Hi Frank,

Not sure how they get altered, but what I do when I get SDLXLIFF files is add them to a project, then instead of running the Prepare without Project TM batch task, I run a Copy to Target Language batch task and that's it.

The thing is that "Copy to Target Languages" batch task does NOT plainly copy the SDLXLIFFs to target languages as-is, but (RE-)SEGMENTS them according to the rules configured for each target language.
Which may or may not alter the SDLXLIFFs, depending on the segmentation rules configured in each target language's TM (or first TM in the list, if there are more TMs configured for that language).

Hi Evzen,

I just did a quick test and the file did not get resegmented when a new TM is added with a different segmentation rule.

Project 1 - Word file prepared with the Prepare without Project TM task

Project 2 - SDLXLIFF file from Project 1 added to a new project with the Copy to Target Languages batch task. This project has a new TM that has an underscore segmentation rule.

Just to check that the segmentation rule is working, I added a copy of the Word file to Project 2, and used Prepare without Project TM, with this result:

So I think this shows that the SDLXLIFF was not resegmented when the Copy to Target Languages task is used.

Coincidentally, I learned about the re-segmentation the hard way :-( last week...
The scenario was like this:

• you have existing project with language pair A-B using TM with removed "Colon" segmentation rule
• you add new target language C to the project (by editing Project Settings) without adding TM (with the 'special' segmentation rules setup) for that language right away at the same time, then click OK in the Project Settings
• then Studio says "hey, I see you added new language" and offers preparing the files, i.e. basically running the "Convert to Translatable Format" and "Copy to Traget Lanagues" tasks
• now, if you let Studio do it, it will use the DEFAULT language resources for the segmentation... obviously, since it has no other choice...
• so you will end up with incorrectly segmented targets
• so... you delete the bad target files
• then you add the correct TM (for A-C language pair) to the project
• and then you run manually the "Copy to Target Languages" batch task... (i.e. task which uses the source SDLXLIFFs, not the original source format)
• ... et voila, the targets are now correctly segmented!

EDIT:
This was with MadCap Flare files, i.e. using XML file type (these weirdo files pretend to be HTML, but use some custom tags, so they are no more HTML-compatible and must be treated as generic XML, though they are like 99% HTML). It could be that other source formats behave diofferently. Who knows what's going on inside Studio...

Hi Nora,

OK, now I see what you mean. I was confused since Copy to Target Language always runs as part of the batch sequences at project setup. One of the other task is causing the slight alterations of the files.

However, when I choosed Copy to Target Languages again after the files have been added, the files are copied unaltered.

Thanks

Frank