Forum: CAT Tools Technical Help
Topic: I have been asked to provide a memory - how do I do this?
Poster: Samuel Murray
Post title: Three examples of aligners
I took a small text and pasted it as both source and target, and then I made one change in the source and one change in the target, and then ran three aligners mentioned in this thread, to show what happens.
The original text:
I changed "happy, and" to "happy. And" in the source text, and I changed "pancake, had" to "pancake. It had" in the target text. In other words, I added a sentence in the source text and further down I added a sentence in the target text.
[b]Wordfast Anywhere[/b]
Here is Wordfast Anywhere aligner's alignment result:
The red text is lost, and the orange text is misaligned.
From this test I deduce that the aligner resets itself at the start of every new paragraph (which is why the text starting from the second segment is correctly aligned again for a while, and why the last sentence is correctly aligned as well). It would seem that the Wordfast Anywhere aligner is quite a simple aligner: it splits each paragraph by sentence and then assumes that each sentence in the source and target text will just line up.
If you had used this aligner, you'd have to correct these alignment errors before delivering it to the client. The Wordfast Anywhere aligner does not have an interactive component, so it generates a number of files (CSV, TMX, etc.) which you then have to "fix" in another tool (e.g. Excel).
[b]LF Aligner[/b]
Here is what LF Aligner does with the text (as viewed in LF Aligner's editor):
I marked the problematic segments in red blocks. The alignment is much more useful but it's still not perfect -- the user would have to manually merge the first two segments in the editor.
[b]Trados Aligner[/b]
Since someone mentioned Trados' aligner, I'll add it here, too. This is what Trados does to the test files:
Trados correctly guessed how to deal with the two problem segments, and Trados opens the alignment in an alignment editor for the user to correct. However, I find Trados' aligner's controls very cumbersome (it involves a lot of mousework) and the two columns jump up and down independently quite a bit while editing, and I find the lines confusing to look at. Still, it's a relatively good aligner.
As I'm sure you're aware, though, Trados is quite expensive.
[Edited at 2023-10-18 12:11 GMT]
Topic: I have been asked to provide a memory - how do I do this?
Poster: Samuel Murray
Post title: Three examples of aligners
I took a small text and pasted it as both source and target, and then I made one change in the source and one change in the target, and then ran three aligners mentioned in this thread, to show what happens.
The original text:
I changed "happy, and" to "happy. And" in the source text, and I changed "pancake, had" to "pancake. It had" in the target text. In other words, I added a sentence in the source text and further down I added a sentence in the target text.
[b]Wordfast Anywhere[/b]
Here is Wordfast Anywhere aligner's alignment result:
The red text is lost, and the orange text is misaligned.
From this test I deduce that the aligner resets itself at the start of every new paragraph (which is why the text starting from the second segment is correctly aligned again for a while, and why the last sentence is correctly aligned as well). It would seem that the Wordfast Anywhere aligner is quite a simple aligner: it splits each paragraph by sentence and then assumes that each sentence in the source and target text will just line up.
If you had used this aligner, you'd have to correct these alignment errors before delivering it to the client. The Wordfast Anywhere aligner does not have an interactive component, so it generates a number of files (CSV, TMX, etc.) which you then have to "fix" in another tool (e.g. Excel).
[b]LF Aligner[/b]
Here is what LF Aligner does with the text (as viewed in LF Aligner's editor):
I marked the problematic segments in red blocks. The alignment is much more useful but it's still not perfect -- the user would have to manually merge the first two segments in the editor.
[b]Trados Aligner[/b]
Since someone mentioned Trados' aligner, I'll add it here, too. This is what Trados does to the test files:
Trados correctly guessed how to deal with the two problem segments, and Trados opens the alignment in an alignment editor for the user to correct. However, I find Trados' aligner's controls very cumbersome (it involves a lot of mousework) and the two columns jump up and down independently quite a bit while editing, and I find the lines confusing to look at. Still, it's a relatively good aligner.
As I'm sure you're aware, though, Trados is quite expensive.
[Edited at 2023-10-18 12:11 GMT]