translation-toolkit/skills/mpi-translation/references/bilingual-format.md

Bilingual DJ Format

Layout

Each pair: source line immediately followed by target line. Blank line separates pairs.

source-line
target-line

source-line
target-line

NOT:

source-line
              ← WRONG: extra blank between source and target
target-line

Creating initial bilingual from source only

Only non-blank source lines get an empty target placeholder. Blank lines in the source pass through as-is and serve as natural pair separators.

source-A

source-B

The blank line between source-A and source-B is an original blank from the source — do NOT add an extra target+separator for it.

Pitfall: treating blank source lines as content lines creates 3+ consecutive blank lines (source-blank → target-blank → separator-blank). This is wrong.

Verification

non_blank_source_lines × 2 + total_source_lines = bilingual_line_count