the Alignment and TM Options page to start the alignment process.