XML (eXtensible Markup Language) files

XML is the world's most versatile data format that defines a sort of markup that can encode almost everything we want to write down.

XML files can hold text, structured data, or even program code, and are perfectly readable for humans and machines.

Many well-known document types are XML – for example, HTML, Word documents (at least DOCX), XLIFF, TMX files (translation memory contents), and many more.

Depending on the XML type, memoQ processes each file differently and suggests a specialized filter for it. For example, when you import a Word document, memoQ offers to use one of the Microsoft Word filters instead of XML. But it will use the XML filter to read the majority of the imported document.

Many authoring and database systems store - or export - contents in XML files. When you translate them in memoQ, use this XML filter to import them.

Multilingual XML files: There are XML files that contain the same text in several languages. To import those files, use the Multilingual XML filter.

How to get here

  1. Start importing an XML file.
  2. In the Document import options window, select the XML files, and click Change filter & configuration.
  3. The Document import settings window appears. From the Filter dropdown, choose XML filter.

    Document import settings window showing filter and filter configuration dropdowns, Add cascading filter clickable link, and Encoding and reference files tab with default encoding options and reference files and DTD options. OK, Cancel, Help buttons are in the bottom left corner.

XML configurations are complex, and it's worth saving them: It may take several hours to prepare your import properly. When the configuration is ready, click the Save as a new filter configuration  button next to the Filter configuration drop-down. The next time you need to import an XML file from the same source, you can choose the saved configuration from the same Filter configuration drop-down.

What can you do?

To import an XML file properly, you need to set up a lot of things. To make it easier, this topic uses the following example:

xml-sample-document

The above example, like any XML document, contains “normal” text that needs to be translated, next to tags like <doc> that hold descriptive or structural information. Tags can have attributes, which have values (id="0527").

The sections below explain how these can be interpreted in memoQ.

When you finish

In the Document import options window: Click OK again to start importing the documents.

  • If this is a cascading filter, you can change the settings of another filter in the chain: Click the name of the filter at the top of the window.