Although original
attribute of <file>
is required in Xliff 1.2 spec and schema, you can ignore it and have a dummy string as its value so that your file passes schema validation.
One of the common uses of this property is when the strings from multiple documents (.properties
files, gettext
files, etc.) are extracted and reformatted as Xliff trans-units so that the strings from each individual file are placed under a respective individual <file>
tag. original
attribute can be used to keep the original filenames in an Xliff file with multiple <file>
tags:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<xliff version="1.1" xml:lang='en'>
<file source-language='en' target-language='de' datatype="plaintext" original="Sample.po">
...
<body>
<trans-unit id="1" restype="button" resname="IDC_TITLE">
<source>Title</source>
</trans-unit>
<trans-unit id="2" restype="label" resname="IDC_STATIC">
<source>&Path:</source>
</trans-unit>
...
</file>
<file source-language='en' target-language='de' datatype="plaintext" original="Sample.properties">
<trans-unit id="1" restype="label" resname="IDC_LABEL">
...
</body>
</file>
</xliff>
I agree that using Xliff for localizing small web applications can often be a bit of an overkill, but this format is arguably the only industry standard file format for localization data interchange at the moment. This makes it very popular with large scale localization implementation either simple source/target-structured files or heavily customized and tailored ones like those used in Translation Management Systems like SDL Idiom Worldserver.
Additionally, there is compatibility between Xliff and other standard file formats of OAXAL family.