Importing Translations

When translating in Microsoft Excel, the string can be marked as translated by changing the cell value of the translated column from 0 to 1. However, if the Import all strings option is selected when re-importing the translation back to M-Files, all strings are imported to M-Files regardless of whether the value of the translated column.

Note: If the target column is left empty and the value of the translated column is set to 1, M-Files uses the source language string as the translation.

If you only want to import the strings marked as translated, select the Import only strings that have been marked as translated option. This way, only the strings with the value 1 in the translated column are imported to M-Files. For example, if new additions are made to the source language at a later stage, this selection can be used to import only the translations of the new additions to M-Files.

If changes are made in the source language, this version data can be found in the source-version column of the exported XML file: when changes are made to the source language string, the value of this string cell is always increased by one. The target language translation must then be checked and changed to correspond to the change in the source language.

Also, if the values of the translated strings in the translated column have previously been changed to 1, they will be reset to 0 if changes are made to the source language of these strings. For this reason, it is recommended to instruct the translator to mark the translated and accepted translations as translated, after which the value 1 indicates that the target language translations are up to date.

To import the translation back to M-Files from Microsoft Excel, save the translated XML file in Microsoft Excel in XML Data format. You can then import the file to M-Files using the Import function of the Languages and Translations dialog. It is alright for the file to have different name when importing and exporting.

Importing a translation to M-Files is quite straightforward. Just select the appropriate target language and whether you want to import all the strings or just the ones marked as translated.

After importing, M-Files asks if you want to rebuild the full-text search index for the metadata. Edited translations cannot be used in searches until the search index is rebuilt. This may take several minutes or even hours depending on the number of objects in the document vault.