XLIFF

Having a great website management system like Drupal that has built-in content translation tools is an achievement in itself. But content is not always born in Drupal, and it’s most certainly not translated in Drupal. This makes it necessary, particularly in the context of multilingual websites, for Drupal to support interfacing so it can link in with external translation tools and their translation workflows.

Lately I have been poking around workflows to better support translators. The localizer module suite has no built in workflow support, and i18n module suite has a very simple and limited built-in workflow, so for complex workflow requirements, people need to look elsewhere. Luckily, respected members of the community maintain the workflow and actions modules, which allow for setup of more complex workflows.

By looking at what people described as their use case, there is a considerable amount of interest in a CAT (Computer Aided Translation) support tool in Drupal. While Drupal 6 could (and will by default or with a contrib module) provide a translation interface for nodes, content created in professional systems is often not translated inhouse, translation work is outsourced to professional translators. These professionals employ tools to remember previous translations, build on existing terminology and reuse what is already done.