Overview
The Multilingual Excel filetype is designed to provide support for translating Excel files that support more than one language. The Excel file does have to be structured so that the content is within columns, but this is the typical layout for most files used in this context. Examples would be Excel files used for Gaming and Software localization, and files used for translating terminology. For example:
Image: Gaming Excel with a column for character length check, software key and comments from the developer:
Image: Terminology Excel with various columns providing context and columns supporting pixel length checks:
At a high level the filetype is designed to do several useful things:
- create a single multilingual filetype project from one source file for any number of target languages
- support embedded content
- support character length checks (can be language specific)
- support pixel length checks (can be language specific)
- generate a single multilingual excel file from the completed project
At a more detailed level the app supports many features the user will find helpful, and in many cases provides support for files that are not easily handled out of the box by the existing Excel filetypes.
Settings
File Type Information
Standard filetype interface providing minimal info about the filetype name, identifier and the type of files it supports:
Worksheet Mapping
This page summarises the settings used to map the content from the excel file so Trados Studio knows how to handle it. It does this by mapping the column references in excel to the data being held in Trados Studio:
General
These type of excel files often contain instructions in the first few rows of the file. You specify here where the relevant data for the project starts, and if you have multiple worksheets in the file you have the option to read the data from all the worksheets as long as they follow the same layout for the content. So in this example the heading starts on row 5, and this row is checked to identify that it is the column headings and not translatable:
Languages
Using the tabs across the top you can Add as many language as you like, Edit them, Delete them, and Set Default Language. The Set Default Language feature is useful because it allows you to populate one language with all the settings so that all additional languages will use these settings when you add them. You can of course change the settings but this can significantly reduce the data entry time for files with many languages: