Aspire is a translation alignment tool that creates translation memories from a source and a target text based on machine translation.

Aspire can be used as a web app or a command-line program. Each implementation has its own features and limitations.

Make sure to add and change usernames and passwords as needed by modifying apsire_web_app\users.py. Password will be visible in the code. The web app runs on lacalhost by default. If you need to make the app publically accessible, it's your responsibility to set up a secure connection (HTTPS) between the user and the local app. The web app itself does not provide any encryption or security features.

• Align plain text or provide source and target URLs to align web pages
• Easily choose alignment algorithm and fine-tune parameters
• Segmentation is automatic and can be customized by modifying the default SRX file: apsire_web_app/web_dynamic/py_srx_segmenter/default_rules.srx
• Export TMX or XLS translation memories
• Review alignments to approve or reject pairs
• View alignment scores

• One alignment operation at a time
• Basic user authentication

Aspire's web app uses the Google Cloud Translate API, which is a paid service by Google. You are responsible for defining your own spending limits and usage quotas. To proceed with account setup, follow these steps:

1. Create a Google Cloud account
2. Create a project and enable the Google Cloud Translate API.
3. Follow these steps to obtain a JSON file containing authentication credentials.
4. Rename the JSON file and store it in apsire_web_app/web_dynamic/google_trans_api_auth/creds.json

Other versions may work but were not tested.

In addition to Python 3.8, you need to install Microsoft Build Tools 2015 Update 3. Scroll down to Other Tools, Frameworks, and Redistributables to find it. After installing the build tools, start the Windows Command Prompt in Aspire's root folder and run:

python -m venv asp-env
call asp-env\Scripts\activate.bat
pip install wheel==0.36.2
pip install -r apsire_web_app\requirements.txt
pip install -r aspire_aligner\requirements.txt

call asp-env\Scripts\activate.bat
cd apsire_web_app
set FLASK_APP=flask_app.py
python -m flask run

cd into Aspire's root folder, then run the following commands:

sudo apt-get install python3-venv build-essential python3-dev
python3 -m venv asp-env
source asp-env/bin/activate
pip install wheel==0.36.2
pip install cython==0.29.21
pip install -r apsire_web_app/requirements.txt
pip install -r aspire_aligner/requirements.txt

source asp-env/bin/activate
cd apsire_web_app
export FLASK_APP=flask_app.py
python3 -m flask run

Warning: refer to the security section above. Point the browser to the default URL, typically: http://127.0.0.1:5000/ Use one of the username/password combinations you entered in apsire_web_app\users.py

• Can be used by developers for automating alignment jobs
• Align multiple plain text files
• Names of source, target, and MT files can be read from an Excel sheet
• Export TMX or XLS translation memories
• Can be built and utilized by other applications.

• For advanced users
• Does not offer segmentation. Plain text files need to be pre-segmented.
• Does not automatically fetch machine translation. Machine translation should be provided as a plain text file.

Create a virtual environment and install requirements.txt.

Then run python aspire_aligner\main.py -h for usage information.

This tool was presented at the Kent State University Translation in Transition conference. For information about accuracy, refer to the conference abstract.