RE: [xliff] Source read-only or not?

["Estreen, Fredrik" <Fredrik.Estreen@lionbridge.com>]

Hi,

I would agree that source should be modifiable within limits. One more case where the source would need to be modified is if it need to be segmented. In that operation it would be preferable no only that the content is divided up between multiple segments, but also that spanning tags can be converted to non-spanning equivalent tags. I also agree that it would be good to allow annotations on the source text to be added. Both of these operations preserve the actual original source content semantically. They just change the representation not the meaning. 

I'm less sure that spell correcting or editing the content, which in effect changes the meaning of the source and it's correspondence with the original document, is a good idea. It brings XLIFF closer to a authoring format.

All of these features could be implemented with a read only source, I'm not sure I would like the technical solutions though. The solution would be to use external elements and attributed that point to portions of the source content and add annotations, segmentation points or even edit operations.

Regards,
Fredrik Estreen

-----Original Message-----
From: xliff@lists.oasis-open.org [mailto:xliff@lists.oasis-open.org] On Behalf Of Yves Savourel
Sent: den 3 april 2012 04:35
To: xliff@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: [xliff] Source read-only or not?

Hi all,

While going through last meeting's minutes I noticed this request from Rodolfo:

> === 6/ New Business     
> Rodolfo: Request to know if source text should be read-only or not.

I would tend to say that the source text should be modifiable by any XLIFF user agents.

In addition to apply some annotations (which would probably not be considered a modification of the content), some steps of the process may want to affect the source text itself before it goes to translation. For example running a spell/grammar checker to help the MT pre-translation later, or doing some form of editing based on a source TM, etc.

The bottom line is that we probably don't want to restrict what tools could do without very good reasons.

Cheers,
-yves





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