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.

Note

Why “Text” and not “Markdown”? The file is deliberately plain text. Its segment blocks rely on line breaks being preserved, and a Markdown renderer collapses single line breaks – which would scramble the structure. AI agents read the raw characters when you paste a file into a chat, so plain text is both safe and maximally readable.

Exporting

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

You’ll get a small options dialog (include locked segments; which statuses to include) with two ways out:

• Save to File… – opens a save dialog and writes the text file (see below).
• 📋 Copy to Clipboard – copies the same text instead, ready to paste into an AI chat. No file is written. See Working without files.

When you save to a file, 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.

• <b>…</b>, <i>…</i>, <u>…</u> 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:

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 <b>/<i>/<u> changes never trip this.
• Locked segments are never modified.
• Blocks that match nothing – when a block can’t be matched to a segment of the open project, the preview lists it as MISSING and it is never written anywhere.

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.

Working without files: copy and paste

If you work on the text in an AI chat, you don’t need a file in either direction (from v1.10.372). This is the Workbench counterpart of Clipboard Mode in Supervertaler for Trados.

1. Project → Export → 🔁 Supervertaler Re-importable → Bilingual Text (AI-friendly)…, choose your options and click 📋 Copy to Clipboard.
2. Paste the text into your AI chat, with your instructions (see Editing with an LLM).
3. Copy the AI’s reply and press Ctrl+Shift+V in Supervertaler, or choose Project → Import → 🔁 Supervertaler Re-importable → Bilingual Text (AI-friendly) - Update from Pasted Text…
4. The Update from Pasted Text box opens. If the clipboard already holds [SEGMENT NNNN] text, it is filled in for you; otherwise paste it in. Click Preview Changes….
5. You get the same preview and the same safeguards as the file import (tag check, locked segments skipped). Click Apply changes to update the translations, comments and statuses.

The reply doesn’t have to be tidy: a line of chat before or after the blocks, or the whole text wrapped in a code block, is fine.

How pasted blocks find their segments

Pasted text has no sidecar, so the blocks are matched to your segments by their source line, not by their [SEGMENT NNNN] number. The number can’t be trusted on its own: an export filtered by status numbers its blocks from 1 wherever they sit in the project, and an AI may reorder or drop blocks. The source line is reliable, because it is read-only.

• Leave the source lines exactly as they were. A block whose source matches no segment is listed in the preview as not found and skipped.
• Repeated sources – when the same source text occurs more than once, the blocks are paired with those segments in document order.
• Same session – if you exported or copied this project earlier in the same session, that export’s exact mapping is used first.

Tip

Ctrl+Shift+V works only while Supervertaler is the active window, so it doesn’t interfere with other applications. You can change it in Settings → ⌨️ Keyboard Shortcuts.

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 the file. Segments are then matched by their source text, exactly as for pasted text, so edits still reach the right segments even if the export was filtered by status.

Related

• Supervertaler Re-importable Table (DOCX)
• Exporting Translations