When requesting translations for a specific file, there is a portion of its content that is extracted for translation and another that is left out of the process, based on the filter configuration applied to the request - see more information here.

However, you may have terms or expressions in your file that you want to protect from changes introduced by the translation process, even if that content is considered extractable for translation. You can ask for content to be preserved in different ways:

• by having a custom file filter use a property of that content to exclude it
• by requesting a File Engineering, DTP, or PDF Handling service, depending on the file format
• by using one of our generic placeholders with the text, in order to exclude it from translation

Using placeholders to preserve text

There are a series of placeholders, i.e., character expressions that placed next or around the text will prevent its translation. Their behaviour is slightly different and is explained in the list below.

Placeholders are generic and will work in standard filter configurations and custom ones, unless it was specifically requested that they are disabled in the latter.

Placeholders that are not part of this list will not work with the standard filters.

Placeholders supporting spaces and diacritics

The placeholders in this list allow for sentences with words separated by spaces or containing diacritics to be preserved. The content between the special characters remains unchanged but is still visible for translators, as to provide context during translation. These include

• {text here}
• ${text here}
• $((text here))
• {{text here}}

Example on how it should look on the source text:

✅ The figures on this report refer to the income from the {Green Lodge Lagoon} facilities.

Placeholders NOT supporting spaces and diacritics

The list below works for single terms with no diacritics. The protection will cease as soon as a space is or diacritic is found in the text ahead.

• %#@placeholder@
• @PLACEHOLDER
• #placeholder
• %%placeholder%%
• %placeholder

Example:

✅ The figures on this report refer to the income from the #Green Lodge Lagoon facilities.

In this sentence, only the term "Green" is protected during translation.