Output file Error (XML parsing error)

Question

Hi, 
 It's the second time that I'm facing this error. I sent a package to a translator (there was nothing wrong with the project so far). The translator did his job and send me back the return package. The problem is that the output file couldn't open in Microsoft Word ( xml parsing error ). So, after searching the net, I couldn't find anything, and made the project again and pretranslated it. The project had lots of segments needed to merge, and the translator merged all that segments (I think this problem is with merging the segments with tags). So, a lot of segments hadn't translation, and I had to put them manually into the word document. It's so frustrating, so please debug it or show me a workaround. 
 
 Thank you.

Paul · Accepted Answer

Hi Alireza Nadry , 
 
Whilst we do say we support PDF files these are a pretty tricky format and in my opinion a little bit of work should be carried out before preparing the files to make them more likely to survive a translation round trip. In this case there has been no attempt to clean up a fairly large PDF for translation at all, so the translator has left out tags all over the place, got some tags the wrong way around and had to merge to deal with poor segmentation issues. Leaving tags out, at least formatting tags, probably won't cause the problem you have but having tags the wrong way around could and so could all the merging. 
 
I was going to have a go at fixing the word file but the underlying xml is so large I can't even open it! So I think your best bet with files of this nature is to convert them to Word first, and then clean them up: 
 
- remove necessary formatting tags 
- remove incorrect hard breaks 
 
Then prepare your project with the Word filetype instead. This is probably going to be a lot easier for the translator as this file was a little bit like a tag soup, so they'll thank you for that, and it's more likely to survive the sort of file manipulation this one underwent, although if you did this clean up it probably would not need it. 
 
In the meantime I don't have a better solution that the one you have applied. Just additional work to re-translate using Perfect Match and some TM matching. 
 
Regards 
 
Paul

Paul · Answer

Hi Alireza Nadry , 
 
Are you using Perfect Match to pretranslate the file again? That may help you with the missing segments. 
 
On the problem itself... if you can send me the package you sent to the translator and also the package you received back then I'd be happy to take a look. Do you know exactly what the translator did with this? Did he use Studio or some other tool for this, or did he use an older version of Studio than you.... or even a newer one? What version of Studio are you using? 
 
If you can send the packages to pfilkin@sdl.com I can take a look. 
 
Regards 
 
Paul

Paul · Answer

Unknown said: Sorry for off-topic, but this is precisely the case why I say "never trust the translator" in the other thread. 
 I wouldn't blame the translator for this at all. He/she received the package with an unprepared file which was very difficult to work with. I think this is just a format that needs to be handled a different way in preparing the file for translation. If you don't do that then every stage in the translation process becomes problematic and each person has to deal with problems as a result. 
 Unknown said: So, I live in a hope that the issues with PDF support will outweigh the benefits one day and that the support will eventually be removed... in favor of clear and strong "translate the SOURCE, NOT the PDF!" message to all people in the world ;-) 
 I think you just live in the world of volume translations where this sort of process is completely unacceptable. Support for PDFs has always been one of the most called for requirements in many CAT tools, hence we see it in quite a few. Often the source is not available at all and people want a way to handle these files without having to go through the process of recreating the source due to the additional time/costs involved in doing this. So I live in hope that PDF support will get better and become capable of removing many of the issues we see today completely. 
 I think education is key, and certainly PDF handling is a common theme at translation conferences these days so people are more aware today than they have been. It can only get better. 
 Regards 
 Paul

Fernando Davín Pérez · Answer

This is a rather common error with Trados regardless of the version you are using. Mine is the latest and it still makes the same mistake. 
 Nevertheless, I have come to a solution after trying several things, including starting from scratch. 
 My original problem was that Trados converted my Word files into XML files and then would not allow me to open them with Microsoft Word. The result is that I could not have a Word document with my translation after so many hours of hard work. 
 Even though the source Word documents were in perfect condition, Trados would convert them into XML documents again and again and the problem still remained. I was about to give up and start just copying and pasting before I was running out of time before delivery. 
 BUT I FOUND A SOLUTION THAT WORKED FINE! 
 Since the source documents were fine and could be opened with Word no problem, I opened them and saved them as .rtf files. 
 RTF stands for RICH TEXT FORMAT . This is a standard type of format that works fine with Word in most cases and even Trados is capable of dealing with them actually better than it deals with Word or pdf documents. 
 So, I created a new project with the rtf files and translated them with the memory that I had already created. 
 After fiddling with Trados funny behaviour about what is to be translated automatically and what is not, for whatever reason we do not know, I could produce a new translation in a shorter time than just by tedious copying and pasting. And this time YES! I could produce a target document that worked fine even though I got a warning from Microsoft Word about loosing some characteristics. Whatever..... 
 My advice is to convert the source documents into rtf files before creating a new project. They normally work better with Trados than any of Word versions: doc, docx, etc... 
 I hope you all find this useful and saves you some extra hassle and plenty of time. 
 Good luck,

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Output file Error (XML parsing error)