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How to fix «Failed to save target content: Cannot find central directory» error in Trados Studio
12 June 2026
About the ways to fix the issue in Trados Studio
When trying to generate a translated document in Trados Studio, this error sometimes occurs:
Failed to save target content: Cannot find central directory.
It happens because of corrupted data in the source file used to create and store the SDLXLIFF file you translated in Trados Studio, and for this reason Trados Studio cannot generate a translated file.
Unfortunately, the error is serious and cannot be fixed within the current project. The solution is as follows:
- Update the TM with translations from the translated SDLXLIFF file.
- Create a new Trados Studio project from the source file with the same settings and connect this TM to it.
- Pretranslate the new SDLXLIFF file with it. Make sure that all segments are in place.
Now the translated document should be generated as expected.
Here is what the Trados Studio developer says about it. This error is closely related to another one, Dependency file not found.
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