Open Language Tools is a

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project released by

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under the terms of Sun's

CDDL The Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL) is a free and open-source software license, produced by Sun Microsystems, based on the Mozilla Public License (MPL). Files licensed under the CDDL can be combined with files licensed under o ...

(a GPL-incompatible

free software license A free-software license is a notice that grants the recipient of a piece of software extensive rights to modify and redistribute that software. These actions are usually prohibited by copyright law, but the rights-holder (usually the author) ...

).Free Software Foundation
List of GPL-Incompatible Free Software Licenses Open Language Tools are intended for people who are involved in translation of software and documentation into different natural languages ( localisation engineers, translators, etc.). They are based around common localisation industry standard file formats such as

XLIFF XLIFF (XML Localization Interchange File Format) is an XML-based bitext format created to standardize the way localizable data are passed between and among tools during a localization process and a common format for CAT tool exchange. The XLIFF ...

and TMX. Open Language Tools consist of the XLIFF Filters designed to convert different source file formats to

and the XLIFF Translation Editor which is designed to read and edit

files. They are written in

and run on

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Mac OS Mac operating systems were developed by Apple Inc. in a succession of two major series. In 1984, Apple debuted the operating system that is now known as the classic Mac OS with its release of the original Macintosh System Software. The system ...

, or

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as long as Java J2RE (at least 1.4.2) is installed.

Workflow

XLIFF Filters

This is an application designed to convert different source file formats to an

format. It is currently based around the

1.0 specification. The conversion is simple. Launch the filters, drag and drop a source file on the application, and the file will be converted to a .xlz file in the same directory as the source file. What basically happens is that the filter: # reads and parses the source file, # separates the translatable portions of the text from the non-translatable portions by breaking the file into blocks # further segments the translatable blocks into smaller sections, typically sentences, and # writes the

file ( .xlf) and the skeleton file (.skl) which are further bundled within a zip archive with the .xlz extension.

XLIFF Translation Editor

This is an application which is made for translating the contents of

files. As the

format itself is quite complex and not very user friendly (especially to people not familiar with XML), XLIFF Translation Editor was developed to make the translation and editing much more feasible. Upon opening it shows the user two major panes with the source and target language. The text is segmented and marked – whether it is translated or untranslated, whether it has any 100% matches or fuzzy translations suggested from other applications that may have processed the

file in the past. The source and target segments are shown in order to give the translator the full context and they are directly editable. Initially, the translator creates a Project into which either an .xlf or .xlz files are inserted. The central part of the editor is the “Mini-TM”, a simple file-based database with all source and target segments from the current project, which is being automatically updated. As soon as the translator starts translating a segment which has already been translated, the target segment is automatically inserted based on the Mini-TM. Similarly, the Mini-TM suggests fuzzy matches. Segments can be marked as approved, reviewed, unreviewed, problematic, Mini-TM translations or user translations. There is also a mechanism to display notes from the source documents (typically from formats like .po files or from other translators). There is a back-conversion tool integrated into the editor which converts the

files to their original format. For each

file, it is possible to create a translation memory ( TMX) file, which can be later used to update the central translation database.

Supported files

Documentation file types

HTML Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets ( ...

DocBook DocBook is a Semantics (computer science), semantic markup language for technical documentation. It was originally intended for writing technical documents related to computer hardware and software, but it can be used for any other sort of docume ...

SGML * JSP *

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing data. It defines a set of rules for encoding electronic document, documents in a format that is both human-readable and Machine-r ...

(generic - needs a configuration file for each XML type) *

OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org (OOo), commonly known as OpenOffice, is a discontinued open-source office suite. Active successor projects include LibreOffice (the most actively developed) and Collabora Online, with Apache OpenOffice being considered mostly d ...

: sxw, sxc, sxi *

Open Document Format The Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF), also known as OpenDocument, standardized as ISO 26300, is an open file format for word processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations and graphics and using ZIP-compressed XML ...

: odw, odc, odi *

Plain text In computing, plain text is a loose term for data (e.g. file contents) that represent only characters of readable material but not its graphical representation nor other objects ( floating-point numbers, images, etc.). It may also include a lim ...

Software file types

* PO (gettext) *Msg/tmsg (catgets) * Java .properties * Java ResourceBundle *Mozilla .DTD resource files

References

{{Reflist

External links

Open Language Tools
- Official Open Language Tools website
Open Language Tools download
– Download Open Language Tools
Free Language Tools
– Free Language tools of Websites
User's Manual to XLIFF Translation EditorHelp to improve Open Language Tools
Software-localization tools Free software programmed in Java (programming language) Computer-assisted translation software programmed in Java