Parallel text alignment

A parallel text is a text in one language together with its translation in another language. Large collections of parallel texts are called parallel corpora (see corpus). Aligning parallel corpora at sentence level is a prerequisite for many areas of corpus linguistic research. This step identifies the corresponding sentences in both halves of the parallel text.

During translation, sentences can be split, merged, deleted, inserted or changed in order. This makes alignment a non-trivial task.