How to open these XLIFF files?

Question

Dear Team, 
 I tried using the default XLIFF filter, but I keep getting various errors, the latest are "value cannot be null. parameter name culture" and "There is an error in XML document (1, 2)" 
 Any idea how I could make this work? Attached two versions of the same file, XLIFF 1.2 and 2.0. 
 Thank you in advance for your help! 
 Best regards, 
 Giannis 
 4403.Lina-video-subtitles-4190_2.0.zip

Paul · Accepted Answer

Giannis Ouzounis

I can open the 1.2 (although it does complain a bit) but not the 2.0. So I ran it through an XLIFF Validation tool and receive the following:

1.2
Invalid attribute in <group>: course-page-layout.

This indicates that the XLIFF 1.2 file you are trying to work with contains an invalid attribute "course-page-layout" within a <group> element, which is not allowed according to the XLIFF 1.2 specification. You can check that here: http://docs.oasis-open.org/xliff/v1.2/os/xliff-core.html#group

I removed that attribute and also switched off the validation in the filetype settings and it opens without a complaint (apart from the language code which isn't really a problem):

Screenshot showing the XLIFF 1.2 successfully opened in the Studio editor.

2.0
cvc-complex-type.3.2.2: Attribute 'datatype' is not allowed to appear in element 'file'.
cvc-complex-type.3.2.2: Attribute 'date' is not allowed to appear in element 'file'.
cvc-complex-type.4: Attribute 'id' must appear on element 'file'.

This indicates that the XLIFF 2.0 file you are trying to work with contains attributes "datatype" and"date" within an element "file" that are not allowed according to the XLIFF schema rules. It is also missing the mandatory attribute "id". You can check this here: http://docs.oasis-open.org/xliff/xliff-core/v2.0/xliff-core-v2.0.html#file

I corrected these and then the message get too complex for me to type out!:

Screenshot showing a c plex error message generated from validating the XLIFF file in a separate application.

I removed the content of the notes elements but the messages continue to get more and more complex. I think you have two options really:

go back to your client and explain what problem you are having as they are producing invalid XLIFF 2.0, or
use the Bilingual XML filetype and then you will be able to handle this with ease as it doesn't care quite so much about the XLIFF specification:

Paul Filkin | RWS Group

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Paul · Answer

Giannis Ouzounis 
 Well the XLIFF is still non-valid. The only advice I could give to your client is to learn how to write valid XLIFF... or if it's being generated by some 3rd party tool perhaps review the code and make some changes to ensure it's doing this correctly. 
 I know we can be quite strict with XLIFF so I also tested this one in another tool (memoQ) but it fails in there too and that tool is usually a bit more relaxed. So I'm pretty sure that the problem here is with the XLIFF itself. 
 I looked at your filetype settings... and note that you have created a monolingual XML filetype extracting the source. That won't really help you as when you write back the target it will simply overwrite the content in the source element with the target translation. 
 If you want to use a monolingual filetype for this then your process would be this: 
 
 copy the source to target using a text editor... bit of regex magic 
 create your filetype to extract the content of the target element, not the source 
 use the embedded html filter to handle the tagging 
 
 This is ok when you don't have any target content in the original source... as yo indeed don't with your sample files. But if you have to do any review on the xliff files, or if you receive some partially translated then this approach won't work. Hence the reason for me suggesting this: 
 Paul said: use the Bilingual XML filetype and then you will be able to handle this with ease as it doesn't care quite so much about the XLIFF specification 
 I probably confused you there... apologies. It's actually called the Multilingual XML filetype as you can see in the screenshot I also provided. You can find it here: https://appstore.rws.com/Plugin/13 
 So if I was you I'd run with the Multilingual Filetype for many reasons: 
 
 it doesn't care about your crappy XLIFF 
 it supports the embedded content filters 
 it supports additional use of regex for tagging on top of the embedded content filters if needed

Paul · Answer

Giannis Ouzounis

Giannis Ouzounis said:
I guess since the source has just <source> and <target>, I would need to change the target language every time, right?

Right.

Giannis Ouzounis said:
I thought the HTML embedded content would help with this, but it didn't.

It should do... perhaps you didn't apply it correctly? I created a quick video to explain so you can see it works and how I did it:

I hope this helps.

Paul · Answer

Giannis Ouzounis 
 It's not missing at all, it's just been converted to what it represents, a carriage return. The HTML entity &#13; represents the ASCII control character Carriage Return (CR). In ASCII, the Carriage Return character is defined as decimal 13 (or hexadecimal 0D), which is why &#13; is used to represent it in HTML. 
 So you have this: 
 
 Which is two carriage returns, the number 10 and another carriage return. Your target file shows this: 
 
 Looks remarkably like two carriable returns, the number 10 and a carriage return. 
 If I open the file with the filetype I created in the video and look at that part of the file using the "All content" display filter I can also see them there: 
 
 Unfortunately I don't think you are going to be able to address this within the filetype because Studio automatically handles them and doesn't allow you to have any control over how the whitespace like this is managed. 
 The multilingual filetype at least retains then in the source, compared to the xml filetype which will not. I think the best solution is to ask your customer to simply use whitespace and then you can tell Studio to preserve the whitespace. Using entity values is really problematic and most XML processors (especially .NET) will automatically encode the &#13; entities as carriage returns when writing XML.

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How to open these XLIFF files?

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