For such projects I created two simple pre- and post-processing scripts.

The pre-processing script extracted the source strings into a very simple XML, where each string had an attribute holding a position of the cell where the target string should be placed. Like this:
<string cell="A2">blablabla</string>
<string cell="B2">blebleble</string>

And the post-processing script just took the translated XMLs and simply injected the strings into the corresponding cells (docs.microsoft.com/.../excel.range.value).

The target-language-dependent source XMLs created by the first script can be all put in a single multilingual Studio project.

Thank you, Evzen, for sharing that with me.

The thing is, I explicitly want to avid using scripts and copying texts to and fro with Excel. the more we do with the sources, the more error-prone the whole thing gets. And Excel lists with 28 languages as such are quite error-prone in themselves I'm afraid :-)

Hello Yvonne Rezbach

Yvonne Rezbach said:

The thing is, I explicitly want to avid using scripts and copying texts to and fro with Excel.

I'm afraid this isn't possible in Studio without doing one of these two things (or a workaround similar to the one Evzen suggested):

- create a multilingual project then merging all the separate excel files into one afterwards, or

- create 28 separate projects and also merge the files into one afterwards

Your best bet might be to use Passolo to prepare the project as this has a multilingual Excel parser.  The process would be this:

1. Create your single Passolo project with all 28 target languages
2. Tell Passolo which language goes into which column in the Excel file
3. Translate the files
   - either by sending out the bundles to be done in Passolo, or
   - export the files to SDLXLIFF, translate them in Studio, import back into Passolo
4. Generate the target file

Hello Yvonne Rezbach

Yvonne Rezbach said:

The thing is, I explicitly want to avid using scripts and copying texts to and fro with Excel.

I'm afraid this isn't possible in Studio without doing one of these two things (or a workaround similar to the one Evzen suggested):

- create a multilingual project then merging all the separate excel files into one afterwards, or

- create 28 separate projects and also merge the files into one afterwards

Your best bet might be to use Passolo to prepare the project as this has a multilingual Excel parser.  The process would be this:

1. Create your single Passolo project with all 28 target languages
2. Tell Passolo which language goes into which column in the Excel file
3. Translate the files
   - either by sending out the bundles to be done in Passolo, or
   - export the files to SDLXLIFF, translate them in Studio, import back into Passolo
4. Generate the target file

Thank you, Paul. I did not expect Passolo to work with the Excel files, to be honest. When I tried to insert it as a source, Excel wasn't even listet as a supported file type , so I gave up in Passolo :-)

I'll try now! 

Hi Yvonne Rezbach

Yvonne Rezbach said:

When I tried to insert it as a source, Excel wasn't even listet as a supported file type , so I gave up in Passolo

That would be my bad for not explaing that the excel parser is an optional component that must be purchased and licensed. It's part of the “ODBC Database parser” which is around 300 EU I think.

Hi Paul,

Sorry but can you tell me how to get this add-in? I cannot find it in the SDL appstore for Passolo....

Hi Yvonne Rezbach

It's not an app. You need to purchase this through the normal product pages as an add-on to Passolo.  I'd give you directions but having just tried it I see that the experience is somewhat poor, so if you are interested I'd suggest you go through the live chat and the team there will be able to help you:

http://bit.ly/SDLChat

Select the Customer Experience Desk.