Bilingual document formats

Bilingual documents are specific to the field of translation and localization in that they contain translatable source text and its (complete or partial) translation in pairs of segments. A typical way to create a bilingual document in memoQ and other translation tools is this: the user first imports the original source language document into a translation tool, optionally translates all or part of it, and uses the saving or exporting features of the translation tool to produce a bilingual document. In the bilingual form, the translation document can be passed on to other users, enabling common workflows including those in which a document is first translated by one user, then edited or proofread by some other user, and verified and finalized by a project manager.

Bilingual documents can also be used to exchange translation documents between different translation tools: you can translate bilingual documents created in other tools, or export into a bilingual format to let a non memoQ user to work on a document prepared in memoQ. In cases like this, the translation document is imported in one tool, and processed (translated, edited, etc.) in another tool. To be able to produce the final target language document (export), the same tool must be used that was used for importing.

To enable users to take on almost any translation job, and to prove flexible in an environment where several translation tools are used, memoQ provides extensive support for all the important bilingual document formats. It can be used to translate bilingual DOC/RTF files, XLIFF files, Trados TTX files, and RTF documents with multi-column tables or to export any translation document into bilingual DOC/RTF files or XLIFF files for users of other translation tools.

Bilingual file formats