II. Signing up to YouAlign

If you have not used YouAlign before, you will first need to create a user account. (If you already have an account, skip this step and go directly to Getting Ready.) 

1. Open the browser of your choice (e.g. Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox) by double-clicking on the shortcut icon on your desktop or from the Start menu.
2. In the address bar, enter www.youalign.com, and hit Enter on your keyboard to go to the YouAlign home page (or simply click on the link provided here.) If English is not already the interface language, click on English in the upper right-hand corner of the page.    

3. Once on the YouAlign home page, click on the Create an account link, located below the Log Into YouAlign field.

4. Enter the information required to create your account, and read the YouAlign Privacy Policy. Then click on the Create Account button at the bottom of the page.

5. A confirmation email will be sent to you. Activate your YouAlign account by opening your email account and clicking on the link provided in this email.

III. Getting ready

1. Locate the files you want to align.
   1. If you already have files you would like to align, be sure you know where they are.
   2. If you do not already have files to align:
      1. Create a sub-directory called YouAlign (or another name that you wish). (For instructions, see Creating a sub-directory in Windows.)
      2. Download the compressed folder YouAlign Tutorial Level I files, which contains the files WHO-obesityEN.doc and WHO-obesityFR.doc.
      3. Extract the files to the sub-directory you have just created. (For instructions see Extracting files from a compressed folder in Windows.)
2. Log into your YouAlign account.
   1. If you have not already done so, open the browser of your choice (e.g. Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox) by double-clicking on the shortcut icon on your desktop or from the Start menu. Then enter www.youalign.com in the address bar, and hit Enter on your keyboard to go to the YouAlign home page. (Or simply click on the link provided here.) If English is not already the interface language, click on English in the upper right-hand corner of the page. 
   2. Enter your email address and your password in the corresponding fields. Then click on the Login button.  

IV. Aligning your documents

YouAlign allows you to create bitexts from your archived documents. The files you use must not exceed 1 Mo in size. 

1. The Alignment Settings page appears automatically after you log in.
2. In the section 1. Select the files you wish to align, identify the files you would like to align and the language associated with each file.
   1. Click on the Choose File button below Source File, and find the French-language file. If you are using the files suggested in this tutorial, find WHO-obesityFR.doc.   
   2. Choose the corresponding language (in this case, FRA) from the Language dropdown menu, located to the right of the first Choose File option.
   3. Repeat these two steps to identify the target file (e.g. WHO-obesityEN.doc) and target language (e.g. ENG). 

3. In the section 2. Select the segment filtering criteria (optional), you may select none, one, two, or all three of the checkboxes, depending on the type of segments you wish to reject from the alignment.

4. Click on the Align Now button to align your documents. This process may take several minutes depending on the size of the files and the speed of your internet connection. 

V. Downloading the alignment results

Once the alignment has been completed, a preview of the alignment appears on the screen.  

1. Verify that the segments have been correctly aligned. 

   1. Would you say that the alignment is perfect? Why or why not? If not, do you have an idea about what aspects of the files might have created problems for YouAlign?
   2. Did you have to go back to the previous page and set any filtering criteria in order to obtain better alignment results? If so, which of the boxes did you check? If not, try modifying these criteria to see how the alignment results are affected.
2. Download the alignment results by clicking on either Download alignment in TMX format or Download alignment in (HTML) format (located at the top of the page), depending on the format supported by the translation memory system you are or will be using. (For more information on translation memory systems, see the list of tutorials and exercises offered by CERTT in the LinguisTech portal).