--- title: "How do I put HTML tags or line breaks in an XLIFF file?" description: "Either escape the markup as text ( or CDATA), which tools treat as translatable text, or use XLIFF inline elements (, , in 1.2; , in 2.0) so tools protect it. For line breaks, use or a literal newline under xml:space=\"preserve\"." category: xliff date: 2026-10-09 canonical: https://localizely.com/i18n-questions/xliff/how-do-i-put-html-tags-or-line-breaks-in-an-xliff-file/ --- # How do I put HTML tags or line breaks in an XLIFF file? There are two ways to carry markup, and they differ in what translation tools do with it: escape the HTML so it is ordinary text inside `` and ``, or represent each tag with an XLIFF inline element so tools treat it as a protected code. For line breaks, a literal newline is valid but only guaranteed to survive under `xml:space="preserve"`; ` ` is the explicit form. Markup as text. XML requires `<` to be escaped in text, so `` becomes ``, or the whole value goes into a CDATA section: ```xml Click Save to continue Speichern, um fortzufahren]]> ``` Your code gets `Click Save to continue` back. To a CAT tool or TMS this is plain text, so the tags are counted, shown and editable, and a translator can change or drop them. In Twig, output is escaped by default, so `{{ 'save_hint'|trans|raw }}` is needed to render the tags. Markup as inline elements. XLIFF 1.2 defines `` for a paired code, `` for a standalone one, and ``/`` and `` when the native code itself should travel inside the element. The XLIFF 1.2 [representation guide for HTML](https://docs.oasis-open.org/xliff/v1.2/xliff-profile-html/xliff-profile-html-1.2.html) maps `` to `` (`x-html-` plus the element name for others) and `
` to ``: ```xml Click Save to continueor press Enter Klicken Sie auf Speichernoder Enter drücken ``` XLIFF 2.0 uses `` for paired and `` for standalone codes and keeps the original markup in ``: ```xml Click Save to continueor press Enter ``` Editors show these as locked tags that can be moved but not edited. The condition is that whatever reads the file must understand them. Angular's extractor writes its own placeholders (``) and resolves them at build time; a loader that takes the target as plain text will not, and there you escape instead. Line breaks. Put the newline in the text and set `xml:space="preserve"`, which in 1.2 goes on ``, `` or `` (not on ``), and in 2.0 may also go on ``, `` or ``: ```xml Line one Line two ``` Without it an XML parser still hands the newline to the application, but an XLIFF tool may normalize whitespace and return it as a space. ` ` is expanded to a line feed by every XML parser and survives editors that re-indent the file. Either way the parser turns CRLF into LF, so you get `\n`, not `\r\n`. Source: https://localizely.com/i18n-questions/xliff/how-do-i-put-html-tags-or-line-breaks-in-an-xliff-file/