Supervertaler Re-importable Text (AI-friendly)

The Re-importable Text round-trip lets you send a whole translation out as a plain-text file — for a proofreader or an LLM to edit — and then pull the edits straight back into the same project. It’s the plain-text sibling of the Re-importable Table (DOCX), ported from the Supervertaler for Trados plugin. Added in v1.10.231.

Exporting

Project → Export → 🔁 Supervertaler Re-importable → Bilingual Text (AI-friendly)…

You’ll get a small options dialog (include locked segments; which statuses to include), then a save dialog. Two files are written side by side:

MyProject_bilingual.txt — the editable text file.
MyProject_bilingual.txt.svexport.json — a sidecar that records, per segment, a stable id, a source hash, and the status. Keep the two files together; the sidecar is what makes a safe re-import possible.

The file opens with a short header that lists exactly which statuses you may set. Each segment is one block:

[SEGMENT 0001]
EN: The <b>quick</b> brown fox {1}
NL: De <b>snelle</b> bruine vos {1}
Status: Confirmed
Comment: Verify the shade of "brown"

The EN: line is the source — leave it alone. It stays on one line, and a [newline] in it marks where the original source broke across two lines (e.g. a subtitle cue). The source is read-only and never written back to your project, so these tokens are just there to show its structure — handy for spotting a target that’s missing a break the source has.
The NL: line is the target — edit it freely, but keep it on one line. Where the target needs a hard line break — for example to split a subtitle across two lines — write the literal token [newline]:
```
NL: Welkom bij dit webinar[newline]over de waardeketenanalyse
```
On re-import [newline] is turned back into a real line break, so the two-line layout is preserved on export. (Introduced in v1.10.255; files exported before that — with the target genuinely wrapped over several lines — still re-import unchanged.)
The Comment: line is always present (blank when the segment has no comment) so you can see the field exists. Edit it, fill the blank one, or clear it — the change re-imports into the segment’s comments. It too may span several lines.
…, …, … are cosmetic formatting — add or remove them as you like.
{1}, [1}, <92> and similar are structural tags — keep them; dropping one will flag the segment on re-import (see below).

A real file looks like this — note the single-line sources and the [newline] token marking where each target splits across two lines:

A Supervertaler Re-importable Text file: the header lists the project details and the editing rules, the NL: source lines each sit on one line, and two EN: targets show the [newline] token highlighted where a subtitle is split across two lines.

Editing with an LLM

Hand the .txt to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, etc. with an instruction such as “edit only the NL: lines; keep each one on a single line, using the literal token [newline] for any line break; leave the [SEGMENT …] markers, the EN: lines, and the {…} tags untouched.” Because each field is one labelled line (not a table column), it survives pipe characters and long inputs without the source/target roles getting confused, and keeping targets to one line stops an agent from accidentally reflowing them.

Re-importing

Project → Import → 🔁 Supervertaler Re-importable → Bilingual Text (AI-friendly) - Update Project…

Pick the edited .txt (its sidecar is found automatically). A preview dialog shows how many segments will be updated, how many are unchanged, and how many are skipped — and why. Nothing is applied until you click Apply changes.

Safety guards

Source-tamper detection — if a segment’s source line was changed, that segment is skipped (its hash no longer matches the sidecar).
Structural-tag integrity — if the edited target dropped a required tag, the segment is flagged. With “Refuse to apply edits that drop required tags” ticked (the default), such segments are skipped; untick it to apply them anyway. Cosmetic // changes never trip this.
Locked segments are never modified.

Status

If you (or the AI) deliberately change a Status: line to a different value, that status is applied.
Otherwise, any segment whose target you edited is marked Draft — a translated-but-unconfirmed state, ready for you to review and confirm.

Comments

Existing segment comments are written out as a Comment: line. Edit it, add a new one to a segment that had none, or delete it — the change re-imports into the segment’s comments. A comment-only edit (target left alone) is applied on its own and shows up in the import preview.

Tips

Export reads live grid state, so in-progress edits are included even if the segment isn’t confirmed.
If the sidecar is missing, you can still re-import — segments are then matched by position only, and source-tamper detection is unavailable. You’ll be warned first.