Transifex FAQ

What happens when one uploads a new source file?

Here are the steps taken, when you create a new resource by uploading a new source language file:

• Identify the translatable entities/segments in the file.

• For each one, create a new source entity in Transifex, if one does not yet exist.
• Most source files include the string in the source language (in the case of Gettext POT, this is the msgid content). Take this string and store it in the database as the translation for the source language, if needed.

• Replace this string with a hash, in order to mark the place of the source entity and be able to replace it with the correct translation, when exporting the translation file. The above architecture means that all translated versions of the file preserve the comments and non-translatable part of the file. (source)

What happens when one imports a target language?

When you upload eg. a French file, Transifex does things differently. It goes through all translations, locates the respective Source Entity and updates its translation. Then the file is deleted. This means that any content which may not be supported by Transifex (such as arbitrary comments in random locations in the file) might not be preserved. (source)