XLIFF

XLIFF (XML Localization Interchange File Format) is an XML-based bitext format created to standardize the way localizable data are passed between and among tools during a localization process and a common format for CAT tool exchange. The XLIFF Technical Committee (TC) first convened at OASIS in December 2001 (first meeting in January 2002), but the first fully ratified version of XLIFF appeared as XLIFF Version 1.2 in February 2008. Its current specification is v2.2 released on 2025-03-13, which is backwards compatible with v2.1 released on 2018-02-13. The specification is aimed at the localization industry. It specifies elements and attributes to store content extracted from various original file formats and its corresponding translation. The goal was to abstract the localization skills from the engineering skills related to specific formats such as HTML. XLIFF is part of the Open Architecture for XML Authoring and Localization (OAXAL) reference architecture.