Working on a Trados package when you don’t own Trados

What is in a project package

A project package is how a Trados user hands work to someone else. RWS describes it as holding “files on which a project team member has to perform a manual task such as translation or review”. Whoever makes it can also add reference files, the original source files, and translation memories, termbases and AutoSuggest dictionaries (RWS, Project packages, Trados Studio 2024).

An .sdlppx file is a ZIP archive. This is what we found in one of the two packages we opened for this post, an English to French and Polish package from the open test files of the Okapi Framework (Okapi, package test files):

• A project file (.sdlproj): the languages, the settings and who made the package.
• A folder for each language: en-US/Test.docx.sdlxliff for the source, and fr-CA/ and pl-PL/ with one bilingual file each. The files in the target-language folders are the ones you translate.
• A Reports folder: the analysis Trados ran on the files, with word counts and matches.

An .sdlxliff file is XLIFF, the open standard for bilingual files, with Trados’s own additions: each segment’s status, such as Draft or Translated, and whether it is locked. In this package the original Word file travels inside each .sdlxliff, so the agency can rebuild the translated Word document from it.

What the agency gets back

When you finish, you send a return package, an .sdlrpx file. RWS’s documentation says: “When you create a return package, it only includes the project files and not the translation memory (TM), termbases (TBs) or AutoSuggest dictionaries” (RWS, Creating return packages, Trados Studio 2024). Your work travels in the .sdlxliff files.

The Okapi test files include a return package that Trados made from the other test package. Next to the package it came from, it has the same project file, now marked as a return package, the bilingual files with their translations, and no Reports folder.

The status of each segment goes back too. A segment you typed but never confirmed arrives as Draft, not Translated, and the agency’s Trados shows it that way.

Doing it in Lexora

1. Open the package. Create a project and add the .sdlppx. If the package holds more than one target language, Lexora opens the one that matches the project’s target language and tells you which others are in it.
2. Add the memory, if there is one. Lexora reads Trados memories (.sdltm) and TMX files. If the memory came inside the package, copy the .sdlppx, rename the copy to .zip, take the .sdltm out and add it under Memories.
3. Leave locked segments alone. A segment the agency locked opens locked, and it goes back locked. You can unlock one, but ask the agency first. (Lexora 0.5.2 doesn’t read Trados’s locks yet; the next update does.)
4. Translate and confirm. Confirm each segment with Ctrl+Enter. Lexora writes a confirmed segment back as Translated and a reviewed one as Approved; text you didn’t confirm goes back as Draft.
5. Check. Run the checks for numbers, tags, terms and punctuation before you export.
6. Export the return package. Choose “Return package for Trados · .sdlrpx”. Lexora puts your translations into the bilingual files, marks the project file as a return package and leaves out the Reports folder, as the return package Trados made does. Every other file goes back exactly as it came; our tests compare them byte for byte.
7. Send it the way the agency asked.

What Lexora doesn’t do

• It doesn’t load a package’s memories and termbases by itself. You add a memory by hand, as above. Lexora can’t read Trados termbases (.sdltb) at all: ask the agency for the glossary as TBX or Excel, which it reads.
• It doesn’t connect to Trados GroupShare, or to projects an agency shares online instead of sending a package. It works with the files you are sent.
• Its word count is its own. If your fee depends on the analysis in the package, go by that report, not by Lexora’s count, which can differ.
• It runs only on Windows.
• We haven’t tested every Trados version. The two packages we tested were made in 2017 and 2021. We haven’t yet tested one made in Trados Studio 2026, the current version.

When Trados is worth buying

We think owning Trados makes most sense when most of your work arrives in Trados packages and your agencies rely on what a package carries besides the text: locked segments, termbases, their own analysis. Trados is the tool those packages are made for. RWS sells Trados Studio Freelance as a subscription, with monthly and annual plans (Trados pricing for freelance translators, checked on 7 October 2026).

If Trados packages are an occasional job among Word files and other formats, we think a tool that opens them and writes a clean return package can be enough. That is the case we built Lexora for.

What we tested

On 7 October 2026 we opened both Okapi test packages in Lexora 0.5.2, translated every segment with a marked test translation, exported the return packages and opened them again. Every translation came back, and every file we don’t change was identical to the original. The same run covered 1,266 other files: we round-tripped 1,268 files through Lexora.