About the Example BIL Format

In order to demonstrate the main features that can be used when developing a bilingual file type plug-in, we have created an example format with the extension *.bil (from now on BIL). This file type is not used in any 3rd party application. It is a fictitious document format, which was created only for this SDK sample project.

Format Description

BIL is custom a XML based format which looks as shown below:

<bilingualdocument source-language="en-US" target-language="de-DE">
  <unit id="1" status="exact">
    <source>
      <seg id="1">
        <b>Features</b>
      </seg>
    </source>
    <target>
      <seg id="1">
        <b>Leistungsmerkmale</b>
      </seg>
    </target>
   <comment id="1">This segment was translated using web translator.</comment>
    <type spec="Heading"/>
</bilingualdocument>

The BIL format contains the following elements:

bilingualdocument: The root element, in which the source and the target languages are specified within element attributes.
unit: Acts as the container for the source and the target content. Each unit element is identified by the unique value of the id attribute. Also the unit element contains a status attribute, which defines whether the current unit is, for example, new or an exact match.
source: Contains one seg element, which stores the actual source segment content.
target: Can contain a seg element for storing the target content. The target element can be empty if no target segment is available.
seg: Encloses the actual source or target content. Segment content may be enclosed in inline tags such as < b >, < i >, etc.
type: Contains additional information on the type of unit, e.g. heading, paragraph, footnote, etc.
comment: contains a comment related to a unit (if applicable). To keep this example as simple as possible, let us assume that a unit can only have one comment.

What the Sample File Type Plug-in Must Do

Your file type plug-in needs to fulfill the following requirements:

Generate an SDLXliff file from a given BIL document
Traverse the BIL file and extract all units; each unit shall represent a paragraph in the translation editor of Trados Studio
Expose all source segments for translation
Expose all target segments (if available)
Markup inline tags such as < b> as tag pairs within the segments and apply the appropriate display formatting
Generate (untranslatable) contexts from the type attribute values (e.g. heading)
Map the BIL unit status values to the appropriate confirmation levels found in the intermediary format used by Trados Studio (i.e. SDLXliff), e.g. translated, draft, approved, etc.
Back conversion, i.e. writing back the content from the intermediary document (SDLXliff)into a target BIL file

When developing the sample file type plug-in we fill primarily focus on extraction (file parser) and generation (file writer) as well as ways of mapping BIL features to SDLXliff features. We will not implement additional functionality such as QuickInsert, user-configurable settings, or document preview, as this is already covered in the chapter on developing a native file type plug-in.

Example Document Below you see an example of a more comprehensive document, which you can use for testing your BIL file type plug-in:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<bilingualdocument source-language="en-US" target-language="de-DE">
  <unit id="1" status="exact">
    <source>
      <seg>
        <b>Features</b>
      </seg>
    </source>
    <target>
      <seg>
        <b>Leistungsmerkmale</b>
      </seg>
    </target>
   <comment id="1">This segment was translated using web translator.</comment>
    <type spec="Heading"/>
  </unit>
  <unit id="2" status="fuzzy">
    <source>
      <seg>
        <b>The future of translation technology is here!</b>
      </seg>
    </source>
    <target>
      <seg>
        <b>Die Zukunft der Übersetzungstechnologie hat begonnen!</b>
      </seg>
    </target>
    <comment id="1">This segment was translated using web translator.</comment>
  </unit>
  <unit id="3" status="new">
    <source>
      <seg>
        <b>The largest translation supply chain in the world</b>
      </seg>
    </source>
    <target></target>
    <type spec="Heading"/>
  </unit>
  <unit id="4" status="new">
    <source>
      <seg><i>Trados Studio</i> is the world’s most popular translation software with over 170,000 users.</seg>
    </source>
    <target></target>
<type spec="Box"/>
  </unit>
  <unit id="5" status="new">
    <source>
      <seg>
        <b>Dedicated translation environment to handle almost any file type</b>
      </seg>
    </source>
    <target></target>
    <type spec="Heading"/>
  </unit>
  <unit id="6" status="new">
    <source>
      <seg><b>Easily open</b> and start working on the widest range of file formats, from the latest Microsoft Office files to XML, from HTML to InDesign.</seg>
    </source>
    <target></target>
  <type spec="Box"/>
<comment id="1">This is the original comment</comment>
  </unit>
</bilingualdocument>

Note

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