Pootle xliff files

I hope there is somebody out there who has experience with Pootle.

Whenever I import a file into Storyline 2, some of the formatting is altered, i.e. red text has turned black, white text in some boxes turned black. Red text is not recognised at all.  Special characters show as 
 or something similar. Embolden text is sometimes bold and sometimes not.  I get the same weirdness if I add bulleted text or even a carriage return, so I have been creating all text in separate text boxes to avoid losing my sanity.

The headings on the slide, even with special characters, appear perfectly but not in the Menu - it just contains those 
  

Is it Pootle that is the problem or is it Storyline's inability to handle xliff files?

Help desperately needed.