Under Community Review

Multilingual Excel: Option to have the length limitation accommodate number of lines and the number of characters per line

Our toughest Japanese client likes to impose length restrictions by limiting the number of lines and the number of characters per line:

Screenshot of RWS AppStore Ideas Excel file showing two rows with Japanese text, English translations, and character number limitations. Row 42 has a warning for exceeding 37 characters in one line.

Now we solve this by adding a function to the Excel file which shows the number of characters per line, but that means the check needs to be done in Excel. Would there be an option to enable such a check in the file type, for example by entering 37x2 in the Max Length column, which the app would then interpret as maximum 2 lines with maximum 37 characters each?

Bart Van Maele

  •  

    I have a few questions about this.

    Q1: iI you have lines and character restrictions in a column as you show, what are your current settings?
    Yes you may be referencing the column but surely its not checking your 37 characters (despite we support character limits), because of all the other data in it.

    Q2: If a segment has a long translation and therefore in the native file the number of lines in a cell are exceeded - I am wondering how would Studio know what restrictions are imposed on the native file?
    Example in Excel you can have a narrow column (small width) but the height of the cell is deep (reflecting several lines of content) but elsewhere your column could be wide and small in height.
    This may reflect as cell having 3 lines vs cell having 1 long line.

    Perhaps to address this - what would be nice is to imported the file into TypeType settings.
    It reads the languages and meta data that you map. But it also outlines the column details (example width 2cm height 1.5cm) and you confirm if that should be locked.
    And somehow it compares source file column size to target column size and if the numbers dont match is flags it as problematic. 

    Does my out the box thinking address some of what you are needing?

    Lyds