Hi Horst-Helge,

I recently translated a PDF I had converted to Word that had quite a few layout issues, though not as complex as yours.

I remember now, I saved the SDLXLIFF to Source via Advanced Save before translating it, then worked on that Word file to smooth out anything I could not easily deal with in the SDLXLIFF. The resulting Word file looked better and I added that to a new project which was much easier to translate and saved to Target without a problem...

It wasn't 130 pages long, though! However, IF you can save to Source and open that, then maybe it will create a Target Word file that you can open??

Maybe...
Ali :)

Hi Horst-Helge,

I recently translated a PDF I had converted to Word that had quite a few layout issues, though not as complex as yours.

I remember now, I saved the SDLXLIFF to Source via Advanced Save before translating it, then worked on that Word file to smooth out anything I could not easily deal with in the SDLXLIFF. The resulting Word file looked better and I added that to a new project which was much easier to translate and saved to Target without a problem...

It wasn't 130 pages long, though! However, IF you can save to Source and open that, then maybe it will create a Target Word file that you can open??

Maybe...
Ali :)

Hi again Horst-Helge,

Ah, so you had already done what I suggested in my most recent post.

Did you try saving that source Word file to a lower version of Word then retranslating that?? Is your version of Word older than the most recent that is used by Studio (as Paul asked)?

Did you try copying the content of the source Word file you prepared then pasting it into a new Word document and removing the potentially troublesome content, then adding that content to the final target Word document after translation?? Tables, headers, footers, metadata, etc...?

I'm sure you've already thought of all this...

This must be so frustrating for you!

All the best

Ali

Something to smile (or cry) ... look how nicely the PDF > Word > Studio conversion separates things:

in the PDF:	in Studio

You'll agree, that this needs merging to make up translatable segments. Just an example. I like such efficient work.

This is going to sound strange but...

Could you apply a global property to the source Word document that would not change anything but would smooth out the text. For example, highlight the whole document and change the language from English to French. Then highlight the whole document and change the language back to English...? I found with another piece of software that this eliminated extra tags that caused all sorts of tag errors...

Clutching at straws...

All the best,
Ali

Edit: The above method only works on text at one level. You'd have to highlight text inside tables for example separately.