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Swordfish Translation Editor

Swordfish logo

Swordfish is an advanced open standards-based CAT (Computer Aided Translation) tool designed for demanding professional translators. It is an essential tool for professional translators and translation agencies who want to streamline their translation processes and deliver high-quality translations more efficiently.

Swordfish supports the exchange of TMX (Translation Memory eXchange), the vendor-neutral open XML standard for the exchange of Translation Memory (TM) data created by Computer Aided Translation (CAT) and localization tools, originally published by LISA (Localisation Industry Standards Association).

Source Code is Open

The source code of Swordfish is available under the Eclipse Public License v1.0 at https://github.com/rmraya/Swordfish. Anyone can download, compile, modify and use the source code free of charge under the terms of the license.

We offer subscriptions for installers, technical support, bug fixes, and feature requests. By subscribing to our support plan, you not only get access to our expertise and help, but you also contribute to the continuous improvement of Swordfish. Your subscription fees pay for code development costs and ensure the quality and reliability of our software.

Subscription Keys are available at our Online Store. Subscription Keys cannot be shared or transferred to different machines.

Translating a Word file with Swordfish

Supported File Formats

General Documentation

  • Adobe InCopy ICML
  • Adobe InDesign Interchange (INX)
  • Adobe InDesign IDML CS4, CS5, CS6 & CC
  • HTML
  • Microsoft Office (2007 and newer)
  • Microsoft Visio XML Drawings (2007 and newer)
  • MIF (Maker Interchange Format)
  • OpenOffice / LibreOffice / StarOffice
  • Plain Text
  • SDLXLIFF (Trados Studio)
  • SRT Subtitles
  • Trados Studio Packages (*.sdlppx)
  • GlobalLink/WordfastPRO TXML (*.txml)
  • GlobalLink/WordfastPRO XLIFF (*.txlf)
  • WPML XLIFF (WordPress Multilingual Plugin)
  • XLIFF from Other Tools (*.mqxliff, *.xliff)

XML Formats

  • XML (Generic)
  • DITA 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3
  • DocBook 3.x, 4.x and 5.x
  • SVG
  • Word 2003 ML
  • XHTML

Software Development

  • JavaScript
  • Java Properties
  • JSON
  • PHP Arrays
  • PO (Portable Objects)
  • RC (Windows C/C++ Resources)
  • ResX (Windows .NET Resources)
  • TS (Qt Linguist translation source)

Compatible with other CAT tools

Swordfish supports the most common formats used for exchanging translations:

  • XLIFF Directly accepts version 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 and 2.0
  • SDLXLIFF SDL Trados Studio XLIFF files
  • Accepts Trados Studio packages (*.sdlppx) and creates return packages (*.sdlrpx)
  • TXLF / mqXLIFF Native support for XLIFF files from WordfastPRO and MemoQ
  • TXML Full support for Wordfast PRO and GlobalLink files.

Complete Segment Filtering

Swordfish lets translators hide/show segments filtering on multiple status options, like: is translatable, has translation, has comments, is approved, etc.

Comfortable Proofreading

Swordfish generates HTML views from XLIFF files that lets translators/reviewers proof read comfortably in the system's default web browser.

Advanced Translation Engines

Swordfish includes two translation engines:

  • A "traditional" TM (Translation Memory) system that provides exceptional matching
  • "Auto-Translation", an exclusive technology that assembles matches from regular TM databases and Terminology databases

Additionally, Swordfish supports these external Machine Translation (MT) Engines:

  • Azure Translator Text
  • DeepL API (Free and PRO plans)
  • Google Cloud Translation
  • ChatGPT
  • Yandex Translate API
  • ModernMT