Translation Related File Formats¶

Primary translation formats¶

Other translation formats¶

• CSV

• INI Files (including Inno Setup .isl dialect)

• Java Mozilla and Java properties files (also Mozilla derived properties files)

• Mozilla Mozilla DTD format

• OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org GSI/SDF format (Also called SDF)

• PHP translation arrays

• Qt Linguist Qt .ts (both 1.0 and 1.1 supported, 1.0 has a converter)

• Symbian localization files

• Windows Windows RC files files

• Mac OSX Mac OSX strings files (also used on the iPhone) (from version 1.8)

• Adobe Adobe Flex properties files files (from version 1.8)

• Haiku Haiku catkeys (from version 1.8)

• Android string resources (supports storage, not conversion)

• .NET Resource files (.resx) .NET Resource files (.resx)

• Mozilla .lang files

Translation Memory formats¶

• TMX

• Wordfast Translation Memory: TM

• Trados: .txt TM (from v1.9.0 – read only)

Glossary formats¶

• OmegaT glossary (from v1.5.1)

• Qt Phrase Book (.qph)

• TBX

• Universal Terminology eXchange (UTX) (from v1.9.0)

Formats of translatable documents¶

• HTML

• Flat XML (single-level XML)

• iCalendar

• JSON

• YAML

• OpenDocument – all ODF file types

• Text – plain text with blocks separated by whitespace

• Wiki – DokuWiki and MediaWiki supported

• Subtitles – various formats (v1.4)

Machine readable formats¶

• Gettext Gettext .mo

• Qt Qt .qm (read-only)

In development¶

Unsupported formats¶

Formats that we would like to support but don’t currently support:

• Wordfast:

  • Glossary tab-delimited “source,target,comment” i.e. like OmegaT but unsure if any extension is required.

• Apple:

  • AppleGlot

  • .plist – see issue 633 and plistlib for Python

• Adobe:

  • FrameMaker’s Maker Interchange Format – MIF (See also python-gendoc, and Perl MIF module)

  • FrameMaker’s Maker Markup Language (MML)

• Microsoft

  • Word, Excel, etc (probably through usage of OpenOffice.org)

  • OOXML (at least at the text level we don’t have to deal with much of the mess inside OOXML). See also: Open XML SDK v1

  • Rich Text Format (RTF) see also pyrtf-ng

  • Open XML Paper Specification

• XML related

  • Generic XML

  • DocBook (can be handled by KDE’s xml2pot)

  • SVG

• DITA

• PDF see spec, PDFedit

• LaTeX – see plasTeX, a Python framework for processing LaTeX documents

• unoconv – Python bindings to OpenOffice.org UNO which could allow manipulation of all formats understood by OpenOffice.org.

• Trados:

  • TTX (Reverse Engineered DTD, other discussion)

  • Multiterm XML TSV to MiltiTerm conversion script or XLST

  • .tmw

  • .txt (You can interchange using TMX) Format explanation with some examples.

• Tcl: .msg files. Good documentation

• Installers:

  • NSIS installer: Existing C++ implementation

  • WiX – MSI (Microsoft Installer) creator. Localization instructions, more notes on localisation. This is a custom XML format, another one!

• catgets/gencat: precedes gettext, looking in man packages is the best information I could find. Also LSB requires it. There is some info about the source (msgfile) format on GNU website

• Wireless Markup Language

• GlossML

• Deja Vu External View: Instructions sent to a translator, Description of external view options and process

Unlikely to be supported¶

These formats are either: too difficult to implement, undocumented, can be processed using some intermediate format or used by too few people to justify the effort. Or some combination or these issues.