The CSV format is not a well-defined standard.
There are several variations: field separators, quoting, escaping, encoding, etc.

So, Lingohub has defined a CSV standard suitable for localization based on RFC4180.

Format

• encoding should be UTF­-8 (but you can export to other encodings)
• the markup follows the RFC4180 standard, which means:
• comma (,) will be used as column separator
• all values have to be quoted with double ­quotes (“)
• quotes can be escaped using double double­ quotes, eg.: “Hello, “”Lingohub”””
• the line ending is always CRLF
• quoted values can span multiple lines
• the placeholder syntax is: {placeholder_name}. If you need a different placeholder syntax, please contact support.
• the first line is the header and must have the following columns:
  • Title constant
  • Description constant (this column is optional)
  • the next columns hold the ISO639-1 code for the languages in the file, e.g.: en, pt-BR

Example

Additional example files can be accessed here.

"Title","Description","en","pl","de"
"settings","General Settings","Settings","Ustawienia","Einstellungen"
"has_placeholders","This example shows the usage of placeholders","Hello {username}","Cześć {username}","Hallo {username}"
"quotes","Quotes in content","Hello ""LingoHub""","Cześć ""LingoHub""","Hallo ""LingoHub"""
"linebreaks","an example for linebreaks","Here is a
linebreak","Oto 
nowa linea","Hier ist ein
Zeilenumbruch"

References

• RFC4180
• ISO639-1