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Version: Current (v17+)

Translation Glossary

Translation Manager's glossary allows you to keep a list of terms you want translated the same way every time. This could be industry terms or job titles, or things that you do not want to translate at all, like names.

These terms are found by supporting connectors and excluded or translated as requested, avoiding any awkward or inconsistant translations.

Not Universally Supported

The glossary can only be used with a supporting connector. The Glossary screen will tell you which of your installed connectors support it. If none of them do, adding terms will not change your translations.

Enabling the Glossary​

The glossary is off by default, and the menu item is hidden until something switches it on. There are two ways to turn it on:

You can use a connector that supports the glossary is configured to use it, or you can set GlossaryEnabled to true in the Translation section of appsettings.json, like this:

{
  "Translation": {
    "GlossaryEnabled": true
  }
}

Once enabled, the Glossary appears in the Translations section, below the job lists.

Who can see it

Seeing the Glossary needs the View glossary permission as well as access to the Translations section. Administrators are granted it automatically; other user groups have to be given it explicitly.

Adding Terms​

The Glossary deals with one language pair at a time. Choose the language your content is written in on the left, and the language you are translating into on the right.

The Add Term button will open a side panel where you can add a term, with various available settings.

  • The Source Text is the word or phrase as it appears in your content.
  • Notes are a reminder for whoever edits the glossary next. Notes are never sent to the translation service.
  • Case Sensitive is off by default, so that "Dashboard" and "dashboard" would be treated as the same term. You should turn it on if the casing matters and two spellings mean two different things.
  • There is a value row for every installed language, so you can fill in all of them at once rather than switching pairs.

Each value row has a "do not translate" switch. Turning it on tells the connector to leave that term exactly as written for that language. This is useful for brand and product names.

Import and Export​

Editing terms one at a time is fine when you're only editing a few of them. If you need to edit a lot, you can use Import and Export at the bottom of the screen.

CSV - One Language Pair at a Time​

A simple three-column file: your source language, your target language, and a doNotTranslate column.

en-US,fr-FR,doNotTranslate
dashboard,tableau de bord,false
Brightbox,,true

This is the format to hand to a translator: export the pair, let them fill in the middle column, import it back. The file is written with a byte order mark so Excel opens it as UTF-8 and accented characters will not be changed.

TBX - Every Language In One File​

TBX (ISO 30042) is the interchange format most termbase tools understand. Exporting gives you every language you hold values for in a single file, which is useful for moving a glossary between sites or importing one from another tool.

Importing is Not Merging​

An import replaces everything in glossary with everything the imported file covers. A term that exists in the glossary but is missing from the file loses its value for that language.

That is deliberate - it means the file you import is exactly what you end up with, rather than leaving behind values nobody can see in the file they are working from. For example, if you export a pair, delete all but one row, and import it back, you will be left with one term.

If you only want to change a few terms, you should edit them on the glossary page. Importing a partial file will delete any other terms.

Import tells you afterwards how many terms it created, how many it matched, and how many values it wrote, along with any warnings. For example, rows whose source term does not exist when Create missing terms is switched off.

One Language Pair Per CSV

A CSV import only ever touches the pair you select. Other languages are left exactly as they are, e.g, importing French never disturbs your German values.

Errors​

A file that cannot be read is rejected whole, and nothing in the glossary changes. A truncated TBX file, or a CSV whose header does not match the languages you picked, comes back as an error with the glossary untouched.

Clearing a Language Pair​

"Clear" will remove every value for the pair currently selected. The terms themselves stay, along with their values in other languages. Clear is useful when you want to start a language again from scratch.