Aligning – most common issues & troubleshooting

Introduction

Below are the most common problems clients report in tickets concerning the aligning feature.

Before reading the article below, we recommend that you read our general article on the Aligning feature. This article describes the key points of the aligning mechanism: Aligning feature.

Before reading the article below, we recommend that you read our general article on the Aligning feature. This article describes the key points of the aligning mechanism: Aligning feature.


Issue description & Solution

Languages are not displayed in the align dropdown

XTM Cloud displays a wide range of languages that you can choose. Keep in mind that not all the languages that are available in XTM Cloud are also available in the aligning process.

Solution: Before attempting to align files, make sure that the languages you want to use in the aligning process are indeed available in their Source language and Target language dropdowns in the Align form.

Alignment failed for some files/languages

There might be many reasons why alignment failed, from server malfunction to a problem with the source files themselves. For example, alignment will fail if the analysis of the input files cannot be performed properly. This might be caused by situations in which the file is not structured correctly (e.g. missing nodes) or the filter for a particular file format does not work correctly.

Solution: To begin troubleshooting yourself, you can perform these steps to confirm if the case above applies:

  1. Create a sample project using the files used for alignment.

  2. Check if the analysis was successful.

  3. If not, create a support ticket for the XTM International Support team and provide details about the issue.

Upload limit

Note that, by default, the standard alignment file upload size for any XTM Cloud server is set to 150MB, separately for the source and target file. If you exceed this limit, a JSON 500 error message will be displayed, and also an additional UI message about the failed align.

Solution: To bypass this limitation, try the following:

  1. Zip your files and attempt to upload them again.

  2. If this solution still not yield any results, attempt to group your files and upload them in succession. A good way to reduce the total size of your files is to remove any instances of repeated segments.

The difference in files volume

Aligning, as the name suggests, is the process of matching a source segment to a target segment. Therefore, if there is a big difference in the number of segments between two files, aligning will fail.

Solution: A good way to measure how many segments a particular file contains is to create a test project in XTM Cloud for each file and then compare what is displayed in this project's Workflow and Metrics section.

Aligning files takes too much time

Solution: There are two possible causes:

  1. Your file is waiting in the alignment queue and waiting for another company's file to finish aligning. In such a case, we request that you give us a little time to perform the necessary actions.

  2. You have chosen a particular language combination to align for the first time. It means that the system has to generate a suitable dictionary before the process can be started. When aligning for that specific language combination for the second time, the dictionary is then reused, shortening the overall process.

The dictionaries might be missing for some less frequently used language combinations that are being aligned for the first time.

Each combination requires a dictionary, but the language combinations are working in both ways; so, for example, the English (USA) → Polish alignment will use the same dictionary as Polish → English (USA) alignment. Furthermore, the dictionaries are the same for language variants, so English (USA) and English (UK) use the same dictionary.