Best way to import translation into lingo : XLSX or XML?

[MAF]

Hello everyone,

I'm using Lingo to translate flare documentation and so far it's working fine, apart from a few bugs. We then decided to use Lingo to also translate our software user interface and this is where it got less fine! Here is what I'm trying to do:
I'm getting from our software development team either an excel file with several columns or an XML file (which is not unusual practice). 4 columns are of interest to me:

• Column F: text in source language
• Column G: text in target language (most entries already exist)
• Column H: notes to translator
• Column I: notes from translator

The aim is to import these columns into lingo, use lingo to detect segment changes or new segment, create an XLIFF bundle and send it to translator, get the translated version back into lingo, and export it back to the excel file with all the new translated segments and notes from translator. This seems pretty standard to me, especially since these columns correspond to 4 standard fields in lingo .

I then looked at the import functionality associated with file filters and couldn't get this simple workflow to work. Here are my problems:

• Excel import: with this functionality, I can import my text segments to translate column into lingo and export the translated text segments back into excel. It is painfully long, it has a few bugs (e.g. your text segment cannot start with a "=" sign), but it works! This is roughly what I'm trying to do but with one main problem: there is that no way I can import the notes to translator and export the notes from translator. This is bad and frustrating since lingo does have this two fields built in and we use them.
• XML import: This functionality seems nice but... I cannot get it to work! My XML is checked valid and I keep getting an error "Index out of range" or something like that. I'll contact Madcap support to see where the problem is, but in the meantime, can anyone of you make XML import work? In any case, I cannot see any options to import the notes to translator into Lingo.
• Text import: We tried this as it does have the possibility to import the notes together with the segments by using a regex... Which is nice! But that means using text files with separators which brings a brand new bunch of problems (our text segments can include any types of text so it's hard to find a usable text separator) and there still is no possibility to export the notes from translator back into a usable file

If any of you have similar problems, I'd be happy to share solutions. It seems like something Lingo should be able to do quite easily and it's frustrating to be stuck right at import phase.

Thanx in advance for any feedback on this.

[Uwe Schwenk]

MAF,
I did also look at translating software with Lingo but there are too many challenges associated with it, as you described some of them very accurately. Depending on the format there are others, believe me. I am using SDL Passolo for software translation. When the translation is done I am using the export function for glossaries and convert the exported glossaries into MS Excel format. I then import these spreadsheets into the Madcap Lingo termbases I created. While Lingo has improved quite considerably for documentation for software its (IMHO) not yet a feasible option.

Therefore, I have 2 tools I am using: Lingo for all documentation and and Passolo for all software.

HTH