Reflow PDF Documents Using XLIFF Data

Content reflow is designed to eliminate formatting headaches when translating or updating PDFs. Instead of manually copy-pasting content and fixing layouts, it extracts text into XLIFF format, an industry-standard translation file that maintains

• Fonts
• Layouts
• Tables

No more manual reformatting.

The format provides seamless integration with translation tools and enterprise scalability.

Trial mode page limit

When in trial mode, output is limited to 10 pages. Once licensed, there is no page limit.

How Does Content Reflow Work for my translation needs?

Unlike traditional translation workflows that require manually extracting and reinserting text, XLIFF Reflow automates this process by converting text into XLIFF format, an industry-standard file type for translation workflows.

Important

The XLIFF translation feature requires PDFs with extractable text; scanned or image‑only PDFs result in malformed XLIFF files and missing content. If required glyphs are missing from an embedded font, the system applies font substitution, which may affect visual output but does not fail the operation.

Right-to-left (RTL) language translation is supported for RTL languages for Arabic and Hebrew. You can use SetFlipPageContentsForBiDirectionalTranslations(bool) to invert the position of images and text on the x-axis and invert vector artwork on the x-axis.You may want to invert the position of text, position of images and vector artwork in a RTL translation as it can, in some cases, improve the look of the translated page.

Step 1

Extract Text into XLIFF Format and save the fielded PDF

C++

// Open a PDF to translate.
PDFDoc doc(input_path + "document.pdf");

// Optionally, subset the pages to process
// This PDF only has a single page, but you can specify a subset of pages like this
// options.SetPages("-2,5-6,9,11-");

// Optionally, set the XLIFF exported version, default is 1.2
// options.SetXLIFFVersion(TransPDFOptions::e_xliff_version_2);

// Extract the xlf to file and field the PDF for translation
TransPDF::ExtractXLIFF(doc, output_path + "output.xlf", pageSet);

// Save the fielded PDF
doc.Save(output_path + "document-fielded.pdf", SDFDoc::e_linearized);

C#

// Open a PDF to translate.
FileStream istm = new FileStream(input_path + "document.pdf", FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read);

using (PDFDoc doc = new PDFDoc(istm))
{
    // Optionally, subset the pages to process
		// This PDF only has a single page, but you can specify a subset of pages like this
		// options.SetPages("-2,5-6,9,11-");

		// Optionally, set the XLIFF exported version, default is 1.2
		// options.SetXLIFFVersion(TransPDFOptions.XLIFFVersion.e_xliff_version_2);

    // Extract the xlf to file and field the PDF for translation
    TransPDF.ExtractXLIFF(doc, output_path + "output.xlf", pageSet);
    
    // Save the fielded PDF
    doc.Save(output_path + "document-fielded.pdf", SDFDoc.SaveOptions.e_linearized);
}

Java

// Open a PDF document to translate
PDFDoc doc = new PDFDoc(input_path + "document.pdf")

// Optionally, subset the pages to process
// This PDF only has a single page, but you can specify a subset of pages like this
// options.setPages("-2,5-6,9,11-");

// Optionally, set the XLIFF exported version, default is 1.2
// options.setXLIFFVersion(TransPDFOptions.XLIFFVersion.e_xliff_version_2);

// Extract the xlf to file and field the PDF for translation
TransPDF.extractXLIFF(doc, output_path + "original.xlf", options);

// Save the fielded PDF
doc.save(output_path + "document-fielded.pdf", SDFDoc.SaveMode.LINEARIZED, null);

Python

        # Open a PDF document to translate
        doc = PDFDoc(input_path + "find-replace-test.pdf")
        options = TransPDFOptions()

        # Set the source language in the options
        options.SetSourceLanguage("en")

        # Set the number of pages to process in each batch
        options.SetBatchSize(20)

        # Optionally, subset the pages to process
        # This PDF only has a single page, but you can specify a subset of pages like this
        # options.SetPages("-2,5-6,9,11-")

        # Optionally, set the XLIFF exported version, default is 1.2
        # options.SetXLIFFVersion(TransPDFOptions.e_xliff_version_2)

        # Extract the xlf to file and field the PDF for translation
        TransPDF.ExtractXLIFF(doc, output_path + "find-replace-test.xlf", options)

        # Save the fielded PDF
        doc.Save(output_path + "find-replace-test-fielded.pdf", SDFDoc.e_linearized)

Step 2

Do your translation. Here you would send the XLIFF file to your preferred computer assisted software, online or running locally.

Step 3

Reflow Translated Text Back into the fielded PDF

C++

// Open the fielded PDF generated by ExtractXLIFF
PDFDoc doc(output_path + "document-fielded.pdf");

// Perform the translation using the pre-prepared translated xliff
TransPDF::ApplyXLIFF(doc, input_path + "translated_output_(en_to_fr).xlf", options);

// Save the translated PDF
doc.Save(output_path + "document-fr.pdf", SDFDoc::e_linearized);

C#

// Open the fielded PDF generated by ExtractXLIFF
FileStream istm = new FileStream(output_path + "document-fielded.pdf", FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read);

using (PDFDoc doc = new PDFDoc(istm))
{
  // Perform the translation using the pre-prepared translated xliff
  TransPDF.ApplyXLIFF(doc, input_path + "translated_output_(en_to_fr).xlf", options);

  // Save the translated PDF
  doc.Save(output_path + "document-fr.pdf", SDFDoc.SaveOptions.e_linearized);
  doc.Close();
}

Java

// Open the fielded PDF generated by ExtractXLIFF
PDFDoc doc = new PDFDoc(output_path + "document-fielded.pdf")

// Perform the translation using the pre-prepared translated xliff
TransPDF.applyXLIFF(doc, input_path + "translated_output_(en_to_fr).xlf", options);

// Save the translated PDF
doc.save(output_path + "document-fr.pdf", SDFDoc.SaveMode.LINEARIZED, null);
doc.close();

Python

# The extracted xlf can be translated in a system of your choice.
# In this sample a pre-prepared translated file is used - find-replace-test_(en_to_fr).xlf

# Perform the translation using the pre-prepared translated xliff
TransPDF.ApplyXLIFF(doc, input_path + "find-replace-test_(en_to_fr).xlf", options)

# Save the translated PDF
doc.Save(output_path + "find-replace-test-fr.pdf", SDFDoc.e_linearized)
doc.Close()

For more extensive code samples please go to the Document Translation Reflow samples page.