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XLIFF Workflow

Localization source files use XLIFF 2.0 — one file per locale. Lexical scopes (knots/stitches/root) map to <file> elements within the XLIFF document. brink-specific metadata (content hashes for change tracking) uses XLIFF’s custom namespace extension (brink:, see BRINK_NS in brink-intl), which conforming tools preserve across round-trips.

The workflow is shipped end-to-end: the brink CLI exposes export-xliff, compile-locale, and regenerate-xliff, and brink-intl exposes the same operations as a library (generate_locale, compile_locale_xliff, regenerate_locale).

Why XLIFF

Every major translation management platform (Lokalise, Crowdin, etc.) natively imports/exports XLIFF, and the spec requires tools to preserve unknown extensions — brink-specific metadata survives round-trips through external tooling.

Workflow

The translation pipeline is .ink → compile → .inkb → export-xliff → .xlf. (Always start from a compiled .inkb; never feed inklecate’s .ink.json into the intl tooling.)

  1. Export: extract every translatable line from a compiled story into an XLIFF file, organized by scope with context for translators.

    brink export-xliff story.inkb --src-lang en --trg-lang es -o story.es.xlf

  2. Translate: work in the .xlf directly or import it into a TMS (Lokalise, Crowdin, …). Translation state rides XLIFF’s state attribute (initial/translated/reviewed/final).

  3. Compile: turn the translated XLIFF into a binary .inkl overlay.

    brink compile-locale --base story.inkb --xliff story.es.xlf --locale es -o story.es.inkl

  4. Regenerate: after the source changes and you recompile, diff the new .inkb against the existing XLIFF — preserving human translations while updating machine-managed fields (original text, context). Content-hash changes flag entries whose source moved.

    brink regenerate-xliff --base story.inkb --existing story.es.xlf -o story.es.xlf

Load the resulting .inkl at runtime with brink_runtime::apply_locale, or in Bevy via the locale-switching API (see the Bevy Integration section).