Alignment - When to Use

Alignment in the Beebox serves multiple purposes:

Use case	Description	Comments
Import legacy translations from source and translated files (Word, Excel, XML...)	Some or all of your content is already translated. You may or you may not have translation memories. When saving a source file to the Beebox, simply include your existing translated files. The Beebox will automatically align the files and extract not just the source segments but also the translations. If you have translation memories, upload those to the Beebox beforehand. Memories are leveraged to improve alignment quality. Upload dictionaries to further improve alignment quality.	No preliminary alignment with 3^rd party tools required. No manual work. Existing memories or dictionaries can help improve quality of results.
Permit editing of translated files and have Beebox update memories directly	When using the Beebox for translation, translated content must not be further edited outside the Beebox. The reason is that those changes do not usually go back to the Beebox and its memories. Using alignment, you can safely permit users to edit translated content outside the Beebox. After any editing is done, simply send the original file + the edited translated file once again to the Beebox. This will align the content, detect changes in the translation and immediately update Beebox memories. The changes are then queued for human approval.	Perfectly synchronizes translations between CMS, Beebox and TMS.
With CMS systems: Let users review, edit and annotate translated pages	This point is similar to the one above. CMS users may want to proofread newly translated content from within the CMS. They may then make changes (see previous point) or leave comments for the translation team. Such a comment would be typed into the translated page/file such as: “(This text is too long, doesn’t fit on screen – please shorten!)”. Once the user has added comments, simply extract the original and the translated content or file again to the Beebox. The Beebox now aligns content, detect changes (aka comments) in the translation. The changes and comments are then sent to the human translation team (TMS link or via Xliff).	Send comments by CMS user to the translation team.