You can create alignment projects after launching MadCap Align. An alignment project lets you leverage translation work previously completed outside of Lingo, uploading translated segments to your translation memory database.
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How to Create an Alignment Project
- Select Tools > MadCap Align.
- In MadCap Align, select File > New Project. The Start Alignment Wizard opens.
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Under the Source Version field, click Select File or Select Folder to bring files or folders, respectively, into the new project.
Note If you want to align files from a Flare, Mimic, or Doc-To-Help project, you must select the project file using the Select File button, rather than selecting the folder where the project is located.
- In the dialog that opens, navigate to the original project, file (in the original language), or folder (of individual files) and double-click it to add it to the alignment project.
- From the Source Language drop-down, select the original language that is used in the project you are translating.
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Under the Target Version field, click Select File or Select Folder.
Note If you selected a file for the source version, Align will disable the Select Folder button. Likewise, if you selected a folder, Align will disable the Select File button.
- In the dialog that opens, navigate to the previously translated version of that same project, file (in the original language), or folder (of individual files) and double-click it to add it to the alignment project.
- From the Target Language drop-down, select the language that you want to use for the translation.
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(Optional) Add a translation memory (TM) database to the alignment project. Do one of the following:
- Select an Existing TM From the Translation Memory drop-down, you can select a translation memory database.
- Add a New TM Click New Local or New Server to add a new TM.
- Click Next.
- In the Project Name field, type an appropriate name for your project.
- By default, a path to the Documents\My Aligned Projects folder on your hard drive is entered in the Project Folder field. (This folder is created when you install the program.) All subfolders and files related to the aligned project will be placed in this folder as you work on the project.
- Click
. The Select Folder dialog opens. - Navigate to the folder you want, select it, and click OK.
- Click
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Select an option for uploading alignments to your TM.
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Review all alignments before upload to translation memory
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Upload aligned files and review only unmapped files and files with imperfect alignment
Note If you select this option, any uploaded segments that are already matched 100% will not be displayed in the File Map window pane in MadCap Align. Only files with segments that require alignment will appear in the File Map window pane.
Note In order to use this feature, you must first install a translation memory database.
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Force segment alignment and upload segments; unmapped files will be disregarded and no align project will be created
Note In order to use this feature, you must first install a translation memory database.
Example You are translating a small Flare project. During the original translation, you translated the topic "Topic.htm" into Spanish. Later, however, an author split that topic in the source project into two separate files—Topic.htm and Topic2.htm. There are also nine other files in the project (e.g., glossary files, skin files).
Because there are differences between the translated file and the source file, you need to create an alignment project. Here's what would happen if you used each TM alignment option.
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Review all alignments before upload to TM
All 11 files in the project are available for review. This option takes the most work, because you have the option to review the files that are already aligned and the files that are not aligned, but it is the best way to be sure that there are no errors.
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Upload aligned files and review only unmapped files and files with imperfect alignment
Align automatically uploads the nine files that are already aligned to the TM. These files are not shown in the File Map. However, the two files that need to be aligned—Topic.htm and Topic2.htm—are shown in File Map so you can manually align them. This is a good option if you have a lot of files in your project and you only want to find the files that are not aligned.
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Force segment alignment and upload segments; unmapped files will be disregarded and no align project will be created
Since there are nine files that are already aligned, these files would be successfully uploaded to the TM. The remaining files—Topic.htm and Topic2.htm—would be disregarded. The alignment project would not be created. This option is the quickest option because it eliminates manual work, but you may miss out on alignments if there are several unaligned files.
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- Click Finish.
When you create an alignment project, a file with an .lialign extension is automatically generated (e.g., My Project Version 2 Italian.lialign). This is the main file for the alignment project and is stored at the root level of the project folder in Windows (e.g., Documents\My Aligned Projects\My Project Version 2 Italian\My Project Version 2 Italian.lialign). You can open the project by double-clicking this file. See Opening Projects.
What’s Next?
Although translated segments can automatically be uploaded to a translation memory database during the process of creating an alignment project, there might be some files or segments that require manual alignment. In the alignment project, the original and translated files and segments are shown side by side, allowing you to make sure everything is correct. If any pair of files or segments do not match precisely, you can manually align them. Once the alignment process is completed, you can manually upload those translated files or segments to your translation memory database. See Aligning Files and Aligning Segments.
