Translation Related File Formats¶

These are the different storage formats for translations and files associated with translations that are supported by the toolkit. See also Standards conformance for standards conformance.

The Translate Toolkit implements a set of classes for handling translation files which allows for a uniform API which covers other issues such as quoting and escaping of text.

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)

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
iCalendar
JSON
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
- .NET Resource files (.resx) – Issue 396
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
Mozilla’s l20n.

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.