Hi Paul, hi Zuzana Kubatova,

Zuzana already received a Word version from the client, as well as a PDF. She tried processing the PDF because the Word version didn't show with the images in the right place in 'Preview'.

Zuzana, images not showing up in the correct position in Preview doesn't mean that the final Target document will also have the images incorrectly placed.

The best way to test this is to create a Target file from the SDLXLIFF via File > Options > Save Target As.

Then, if the Target Word file fails to produce or is not correctly formatted, you can go back to the Source Word file and see what needs to be smoothed out so that the a 'Target' file is successfully produced (obviously, still in the Source language if it has not been translated but the test is still valid).

Always the first thing to do with a complex Word file, test that it will save Target As before translation. This way you can identify and deal with whatever might cause a failure before translation.

All the best,

Ali

Hi Zuzana Kubatova

Sorry I didn't reply sooner, I am ill... Only sinusitis but I stayed in bed this morning. Fortunately I see that Jerzy Czopik has given you an excellent explanation of how various properties of a Word file that can cause displacement of content.

I'm not sure if he knows that the Word file you are working on wasn't made from a PDF file, that you were supplied with both by the client. However, everything he says is correct and valid.

SAs he says, save the original Word file as .docx if it is currently .doc and that will prevent some of the problems.

You could also create a brand new .docx file then highlight all of the original Word document content and paste it into the new .docx file. If it is a huge document, this will take a while but it might leave some properties behind that cause misalignment. (You may have to re-paste the translated content into the original document if it leaves content such as headers and footers behind).

Then before converting to sdlxliff, go through the Word file to see if the formatting is still correctly aligned with the images, and that all the necessary content is present.

There may be hidden content that is causing further problems. You can see some of this by hitting the paragraph icon in the Home tab:

Other content can be present but totally hidden from the 'front end'. Usually it is necessary content (sometimes you will see these items displayed as tags in the SDLXLIFF). There is a trick I used to perform in a different format, Interleaf Quicksilver, that smoothed out all unnecessary 'tag' content. I would highlight the whole content of the document then make a change that affected nothing that needed to stay the same, so I would change the language for example, then repeat the process changing the language back to what it should be. This somehow removed any extra formatting information that was not required. 

Jerzy Czopik, is there a way that this can be performed in Word, do you think? It might help...

It is common in Word for images or other content to 'move' because of the differences between the 'before' and the 'after' text. Also, some content won't move when it should because it has been 'anchored'. Also there is sometimes imported content such as spreadsheets or embedded graphics that is either inaccessible or has to be manually translated in the Target Word document. As Jerzy Czopik says, this is down to how the Word document has been compiled and is not a fault in Studio.

From all of this, you may not be surprised that many people complain about Word-based sdlxliffs that will not save as Target. The best advice is to always do as much as you can to make sure the Word file will save as Target but BEFORE translation.

I hope I haven't confused things, there's a lot of information here! One final thing... some translation agencies tend to employ someone in-house to deal with all this kind of layout work after translation of any word processing or desktop publishing formats. Thus, your client may not be expecting a perfect Word document from you. Do they want the Word document back or the SDLXLIFF?

All the best,

Ali

Dear Ali

Jerzy Czopik, is there a way that this can be performed in Word, do you think? It might help...

You mean "normalizing" of the document?

Provided one single font has been used in Word and - which is quite lucky case - all the text is in black, you can first adapt the Standard or Normal style (the name depends on the language version of Word) to fit the "body text", for example if a simple paragraph of text is Times New Roman 12 point, then adapt the style to TNR 12 point and set the color there to automatic. Then press CTRL+A and CTRL+D. On the first tab select "Times New Roman" as font and chose the Automatic color. Press ok. Then press CTRL+A and CTRL+D again to make sure all document content has been selected, switch to the Advanced tab and set the scaling to either 100% (your translation is not longer) or something between 100 and 98%, if your translation is longer. You can also squeeze the text by changing the spacing to -0,01 points (nearly no one will notice) or -0,02 (some will notice). This can reduce the text so far, that the changes due to the text length will nearly disappear completely.

However, in this very case, the problems seems to be caused by compatibility problems - as Zuzana pointed out, even an untranslated document, stored from Studio, does change the layout. So it seems, that the conversion into SDLXLIFF and the back to Word switches the format from one Word version to another. This can have a very big influence on the layout, especially if the original document is crappy formatted.

@Zuzana Kubatova - if you wish, send me the document offline (jerzy at czopik dot com) for some investigation.

Best regards, Jerzy