Add multiple files for alignment

Alignment is a way to match the segments in a document to the segments in the translation of the same document. If you have a document and its translation, it is called a document pair. You can add a lot of document pairs at a time to LiveDocs corpora. When you add document pairs to a LiveDocs corpus, memoQ aligns the segments in the documents – in other words, it matches each segment with its translation from the translated documents. First, documents on both sides are broken up into segments, and then the corresponding segments are matched using statistical and linguistic algorithms. Although memoQ's automatic alignment results are in many cases superior to those of other translation tools, human revision may be necessary for good results.

With memoQ's LiveAlign technology, the alignment pairs immediately become searchable in the LiveDocs corpus: there is no need to export the alignment results to a translation memory before the translation. You can also add new document pairs to the corpus while you are translating – the newly added segments start giving you exact and fuzzy matches in a few seconds afterwards.

The Add multiple files for alignment dialog allows you to add multiple files to your project to be aligned, and run the alignment. This is the dialog where you match the documents  to each other according to their names and sizes.

Note: To view results of the alignment, open the newly added alignment pair in the aligned document pair view using the LiveDocs pane of Project home.

How to begin

In Project home, navigate to the LiveDocs pane: click the LiveDocs icon on the left. Then, select a LiveDocs corpus in the upper list. Then, on the LiveDocs ribbon tab, click the Add Alignment Pairs button.

Commands and options

Meta-information section:

•The meta-information section allows for easier management of LiveDocs corpora. Use the Source language and Target language drop-down lists to choose the source language and the target language for the documents. LiveDocs corpora are multilingual, and the set of languages is not fixed.

Note: If you work in a project (in the Project home tab), you can choose from the languages of the project only. If you manage the LiveDocs corpus in the Resource console, you can choose any language that memoQ supports.

•Keywords text box: Type one or more keywords for the alignment pair. If you have many documents in a LiveDocs corpus, you can search for the documents using these keywords. If you type two or more keywords, separate them with semicolons (;). Using keywords, you can find individual documents in your corpus when there are many documents.
 

Documents section:

•Add source documents: Imports one or more documents, and adds them to the current project as documents in the source language. When you click this link, the Open dialog appears where you can select one or more documents. You can select multiple documents of various types (i.e. you can mix the document types). With the Add document command, memoQ will use the default document filter with its default configuration for each file extension. For example, it will import .DOCX files using the Microsoft Office Word 2007 document filter.

•Add source documents as: Imports one or more documents, and adds them to the current project as documents in the source language. This time, you can specify the import settings for each document. After you select the document or documents in the Open dialog, the Document import settings dialog appears, where you can adjust the import settings specific to the selected document type. You can even select a different document type. If you select multiple documents of different types, the Multiple file import settings dialog appears where you can choose and configure a document filter for each selected file.

•Add source folder structure: Displays the Add folder structure dialog where you can choose a folder to scan for source documents, and configure various settings of the import process. memoQ will import all supported files from the selected folder and its subfolders. In this dialog, you can also configure the document filter for each file imported.

Note: If you want to extract all files in a folder structure that contain _en, type *_en*.* under Include files

•Add target documents: Imports one or more documents, and adds them to the current project as documents in the target language. When you click this link, the Open dialog appears where you can select one or more documents. You can select multiple documents of various types (i.e. you can mix the document types). With the Add document command, memoQ will use the default document filter with its default configuration for each file extension. For example, it will import .DOCX files using the Microsoft Office Word 2007 document filter.

•Add target documents as: Imports one or more documents, and adds them to the current project as documents in the target language. This time, you can specify the import settings for each document. After you select the document or documents in the Open dialog, the Document import settings dialog appears, where you can adjust the import settings specific to the selected document type. You can even select a different document type. If you select multiple documents of different types, the Multiple file import settings dialog appears where you can choose and configure a document filter for each selected file.

•Add target folder structure: Displays the Add folder structure dialog where you can choose a folder to scan for target documents, and configure various settings of the import process. memoQ will import all supported files from the selected folder and its subfolders. In this dialog, you can also configure the document filter for each file imported.

•Link documents: Links two documents together, establishing that one document is the translation of the other. Select the source document, then press and hold down Ctrl, and select the target document, and then click this command. memoQ displays the Link documents dialog to ask for options: one of the documents that are being linked must be removed from the LiveDocs corpus.

•Unlink documents: Deletes the link between two documents. Select the document pair and click this command.

•Auto-align documents: Click this command to make memoQ automatically link the corresponding files. memoQ looks for similarities in the file names.

Note: memoQ automatically re-aligns the document names when you add documents to the source side or the target side. If you do not want this to happen automatically, clear the tick mark from the Re-align pairs automatically when new documents are added check box (just above the document pair list).

•Remove entry: Removes a file from the project.
 

Alignment options section:

•Structural alignment check box: This text box is available when you align Excel, XML, or RESX documents. If the documents contain identifiers for each segment, memoQ can use these identifiers to match the segments together. In this case, memoQ does not use the 'traditional' mathematical algorithm – instead, it just looks for the identifiers. With structured documents, this alignment method is much faster and more precise than the mathematical algorithm. Check this check box if you want memoQ to use segment identifiers instead of mathematics. Check the Do not segment content check box to not segment the documents on import. If you check this check box, memoQ imports the source and target documents without segmenting the file to sentences, i.e., the effect is the same as using an empty segmentation rule set for both languages under Project home > Settings > Segmentation rules.

•Use terms as anchors check box: Check this check box if you want memoQ to look for terms in the aligned documents. You need term bases in your project to do this. If memoQ finds a source term in a source segment, and its translation in a target segment, it is an indication that the two segments belong together.

•Look up terms now check box: Normally, memoQ queries the term bases while matching the segments together. However, if you think memoQ will find a lot of terms, tick this check box: then memoQ will read through the documents and look up all possible terms up front: this makes the alignment process quicker.

•Term base with the highest rank only check box: Check this check box if your project has multiple term bases, but you want the alignment to use the highest ranked term base only. If you have large reference term bases, this can also make alignment run faster.

•Minimum term length spin box: Set the minimum length of terms that the aligner should deal with. Short terms can result in a lot of false anchors, which can slow down the alignment process. Normally, you should not change this number, unless you have specific abbreviations in your term base that you want memoQ to match in the documents.

•Compare bold/italic/underline check box: Check this check box if you want memoQ to use bold/italic/underline formatting as an indication that two segments belong together.

•Compare inline tags check box: Check this check box if your documents have inline tags and you want memoQ to use them as an indication that two segments belong together. Note that this works only when the two documents are in the same document format (for example, both are DOCX files), and their formatting is fairly similar.

Navigation

Click OK to close the dialog and launch the alignment process. If you click Cancel, memoQ will close the dialog without adding any alignment pairs.