The Beebox is capable of translating source files or content. Typically, you send a source file and you get translated files back. The alignment feature lets you send source files plus any translated files you may have. These are typically legacy translations. The Beebox will read the translation and align them on the fly. In other words: You can send existing translations to the Beebox without having to create translation memories in advance. As simple as that! This document describes how to make best use of the Beebox alignment features.
Continue reading:
What is alignment?
Alignment takes a source file, such as a Word document, plus a translated file. It then splits each file into segments such as sentences or phrases. Finally, it “aligns” source and target segments and tells which source sentence corresponds to which target sentence. The result is similar to a translation memory. The process sounds more trivial than it is. Often, one source sentence may map to two or more target sentences (e.g. if a long sentence was translated into multiple sentences). Off-the-shelf alignment tools do exist and they are very frequently used to convert existing translated content into translation memories. These can then be uploaded to the Beebox.