Translate an XLIFF file into Turkish

What Turkish does to an XLIFF segment

Turkish uses the Latin alphabet, left to right, with letters of its own: ç, ğ, ı, İ, ö, ş, ü. More importantly, it is agglutinative: grammar is carried by suffixes that follow vowel harmony. “in the file” is dosyada, “in the list” is listede. A word's ending depends on the word before it, which is exactly where segments with placeholders get awkward.

• Suffixes on placeholders. For Invited {user}, the accusative attaches to the name: Ahmet'i davet etti but Ayşe'yi davet etti. Since the value of {user} is unknown, the safe wording leaves the placeholder unsuffixed: {user} davet edildi.
• Word order. Turkish is subject-object-verb. “Click <g>Save</g> to continue” becomes Devam etmek için <g>Kaydet</g>'e tıklayın: the sentence is rebuilt around the button.
• Plurals. CLDR has only one and other for Turkish, and nouns stay singular after a number: 1 dosya, 5 dosya, never 5 dosyalar. In ICU messages both branches are often identical; that is correct.
• Long words. A single word such as kaydedilemedi (“could not be saved”) cannot be broken, so narrow buttons and columns need room.

Dotted and dotless i: the casing trap

Turkish has four letters where English has two: i/İ (dotted) and ı/I (dotless). The capital of i is İ; the capital of ı is I. Uppercasing done in code without the Turkish locale turns Giriş into GIRIŞ instead of GİRİŞ, which a Turkish reader sees as a different word.

• If your UI capitalises labels with something like toUpperCase() or CSS text-transform: uppercase, make sure it runs with tr: a lang="tr" attribute on the page, or a locale-aware function.
• The reverse also bites: lowercasing İ without the locale yields i plus a combining dot, invisible on screen but enough to break comparisons and search.
• Once Turkish is active, test your own logic too: "FILE".toLowerCase() == "file" fails under a Turkish locale, because it produces fıle.

Manuce translates the text as it appears in the source; what your application does with case afterwards is on your side.

What Manuce returns, and what it does not

You get back the same XLIFF file, ready to drop into the project, plus a report.

• Each unit's source is translated into the target element, in XLIFF 1.2 and 2.0, and the state attribute is updated.
• Inline tags (<g>, <x/>, <ph>…) are kept in the same order. Where Turkish verb-final order fits poorly, the sentence is built around the tags. A string that would lose a tag is rejected and flagged.
• Every Turkish value is compared with its source (placeholders, tags); if a mismatch persists, the source value is kept and the report says so.
• translate="no" is respected; note elements give the translator context.
• Indentation, ordering, quotes, comments, line endings, encoding and BOM are preserved: only the values change.
• Left untranslated: IDs, empty values, URLs, email addresses, numbers, colours, date formats and anything marked non-translatable.

Manuce does not touch your code or date handling, and does not provide sworn or certified translation. Pricing counts words in values only, tags excluded, with a ×1.25 language coefficient for Turkish.

Preparing the file

1. Encoding. ş, ğ, ı and İ do not exist in ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1). The file's encoding is kept as it is, so convert to UTF-8 before uploading if it is not already.
2. Target language. Check that your export tool has set target-language="tr" on file (XLIFF 1.2) or trgLang="tr" on the root element (XLIFF 2.0).
3. Non-translatable content. Mark product names, commands and anything that must stay verbatim with translate="no".
4. Context notes. Short strings are ambiguous in Turkish: “Open” is Açık as a status and Aç as a button. A note saying “button label” or “ticket status” settles it.
5. Whole sentences. Avoid strings assembled by concatenation ("Delete " + item + "?"): Turkish suffixes depend on the neighbouring word and cannot be glued back afterwards.

Checking the Turkish after delivery

• Read the report. It lists strings left in the source language and why (placeholder, tag, non-translatable value). Start there.
• Test with real values. Replace {user} or {count} with real names and numbers and check the sentence holds: 3 dosya silindi, Ayşe davet edildi.
• Check casing on screen. Look for dotless I where İ belongs in capitalised titles and buttons.
• Check register. Interfaces usually address the user with the polite form (Şifrenizi girin) and short imperative buttons (Kaydet, İptal). A stray informal Şifreni gir stands out when you scan the file.
• Layout. Long, unbreakable Turkish words overflow buttons and table cells more readily.

Before paying, the free sample lets you confirm that a term meant to stay unchanged was left alone; repeat that check on the full file.

In practice

1. Convert the file to UTF-8 and confirm the target language is declared as tr.
2. Upload the XLIFF: an instant quote appears, based on the words in the values.
3. Review the free sample at your chosen level, then start the translation.
4. Download the file and its report, then test the Turkish UI with real values.