National foreword

This British Standard is the UK implementation of ISO 21720:2017.

The UK participation in its preparation was entrusted to Technical Committee TS/1, Terminology.

A list of organizations represented on this committee can be obtained on request to its secretary.

This publication does not purport to include all the necessary provisions of a contract. Users are responsible for its correct application.

Compliance with a British Standard cannot confer immunity from legal obligations.

This British Standard was published under the authority of the Standards Policy and Strategy Committee on 31 December 2017.

Foreword

ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) is a worldwide federation of national standards bodies (ISO member bodies). The work of preparing International Standards is normally carried out through ISO technical committees. Each member body interested in a subject for which a technical committee has been established has the right to be represented on that committee. International organizations, governmental and non‐governmental, in liaison with ISO, also take part in the work. ISO collaborates closely with the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) on all matters of electrotechnical standardization.

The procedures used to develop this document and those intended for its further maintenance are described in the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 1. In particular the different approval criteria needed for the different types of ISO documents should be noted. This document was drafted in accordance with the editorial rules of the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 2 (see www.iso.org/directives).

Attention is drawn to the possibility that some of the elements of this document may be the subject of patent rights. ISO shall not be held responsible for identifying any or all such patent rights. Details of any patent rights identified during the development of the document will be in the Introduction and/or on the ISO list of patent declarations received (see www.iso.org/patents).

Any trade name used in this document is information given for the convenience of users and does not constitute an endorsement.

For an explanation on the voluntary nature of standards, the meaning of ISO specific terms and expressions related to conformity assessment, as well as information about ISO's adherence to the World Trade Organization (WTO) principles in the Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) see the following URL: www.iso.org/iso/foreword.html.

This document was prepared by OASIS (as XLIFF Version 2.0, August 2014) and was adopted, under a special “fast‐track procedure”, by Technical Committee ISO/TC 37, Terminology and other language and content resources, Subcommittee SC 5, Translation, interpreting and related technology.

1 Introduction

XLIFF is the XML Localisation Interchange File Format designed by a group of multilingual content publishers, software providers, localization service providers, localization tools providers and researchers. It is intended to give any multilingual content owner a single interchange file format that can be understood by any localization provider, using any conformant localization tool. While the primary focus is on being a lossless interchange format, usage of XLIFF as a processing format is neither encouraged nor discouraged or prohibited.

All text is normative unless otherwise labeled. The following common methods are used for labeling portions of this specification as informative and hence non-normative:

Appendices and sections marked as "(Informative)" or "Non-Normative" in title,

Notes (sections with the "Note" title),

Warnings (sections with the "Warning" title),

Examples (mainly example code listings but also any inline examples or illustrative exemplary lists in otherwise normative text),

Schema and other artifacts listings (the corresponding artifacts are normative, not their listings).

1.1 Terminology

1.2 Normative References

1.3 Non-Normative References

2 Conformance

3 Fragment Identification

3.1 Selectors for Core Elements

3.2 Selectors for Modules and Extensions

3.3 Relative References

3.4 Examples

4 The Core Specification

4.1 General Processing Requirements

4.2 Elements

4.3 Attributes

4.4 CDATA sections

4.5 XML Comments

4.6 XML Processing Instructions

4.7 Inline Content

4.8 Segmentation

4.9 Extension Mechanisms

5 The Modules Specifications

5.1 Translation Candidates Module

5.2 Glossary Module

5.3 Format Style Module

5.4 Metadata Module

5.5 Resource Data Module

5.6 Change Tracking Module

5.7 Size and Length Restriction Module

5.8 Validation Module

BS ISO 21720:2017

XLIFF (XML Localisation interchange file format)

Published:

31 Dec 2017

Withdrawn:

9 Jul 2024