XLIFF Editor
The XLIFF Editor is an interface for translating and editing documents in a wide range of formats. XLIFF is an exchangeable standard file format that separates document formatting from the content and creates a bilingual source/target file, making it more user friendly for translating. It features an easy-to-learn and easy-to-use, uncluttered editing environment with side-by-side source and target texts and a preview function for many file formats.
The XLIFF Editor serves as either a stand-alone translation editing environment or as a front-end to the MultiTrans centralized TextBase TMs and TermBases. It can also connect to external sources such as machine translation engines. The XLIFF Editor works seamlessly on XLIFF files and on a wide range of XML-based, tagged file formats such as documents created by Office 2007 or 2010, FrameMaker, InDesign, XML, HTML, etc.
Tags - Tags store software commands, most often metadata or formatting commands. They appear as text within the "<" and ">" characters. When a tagged source file is imported into the XLIFF Editor, the tags are separated from the translatable content, leaving only the content exposed to the translator for the editing process. Work-in progress files are stored in industry-standard XLIFF format. When the translation is finished, the tags are reinserted into the target language file as it is exported back to the source file format, accurately recreating the original document structure.
Placeables - terms that do not get translated between source and target text, such as company or product names, or ones that have fixed or predictable translations, such as the names of countries or months. If a placeables TermBase has no translation for a given term, the source term will remain unchanged; if it does have a translation in the target language, then this translation will automatically appear. Placeables can be set not to affect the match levels since they can be replaced automatically. Segments with only differences in placeables will then not appear as fuzzy matches.
XLIFF - aan acronym for XML localization Interchange File Format. It is an XML-based format created to standardize localization. An XLIFF document is composed of one or more files. Each file consists of a source file and the corresponding translation for one language. Translatable content is stored in elements. The element holds a element to store the source text, and a element to store the translated text. The non-translatable content, such as document formatting information and metadata, is separated out as tags.
XML Files - Built into the XLIFF Editor is a simple yet sophisticated Mapping Editor that can be used to define and isolate translatable content from surrounding XML code. Use the Mapping Editor to identify elements or attributes that should be translated. Define internal, external, and ignore tags.
TMX - the "Translation Memory eXchange" file format, an industry standard for exchanging translation memory files. The XLIFF Editor supports TMX and TTX files (SDL Trados legacy tagged format file) out-of-the-box with a built-in mapping feature.
How Will XLIFF Editor Help Me?
Easy to use:
The side-by-side display of source and target text makes translating in the XLIFF Editor intuitive. Positioning of the various editing windows (windows for source and target segments as well as the TextBase TM, TermBase, and Editing Window) is highly flexible and easily configurable with a few mouse clicks. The menu area ribbon can be minimized to create even more editing and viewing space on your screen. Do you prefer to use the editing environment in your own language? Just switch the UI language with a few mouse clicks to English, French, or German.
Integrate directly into MultiTrans Prism:
Although the XLIFF Editor can be used as a stand-alone editing environment for pretranslated files, it becomes even more powerful when connected to MultiTrans Prism's TextBase TMs and TermBases. This provides you all of the advantages of Advanced Leveraging Translation Memory and its granular sub-segment matching. If you are venturing outside your own TM, use MultiTrans to access machine translation engines or to insert pretranslated segments or sentences right into your editing interface to gain a head-start in your translation creativity. Want to pre-translate your file from existing TM or external sources in an automated or semi-interactive mode? Just switch the Translation Agent on and let it go! Did you create a new term while you were translating? Send it right back to the TermBase on-the-fly.
Translation in context:
When connected to MultiTrans Prism's TextBase TMs and TermBases, the XLIFF Editor allows you to view segments in context in two ways: with a simple click on the Translation Agent's "Context" button, you can quickly see the TextBase TM and TermBase origins of any segment that you are working on. As well, with certain file types, you can easily view the source and target files rendered in their original layout either on their own or side-by-side for comparison! Need a spell-checker? It's built in! Want a word or character count? It's built in, too!
Supports many file formats:
Tagged file formats from many industry-standard products are supported out of the box by the XLIFF Editor. These include DOCX, PPTX, XLSX, HTML, XHTML, XML for the Web, MIF for FrameMaker, INX for InDesign, RESX for .NET user interface files, DITA and, of course, XLIFF itself. See below for more file formats.
XLIFF flexibility:
The XLIFF Editor stores your work-in-progress files in the industry-standard XLIFF file format. Want to exchange files with other editors? XLIFF files can be easily loaded into other editing environments that support the standard. This provides you with maximum interchange flexibility.
Integrated Quality Assurance features:
XLIFF Editor has powerful QA tools built in to help you translate more accurately. Check that Terminology follows your accepted terms in your TermBases. Check for missing numbers, parentheses and translations. XLIFF Editor automatically checks the well-formedness and validity of marked-up documents (HTML and XML) and all other document formats supported in the MultiTrans XLIFF Editor. There are a number of QA checks (Live Validation, a Validation Report and a filter) centered on ensuring the proper tags are re-placed in the target segment. When a user exports the target document back to the original format following translation, verification for well-formedness and validity is automatically performed, and any missing tags that would prevent the target document from re-opening are replaced within the document in a non-obtrusive manner
Preserve the original file format:
When you are finished with your translation work, the output generated by the XLIFF Editor is written back to the original file format, transferring the source document structure to your final target language version. DOCX becomes DOCX, INX becomes INX, and so on.
The XLIFF Editor currently supports the following formats:
- XLIFF. MultiTrans can open standard XLIFF files generated by other tools.
- XML. By default, XML tags are treated as external tags, however users can add specific tags through the Mapping Editor which is available with the MultiTrans XLIFF Editor (enables mapping translatable vs. non-translatable tags, in-line tags as well as attributes within tags )
- DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture). This is an XML-based standard for authoring, producing, and delivering information.
- Microsoft Word (DOC and DOCX, version of MS Word 2002 through to 2010)
- Microsoft PowerPoint (PPT and PPTX, version of MS PowerPoint 2002 through to 2010)
- Microsoft Excel (XLS and XLSX, version of MS Excel 2002 through to 2010)
- Open Document (ODF)
- Open Document Presentation (ODP)
- Open Document Spreadsheet (ODS)
- Open Document Text (ODT)
- HTML / XHTML
- RESX (Software XML resources for Localization)
- TMX (Translation Memory eXchange format)
- MIF (MIF is Maker Interchange Format (Frame Maker documents). Versions 7, 8 and 9 are supported.)
- INX (InDesign Interchange format). InDesign documents normally have INDD file extensions, but from within InDesign they can be saved as INX. Versions CS2, CS3 and CS4 are supported.
- TTX (Trados Tag Editor Files). MultiTrans XLIFF Editor can open bilingual, pre-treated TTX files.
XLIFF Editor QA Features
- Ability to validate terminology usage, directly comparing source sentence, target sentence and approved filtered terminology lists from the TermBase and flagging any sentence where one of the approved translations is not found in the target sentence. This includes matching with lemmatization so that conjugated terms may also be found. This also includes flagging when multiple target terms are available, so that the reviewer can quickly validate that the right translation is used for the right context.
- Ability to validate that all placeables have been replaced consistently, and ability to filter-out the sentences that were built with placeables in order to ensure that a human can validate that they were replaced properly (beyond the automated validation).
- Ability to improve the detection of filter on mistakes in the in-line markup language. The software performs DTD validation, skeleton mark-up language validation and detection of missing tags between the source and the target.
- Ability to validate punctuation in the target segment according to target locale (validated against equivalents to source locale punctuation).
- Ability to identify if there are extra spaces in the target segment.
- Ability to identify language-specific forbidden characters according to a mapping table compared to what their valid character replacements would be. This feature also enables automatic replacement of forbidden characters with their valid replacements.
- The "non translated segments" filter identifies translation units with identical source and target segments.
- User-friendly spelling and grammar checking. The XLIFF Editor has a user friendly spellchecker and grammar checker with the ability to treat most common European Union and Asian languages.
- Ability to flag inconsistencies as part of the filters and quality assurance checks. This functionality allows a translator or reviser to view and correct identical source segments with varying translations.
How XLIFF Editor works
You import your file into XLIFF Editor where the content appears in side by side columns displaying source and target. When you are connected to a MultiTrans Prism TextBase and TermBase it will show you matching segments:
Terminology checks are generally done during the translation itself. When retrieving segment matches from the TextBase TM, the MultiTrans Translation Agent will check any open TermBases at the same time and signal the translator that the corresponding segment may have issues with the terminology. Terms are flagged if they exist in the source segment, but the appropriate translation is not found in the target segment.
Tagged data for individual words show as contracted flags so you can position as needed. In case the tags will need to be re-positioned manually in the target text.
Licensing:
- Multilingual
- Available as named or concurrent
- Included with the purchase of Expert, Freelance, or External Translator licenses, but can be purchased separately as well.
For more information please contact us.
