Supported file formats

Weblate supports a wide range of translation formats. Each format is slightly different and provides a different set of capabilities.

Tipp

When choosing a file format for your application, it’s better to stick some well established format in the toolkit/platform you use. This way your translators can additionally use whatever tools they are used to, and will more likely contribute to your project.

Automatikus felismerés

Weblate tries to detect file format during Adding translation projects and components. The detection might be wrong for different variants of the same serialization format (JSON, YAML, properties) or file encoding, so please verify that Fájlformátum is correct before creating the component.

Translation types capabilities

Capabilities of all supported formats

Format

Linguality [1]

Plurals [2]

Descriptions [3]

Context [4]

Location [5]

Flags [8]

Additional states [6]

GNU gettext PO (Portable Object)

bilingual

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes [9]

needs editing

Monolingual gettext

mono

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes [9]

needs editing

XLIFF

both

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

needs editing, approved

Java-tulajdonságok

both

no

yes

no

no

no

mi18n nyelvi fájlok

mono

no

yes

no

no

no

GWT-tulajdonságok

mono

yes

yes

no

no

no

Joomla-fordítások

mono

no

yes

no

yes

no

Qt Linguist .ts

both

yes

yes

no

yes

yes

needs editing

Android szövegerőforrások

mono

yes

yes [7]

no

no

yes

Apple iOS szövegek

both

no

yes

no

no

no

PHP szövegek

mono

no [10]

yes

no

no

no

JSON-fájlok

mono

no

no

no

no

no

i18next JSON-fájlok

mono

yes

no

no

no

no

go-i18n JSON-fájlok

mono

yes

yes

no

no

no

gotext JSON-fájlok

mono

yes

yes

no

yes

no

ARB File

mono

yes

yes

no

no

no

WebExtension JSON

mono

yes

yes

no

no

no

.NET-erőforrásfájlok (RESX, RESW)

mono

no

yes

no

no

yes

ResourceDictionary-fájlok

mono

no

no

no

no

yes

CSV-fájlok

both

no

yes

yes

yes

no

needs editing

YAML-fájlok

mono

no

no

no

no

no

Ruby YAML-fájlok

mono

yes

no

no

no

no

DTD-fájlok

mono

no

no

no

no

no

Sima XML-fájlok

mono

no

no

no

no

yes

Windows RC-fájlok

mono

no

yes

no

no

no

Excel Open XML

mono

no

yes

yes

yes

no

needs editing

App store metaadatfájlok

mono

no

no

no

no

no

Feliratfájlok

mono

no

no

no

yes

no

HTML-fájlok

mono

no

no

no

no

no

Markdown-fájlok

mono

no

no

no

no

no

OpenDocument-formátum

mono

no

no

no

no

no

IDML-formátum

mono

no

no

no

no

no

INI-fordítások

mono

no

no

no

no

no

Inno Setup INI-fordítások

mono

no

no

no

no

no

TermBase eXchange-formátum

bilingual

no

yes

no

no

yes

Szövegfájlok

mono

no

no

no

no

no

Stringsdict-formátum

mono

yes

no

no

no

no

Fluent-formátum

mono

no [11]

yes

no

no

no

Bilingual and monolingual formats

Both monolingual and bilingual formats are supported. Bilingual formats store two languages in single file—source and translation (typical examples are GNU gettext PO (Portable Object), XLIFF or Apple iOS szövegek). On the other side, monolingual formats identify the string by ID, and each language file contains only the mapping of those to any given language (typically Android szövegerőforrások). Some file formats are used in both variants, see the detailed description below.

For correct use of monolingual files, Weblate requires access to a file containing complete list of strings to translate with their source—this file is called Egynyelvű alap nyelvi fájl within Weblate, though the naming might vary in your paradigm.

Additionally this workflow can be extended by utilizing Közbülső nyelvi fájl to include strings provided by developers, but not to be used as is in the final strings.

String states

Many file formats only differentiate „Untranslated” and „Translated” strings. With some formats it is possible to store more fine-grained state information, such as „Needs editing” or „Approved”.

Forrásszöveg leírása

Source string descriptions can be used to pass additional info about the string to translate.

Several formats have native support for providing additional info to translators (for example XLIFF, GNU gettext PO (Portable Object), WebExtension JSON, CSV-fájlok, Excel Open XML, Qt Linguist .ts, go-i18n JSON-fájlok, gotext JSON-fájlok, ARB File, .NET-erőforrásfájlok (RESX, RESW)). Many other formats extract closest comment as source string description.

Magyarázat

The Magyarázat on strings can be stored and parsed from a few file formats.

Currently supported only in TermBase eXchange-formátum.

Forrásszöveg helye

Location of a string in source code might help proficient translators figure out how the string is used.

This information is typically available in bilingual formats where strings are extracted from the source code using tools. For example GNU gettext PO (Portable Object) and Qt Linguist .ts.

Fordítási jelzők

Translation flags allow customizing Weblate behavior. Some formats support defining those in the translation file (you can always define them in the Weblate interface, see Customizing behavior using flags).

This feature is modelled on flags in GNU gettext PO (Portable Object).

Additionally, for all XML based format, the flags are extracted from the non-standard attribute weblate-flags. Additionally max-length:N is supported through the maxwidth attribute as defined in the XLIFF standard, see Specifying translation flags.

Környezet

Context is used to differentiate identical strings in a bilingual format used in different scopes (for example Sun can be used as an abbreviated name of the day „Sunday” or as the name of our closest star).

For monolingual formats the string identifier (often called key) can serve the same purpose and additional context is not necessary.

Pluralized strings

Plurals are necessary to properly localize strings with variable count. The rules depend on a target language and many formats follow CLDR specification for that.

Tipp

Pluralizing strings need proper support from the application framework as well. Choose native format of your platform such as GNU gettext PO (Portable Object), Android szövegerőforrások or Stringsdict-formátum.

Csak olvasható szövegek

Read-only strings from translation files will be included, but can not be edited in Weblate. This feature is natively supported by few formats (XLIFF and Android szövegerőforrások), but can be emulated in others by adding a read-only flag, see Customizing behavior using flags.

Supporting other formats

Most formats supported by translate-toolkit which support serializing can be easily supported, but they did not (yet) receive any testing. In most cases some thin layer is needed in Weblate to hide differences in behavior of different translate-toolkit storages.

To add support for a new format, the preferred approach is to first implement support for it in the translate-toolkit.