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Translated files & XLIFF

Delivery is where translated rows turn back into documents. This page describes the files you download, and the XLIFF paths in and out of a project for working with other translation tools.

Creating translated files

Section titled “Creating translated files”

On the hub’s Delivery tab (project managers and admins), select Create translated files. Every file is rebuilt for every target language in two stages, shown on the file card as Rebuilding layout and Generating output. When a rebuild finishes its file appears under Available downloads.

Rebuilding is repeatable. Run it again whenever rows have changed; a download whose rows were edited after it was created is marked Rows changed since creation, so you can tell a current file from a stale one. Downloading or rebuilding never requires re-opening a completed project.

Two things can block delivery:

  • Unpaid assignments — files cannot be created or downloaded until accepted offers are settled. See Delivery & payments.
  • Open QA issues at error or critical severity are flagged before delivery. See QA & entities.

What you download

Section titled “What you download”
Property Behaviour
Format Same as the source file: .docx in, .docx out; .pdf in, .pdf out
Name The source name with the target language appended, for example report_fin.docx
Scope One file per source file and target language, downloaded individually
Content The original document with translated text in place; see what gets translated

A row that is still empty in a target is delivered with its source text, so an unfinished file is complete but partly untranslated rather than full of gaps. Check the editor’s progress counts before delivering.

XLIFF

Section titled “XLIFF”

XLIFF is the exchange format between translation tools. A project supports it in three ways.

As a source file

Section titled “As a source file”

.xlf and .xliff files can be uploaded as project documents. Each translation unit becomes a row, inline tags are shown as protected spans in the editor, and the delivered file is an XLIFF with the targets filled.

Importing pre-existing translations

Section titled “Importing pre-existing translations”

Any source document can carry a companion XLIFF that already holds translations, for example from a previous vendor or an external CAT tool. Use Import XLIFF file on the file in the wizard’s Upload Files step.

  • Accepted: XLIFF 1.2, 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2, plus .sdlxliff and .mqxliff.
  • The XLIFF’s segmentation is used for the file, so the rows in the editor match the translation units, not the platform’s own sentence split.
  • Translation units are matched to the document in order. The XLIFF should have been produced from the same version of the document, with the units in document order; a reordered or partial XLIFF lines up wrongly.
  • Rows that arrive with a translation skip machine translation; empty units are machine-translated as usual.

Exporting

Section titled “Exporting”

Export as XLIFF on the Delivery tab downloads the whole project as a ZIP of XLIFF 1.2 files, one per source file and target language, named like report_eng-fin.xlf. Use it to hand a project to an external tool or reviewer; bring the result back with the import above.

Translation memories have their own TMX export on the Resources page.

Section titled “Related”