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Am I able to import a multilingual Excel file with multiple worksheets into Studio 2017?

Jo Walton

I have received an Excel workbook with multiple worksheets for translation into seven languages. Each worksheet has a column for the source language and then seven columns for the target languages, with some existing text in these columns that needs to be proofread (different text per language). The column order is not consistent across the worksheets, and the first worksheet contains two columns for reference (that don't need translating), which the other worksheets do not contain.

I have also received separate workbooks per language pair that I could import, however the client wants all of the translations in the one workbook, so I'm wondering if I am able to create one Studio project and import the one workbook containing all the target language columns, and then create separate project packages for each language pair to send off for translation? 

I know there's the bilingual excel file format in Studio 2017, however I don't know if it would somehow work for multilingual Excel files, especially given the fact that each worksheet has the target languages in different columns. Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks. 
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  • 0
    Hi Jo,

    You are going to have to create separate projects and this is because of file preparation in addition to not being able to do this in Studio anyway. If you use the bilingual excel you have to tell Studio which columns are for the source and the target. There is no option to say which column for the source and the target per language. It's one set of rules for all the languages in the project.

    If you use Excel then you need to prepare the files for each language so you are translating the right column for each language. So either way this is not going to be possible the way you'd like.

    Regards

    Paul

    Paul Filkin | RWS Group

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  • 0 in reply to Paul
    Thank you Paul, I thought that would be the case! In the list of supported filetypes, multilingual Excel is listed, so would I be able to rearrange the columns in each of the worksheets myself so that each of the languages are in the same column, and create one project with that file?

    But then I'm not sure of the process to make Studio understand that it's a multilingual file and not a bilingual file...

    Sorry for the questions!
  • 0 in reply to Jo Walton

    There isn't any way to tell this to Studio.
    Such crappy files are NOT translatable in any 'normal' way. Creators of such weird files should try to process the files THEMSELVES first, to see what crap they actually create :-\.

    You have to 'decompose' the file to multiple per-language files, translate, and then 'compose' the original format again.
  • 0 in reply to Jo Walton

    Hi ,

    Unknown said:
    In the list of supported filetypes, multilingual Excel is listed

    Just checking... you mean "Bilingual Excel" is listed, not "Multilingual Excel"?

    Unknown said:
    so would I be able to rearrange the columns in each of the worksheets myself so that each of the languages are in the same column, and create one project with that file?

    No, this is not going to be possible.  You can only handle one worksheet at a time and you can only specify the source and target languages for one language pair.  Maybe take a look at this article to get a better idea:

    https://multifarious.filkin.com/2015/09/28/bilingual-excel-and-stuff/

     mentioned "Excelling Studio" which is an app on the SDL AppStore that might help with this.  I haven't played with this yet, but keep meaning to.  The application allows you to select the columns that contain your target languages and then it creates XML files for using in Studio.

    Once you're translated you put the XML files back into the app and get your translated multilingual Excel file back out.  That certainly looks like the answer to your problem.  I know where  is coming from (although may not have put it like that!) and people do prepare files that are difficult to manage sometimes, but that's the reality of the world we live in.  I think this application might be the answer you're looking for.

    If you want to carry on working with the separate bilingual files then I find the best approach is to create a Project Template for this.  To ensure the correct filetype is used, when this and a monolingual Excel all have the same file extensions, you need to uncheck the monolingual filetypes, or move the bilingual above the monolingual ones in your filetype options.  So to avoid having to mess with this if you create a Project Template that is set up as you need it then you just pick that template when you need to use these filetypes:

    Regards

    Paul

    Paul Filkin | RWS Group

    ________________________
    Design your own training!
    You've done the courses and still need to go a little further, or still not clear? 
    Tell us what you need in our Community Solutions Hub

  • 0 in reply to Paul
    Thanks ! I actually saw the Multilingual Excel filetype listed in one of the PDF downloads in the Resources section of the website that listed all the languages and files that Studio 2017 supported, that's why I was a bit confused as I couldn't see this in the filetypes listed in Studio itself. Thanks anyway, really appreciate the feedback!
  • 0 in reply to Paul
    I have played with Excelling Studio a bit, but its configuration is somehow, unusual... :-\. It seems to combine multiple functionally different things together (configuration of the actual 'decomposing' component, possibility to store the configuration to a "profile" and ability to apply the stored configuration to a file), making the whole thing not very intuitive. Apparently a tool originally tailored to the author's specific needs.
    This, together with the fact that it failed to detect some (fairly usual) languages in my testing Excel file and did not allow me to specify the language manually, has moved it very quickly to a "no go" category. And it's even paid... huh, I would expect properly functional product, not "paying money for the 'privilege' to become a tester" :-\
  • 0 in reply to Evzen Polenka
    Hello Evzen, I am sorry to read you did not make Excelling Studio work for you. It is a very cool application that can do really crazy things with Excel files from filtering and conditional translation through joining cells together in Studio as one segment all the way to pixel counting and stuff like that. I agree that the GUI has become a bit unintuitive because we had to add so many features due to popular demand. We are currently fixing that and recreating the GUI to be more logical. The reason you can store profiles and match them to a file pattern is because some clients always have the same kind of Excel files and then the conversion is drag and drop, or also because sometimes you need more than one try to get the conversion right for complex files. You can actually specify the languages manually, the reason for that is again because most clients keep having similar files into similar languages, so you don´t have to scroll through so many languages all the time. If there is a way we can help you get it to work for your files, let us know. We don´t have a video showing it, unfortunately, again because there are so many different use cases, but maybe we should have just a few examples in our youtube channel, I´ll get my team to work on that... Any other suggestions, let me know! Klaus
  • 0 in reply to Klaus Fleischmann
    Hi Klaus, I understand very well the reason for storing the 'profiles'. My point is that this should be rather an OPTIONAL way to work with the application, not mandatory.
    The usual way to work with application is to "start it, select data to process, then options to apply and press Start"... a natural flow, simple, no-brainer... And yes, the "options to apply" (and even the "data to process") step can be surely made easier by loading/saving profiles... but still just OPTIONAL.
    I should be able to manually select options for one-off usage, I should not be forced to create this profile, especially if the profile includes also additional stuff like source path, filename pattern, etc.... i.e. more and more stuff not obvious (or not even needed) to a first-time or occasional user. This all makes the UX confusing.

    Regarding the languages - yes, I know that it's possible to configure languages manually, but the problem was that it did NOT allow me to configure the language I needed. The list of languages to choose from was very limited and the one I needed wasn't there.
    It's been quite some time ago, so I can't remember the details, sorry. I believe it tried to somehow detect the languages from the column names (similarly to what Glossary Converter does) and offered in the dropdown just those it recognized... but did not allow me to add the one it apprently didn't recognize... or something like that.
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  • 0 in reply to Klaus Fleischmann
    Hi Klaus, I understand very well the reason for storing the 'profiles'. My point is that this should be rather an OPTIONAL way to work with the application, not mandatory.
    The usual way to work with application is to "start it, select data to process, then options to apply and press Start"... a natural flow, simple, no-brainer... And yes, the "options to apply" (and even the "data to process") step can be surely made easier by loading/saving profiles... but still just OPTIONAL.
    I should be able to manually select options for one-off usage, I should not be forced to create this profile, especially if the profile includes also additional stuff like source path, filename pattern, etc.... i.e. more and more stuff not obvious (or not even needed) to a first-time or occasional user. This all makes the UX confusing.

    Regarding the languages - yes, I know that it's possible to configure languages manually, but the problem was that it did NOT allow me to configure the language I needed. The list of languages to choose from was very limited and the one I needed wasn't there.
    It's been quite some time ago, so I can't remember the details, sorry. I believe it tried to somehow detect the languages from the column names (similarly to what Glossary Converter does) and offered in the dropdown just those it recognized... but did not allow me to add the one it apprently didn't recognize... or something like that.
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