Save target as text only?

Question

Dear fellows, 
 While translating a book with lot of images I need to save and deliver the translation as TEXT ONLY files occasionally. Is this not possible? 
 I have no problems saving the target file but Studio always saves also the images and even copies the source text into unfinished segments. I want to save only the text in finished segments. It does not matter if the text is formatted or not. 
 Im using Studio 2015 Freelance. The original file was PDF and the Studio only gives me the option to save target as .docx 
 Best regards, 
 Fridrik Fr.

Paul · Accepted Answer

Hi Fridrik, 
 There are a couple of other interesting ways to tackle this of course. The first would be to export to Excel using this plugin " Export to Excel " which will give you unformatted source and target text in an Excel file. You can copy this into Word if you like and rearrange it into paragraphs or even just send them the Excel file. 
 The second, or should I say "a" second way to tackle this is to create a new TM, import the translated SDLXLIFF into the TM and then use this app " SDLTmConvert " which has an option to create a text file from the source or the target, also with or without formatting. 
 I think it would also be fairly trivial to create an export to text task using the API and group the text by paragraph so it was also a reasonable page layout. maybe interesting for a developer with time on their hands looking for a pet project! 
 Regards 
 Paul

Walter Blaser · Answer

Fridrik 
 
The basic concept of Studio is to deliver a target document that has the same formatting (font and layout) as the source document. This is also what most users expect from a CAT tool. This is why the formatting information is transparently saved in the background and reapplied to the document when you save the target. Consistency checks are carried out to make sure this works fine. This is why there is no scenario for saving the target to another format as the original source file. 
 
In the case of PDF, the reason you get a MS Word file at the end is because the PDF format, which is by definition not editable, is converted to WORD format before it is converted to the bilingual SDLXLIFF format for translation. This means that you will always end up with a Word document when you open a PDF in Studio. 
 
There is however a simple workaround to achieve what you want: open the target Word file in Word and save it as "plain text". 
 
 .... even copies the source text into unfinished segments 
 
Studio does not copy source into target unless you want it, but it may populate target segments with matches from the TM. I suggest you lock the segments you don't want translated. 
 
Walter

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Save target as text only?

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