Katakana text appended to content of cell when importing Japanese from bilingual Excel file

Question

I am trying to import a bilingual Excel file (xlsx) into SDL Studio 2015 SR2 Freelance, with Japanese in column 1 and English in column 2 of the Excel worksheet, like so: 
 
 I open the file in Studio as bilingual Excel, add a new TM during the process and it seems to import both source and target text. The problem is that appended to the Japanese in the source column is a string of katakana text, which is equivalent to the reading of the Japanese for that cell in Excel. 
 So what should be 定時株主総会 in the source column (Ordinary General Meeting of Shareholders) becomes 定時株主総会テイジカブヌシソウカイ, like so: 
 
 From where is it finding / extracting this katakana text and how can I stop it doing this in future? 
 Thanks 
 Dan

Raul Bularca · Accepted Answer

Hi Dan, 
 
The issue has been fixed, and will most probably be part of CU6, but I do not have information when it will be released yet, as we are expecting to release CU5 very soon. Until then, we recommend using Paul's workaround. 
 
Regards, 
Raul

Raul Bularca · Answer

Of course! 
 
For storing each unique text from a cell, Excel uses something called a "shared string table" and the content of each cell is the index of the text from that table. When we implemented the filter we erroneously thought that every "shared string" item contains only the text of the cell and some formatting belonging to that text. However, after this post, we found out that the phonetic translations are also found there. This was the problem, since we wrote in Studio all text we found in the shared string item. However, the drawback is that the phonetic translation will be lost when writing back the file, which we hope it won't be a big issue. 
 
Raul

Paul · Answer

Hi Dan, 
 Maybe this article will help with getting your images in here?

Paul · Answer

Hello Dan, 
 
Would you be able to share this file, or at least a few lines of it so we can reproduce this? I've never seen this before but wonder if it might have something to do with the phonetic guides it is possible to display in Excel? perhaps the text is there but not shown and Studio is picking it up... or something like that! 
 
You can email me your test file - pfilkin@sdl.com 
 
Regards 
 
Paul

Paul · Answer

Hello Dan, 
 
None... but the issue is logged and with development. It's quite a rare thing so won't have a high priority on its own; more like something to investigate when next tackling a bigger piece of work on this filter. The solution for now is the one I gave you before (I think?). Copy into a new file and translate the new file instead. These guides won't be needed in the target file anyway. 
 
Regards 
 
Paul

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Katakana text appended to content of cell when importing Japanese from bilingual Excel file