I have finally released the tool SDLXLIFF to Legacy Converter (version 1.0.0.24) to the OX website; it still needs to go through the acceptance phase so it should be a few days before it is available to the public.

I managed to get a lot integrated with the tool but would appreciate your feedback on additional features that may help the general user that will be eventually depending on this tool  to work effectively.

Introduction:

SDLXLIFF to Legacy Converter is a compact and fast tool used for converting SDLXLIFF files to and importing from Trados legacy formats.

The interface provides filters to exclude/import segments associated with the various segment status categories during the export/import phases; the status of segments can also be updated/assigned based on the user settings which allows for different types of integration.

This tool can be especially useful for the management of a project, allowing translators that do not have SDL Studio, to work on SDL Studio projects by proving their translations in the legacy file formats (i.e. TTX or bilingual word documents with Trados markup styles).

Key features

• Convert SDLXLIFF files to and Import from Trados legacy formats (TTX, Bilingual document with Trados markup styles)
• Convert SDLXLIFF files to Trados compatible TMX format
• Update/assign the status of the segments (i.e. Draft, Translated, Signed off etc...)

Development Notes:

General

The tool supports for the following formats as originally confirmed during the beta testing

Export/Import

• Word 97-2003 Document (*.doc)
• Word Document (*.docx)
• TRADOStag (*.ttx)

Export (Only)

• TMX 1.4 (*.tmx)

Notes:

The bilingual legacy format generated by the tool is structured to provide more control of identifying the properties during the re-import phase; it includes/associates all the relevant properties for each segment and inner file structure; infact, it is structured in a way that could already provide interoperability with other tools.

The main GUI should prove to be very user friendly;  I kept the main interface as clean as possible by moving all the specific options to the setting area;  the listviews support drag ‘n drop and I also (eventually) got around to including support for reading from the SDL project file *.sdlproj

Report

Along with the error handling, the report also provides an overview of the processing statistics which the user can use as a permanent record of events (i.e. segments read/exported/ Content changes, Segment status changes etc… etc…)

Filters

The interface provides filters to exclude/import segments associated with the various segment status categories during the export/import phases

Segment Status Assignment

The status of segments can also be updated/assigned based on the user settings which allows for different types of integration.

Error Handling

I concentrated an enormous amount of time on the error/exception handling as I wanted to make the process as reliable and clean as possible for re-importing the translations into the SDLXLIFF file and when an error/exception occurs, then be able to identify it + report it to the user correctly.

Note: The tool has an inbuilt exception handler that reports the segment ID associated to problematic translations (including the exception message), along with additional functionality to report differences in the tag content to help the user to identify issues as they arise.

I also included an interesting option to undo changes to all SDLXLIFF files when an exception occurs during processing

Note: This is option is useful when you are importing multiple files and do not want to finalize updates in any of the SDLXLIFF file unless the process runs without an exception/warning error

Thank you to everyone for your continuing support with this development,

Patrick Hartnett