File Types

If you are just getting started, and you are translating files that SDL Trados Studio supports, you can use Studio straight away to translate your files — you do not need to change any Studio file type options. However, if you want to translate files of an unsupported file type, or if you want to improve translation leverage, or if you just want to make translation easier for the files that you have, it might be useful to browse through the file type settings to see how you can change the way that Studio processes files.

File type (sometimes called filetype) is a term used to highlight the difference between the types of data held in different files. Examples of file types are program executable files, Microsoft Word documents and MP3 files. Studio supports a number of file types. For these, supported, files, Studio can extract the translatable text from the file so that you can translate it. Conversely, if you try to open a file of an unsupported type, Studio displays an error message.

Important settings specified by the file type options:

How Studio identifies the type of the presented file, for example, what file name extensions are used for files of that type.
How Studio identifies which part of the file contents should be translated and what content should not be translated. For example, the options specify what content in the file is structural information and so is not translated.
How Studio extracts and displays embedded content from XML, XHTML, Java and Excel documents.