Align existing translations

Alignment pairs passages from an original with the corresponding passages in an existing translation. Use it when you have useful past work in two separate documents or text blocks and want to reuse it as translation units.

Quick steps

Provide a source document and its existing translation, check the proposed pairs, and correct them with merge, split, or shift tools. Lock checked pairs before realigning nearby rows. Save the reviewed pairs to a memory for reuse.

Alignment does not translate the original. Both languages must already be present in the material you provide.

Choose the source and translated documents

Choose an original and a translation covering the same content and version. Different editions, omitted paragraphs, and added headings make automatic pairing less reliable.

If you have several file pairs, make their order clear. The first source file should correspond to the first target file, and so on. A bilingual file that already contains both sides is different from two separate single-language documents; inspect how the file is loaded before adding another copy of its target.

Create an alignment

1. Open Alignment → Align.
2. Select the source and target languages.
3. Choose Files or Text.
4. Decide whether to enable Assisted by AI.
5. Add the matching files or paste the source and target into their respective boxes.
6. Choose Align and wait for preparation to finish.

Without AI assistance, Searchspeare uses its automatic alignment tools. Assisted by AI adds AI work to help interpret and refine the pairing, so it needs an available AI service. Either route needs human review.

The current wizard prepares an automatic alignment. If you want to adjust the structure manually afterward, use the alignment workspace's manual alignment and editing tools.

Choose the alignment languages and Files or Text input.

Add the source and target files on their respective sides.

Text input provides separate source and target boxes.

Review pairs in the alignment table

Read a source and its proposed target together. Check meaning before trusting equal row counts: one source sentence may correspond to two translated sentences, and a heading can shift every later pair.

Start near the beginning and inspect recognizable anchors, such as headings, numbers, product names, and section transitions. Use mismatch navigation to find places that deserve a closer look, but remember that similar lengths do not prove the meanings correspond.

Use locks to protect checked pairs

Lock a verified pair when you want it to act as an alignment anchor. The Realign inside the current lock boundary action works on the unlocked stretch containing the selected row, between the surrounding locked boundaries.

Realignment can also change rows above the selected row within the same unlocked stretch. Lock checked pairs before realigning nearby rows.

The document-wide realignment action and current-boundary action have different scopes. Read the command description before starting one.

Rows 24 and 26 are locked. The selected row 25 is the unlocked stretch between them; a boundary realignment would work inside these locks.

The alignment toolbar provides separate ordinary and Searchspeare realignment commands.

Merge, split, or shift rows

Use the alignment tools to merge related segments, split content at the cursor, shift one side, insert an empty row, or remove content that has no useful counterpart.

Keep the active source or target side in mind. A one-sided command changes alignment relationships differently from a command that merges or removes both sides.

Review the neighboring rows after each correction. Fixing one pair can reveal the cause of a longer shift.

Save to TM opens a memory picker. Select the intended destination before importing the reviewed pairs.

Save the checked pairs to a memory

When the useful pairs are reliable, use Import alignments to TM and select or create the destination memory. Alternatively, use Export alignments to TMX for exchange or a separate copy. Check the export options and intended scope before saving.

The Temporary Alignment sidebar entry reopens the temporary workspace. Treat it as work in progress: import the checked pairs into a memory or export them for later use.

You can also extract terminology from the aligned content. Review the candidate terms before saving them to a glossary; a correct sentence pair does not make every extracted phrase a useful term.