Translate an XLIFF file into German without breaking tags

What German changes in your targets

German uses the Latin alphabet and runs left to right, so there is no change of direction or font to deal with. The difficulties lie elsewhere, and they hit exactly the kind of UI strings an XLIFF file carries.

• Length. German text is often 20 to 35 % longer than English, and compound nouns stretch short labels most of all: Notification settings becomes Benachrichtigungseinstellungen, a single 30-character word that cannot be hyphenated neatly. A button or tab can double in width.
• Capitals. Every noun is capitalised, even mid-sentence (die Datei, das Konto). German does not, however, use English title case: Account Settings becomes Kontoeinstellungen, not a string of capitalised words.
• Form of address. Formal Sie is the norm in professional software: Geben Sie Ihr Passwort ein. A consumer app may prefer informal du; what matters is not mixing the two across screens.
• Buttons. German UI convention favours the infinitive for actions: Speichern, Abbrechen, Löschen.

Tags, placeholders and plurals: the German traps

In XLIFF, a sentence is often split by inline tags or placeholders. German tends to push the verb to the end of the clause, which moves those elements: Delete <ph id="1"/>? becomes <ph id="1"/> löschen?. Manuce keeps <g>, <x/> and <ph> tags in the same order: their position in the sentence may shift, their relative order does not. In the rare string where German would rather swap two placeholders, the sentence is built around the original order, so those are the ones to proofread.

For plurals, German has only two CLDR categories, one and other, just like English. An ICU message {count, plural, one {# file} other {# files}} becomes {count, plural, one {# Datei} other {# Dateien}}: no category to add, but the keywords plural, one and other must stay as they are. Each translated value is compared with its source for placeholders and tags; if a mismatch persists, the source value is kept and the report says so.

Finally, German quotation marks are written „…“. These characters do not exist in ISO-8859-1, and since your file's encoding is preserved, it is worth converting such a file to UTF-8 before uploading.

What Manuce returns, exactly

You receive the same XLIFF file, version 1.2 or 2.0, ready to drop back into your project or tool:

• each source translated into its target, with the state attribute updated;
• indentation, element order, quotes, comments, line endings, encoding and BOM unchanged: only the values differ;
• units marked translate="no" left as they are, and the file's notes used as context;
• left untranslated: identifiers, empty values, URLs, email addresses, numbers, colours, date formats and anything marked non-translatable. A format such as dd.MM.yyyy therefore stays put: displaying dates the German way is your application's job;
• a report: strings translated, strings left unchanged and why.

Worth knowing: no length limit is guaranteed. If your file carries size constraints (maxwidth in 1.2, the size restriction module in 2.0), check those strings yourself. Manuce does not produce sworn or certified translations either; irrelevant for a UI, but useful to know if the same project includes legal documents. The price covers the words in the values only, tags and identifiers excluded.

Preparing the file before upload

• Target language. In XLIFF 1.2 the file element carries target-language="de" (or de-DE, de-AT, de-CH); in 2.0 it is trgLang="de" on the root. As the file comes back identical apart from its values, set this attribute yourself. For Switzerland, local usage replaces ß with ss: something to check when proofreading.
• Names to keep. Mark product or module names that must not be translated with translate="no", for instance Dashboard when it is the name of a feature. For a term you cannot mark, check it in the free sample and then in the translation.
• Context. A lone Open may be a verb (Öffnen) or a status (Offen). A note on the unit, such as “toolbar button”, settles it: notes are passed to the translator as context.
• Encoding. Prefer UTF-8 for ä, ö, ü, ß and German quotation marks.

Checking after delivery

• Read the report first: a string kept in the source language usually points to a placeholder or tag the German sentence could not accommodate.
• Re-import the file and open the screens with short labels: buttons, tabs, column headers, menus. That is where compounds overflow.
• Look for mixed address forms: Sie alongside du, or Ihr alongside dein, within the same flow.
• Test plurals with 1 and with 2: 1 Datei, 2 Dateien.
• For a released interface, the Professional or Premium level is the right fit; Essential is enough to understand a file internally.

In practice

1. Set target-language="de" (1.2) or trgLang="de" (2.0) and save the file as UTF-8.
2. Mark product names translate="no" and add a note to ambiguous strings.
3. Upload the XLIFF: the quote is based on the words in the values, and a free sample is translated.
4. Check the sample for Sie or du and for capitalisation, then pay.
5. Download the file and report, re-import it and test the screens with short labels.