Login Start for Free

Glossary

Use glossary to ensure consistent terminology across your apps and projects

Table of Contents

  1. What is a Glossary?
  2. Which kind of terms are managed with the Glossary?
  3. How to manage the Glossary
  4. How does the translation editor interact with Glossary terms?
  5. How does a Branching project interact with Glossary terms?

What is a Glossary?

The Glossary feature is available for projects belonging to accounts in the PRO tier or higher. It is used to manage all terms unique to your app or software and can include instructions on how strings should be translated. Each Glossary is assigned to a specific project. You can find it on the Project Overview page, next to the Team and Translation Memory access. Use of the Glossary available on GlobalLink Strings is recommended for teams that have their own linguistic team managing translations. If you are using TransPerfect Translation Services, TransPerfect will manage an internal glossary for TPT linguists on your behalf. Please check with your TPT Account Manager if you have questions regarding glossary terms.

Back to Top

Which kind of terms are managed with the Glossary?

There are 2 kind of terms which are usually managed through the Glossary:

  • Terms that should not be translated at all

    For example branded words like the name of your app or usage specific lingua (e.g. “to twitter”). Simply add these terms to the memory with or without a description.

  • Terms that should always be translated in a specific way

    For example, if you use different branding in certain regions and developed specific translations accordingly, add them like a regular Glossary term, then add the languages and the translations for that term accordingly

    If there is more than one possible translation for a term, you can also add synonyms for that term in your glossary, be it in the base language or target languages.

Back to Top

How to manage the Glossary

How to manually add terms to the Glossary

Please note that glossary terms are case sensitive.

  1. On the project page, click Glossary
  2. Click Add Entry then enter the Glossary term in the left column and click the green checkmark to save. (Optional - add a description for the term in the right column and click the green checkmark to save.)
  3. Click the plus sign and select a language to add a specific translation for the term
  4. Enter the translation and click the green checkmark to save.
  5. To enter synonyms, click the plus sign and select the language again, then click the green checkmark to save the synonym.

Back to Top

How to import terms to the Glossary

There are a few prerequisites to consider before importing terms into the glossary:

  • XLS and XLSX are the only supported file formats
  • Terms for a given language must go in the same column
  • You can add one or multiple synonyms, be it in the base or target language(s). Each synonym must be placed in a separate column
  • Term descriptions must be in a separate column
  • You can only import terms for languages that already exist in the project
  • There is no naming convention for column headers

To import your glossary, follow these steps:

  1. On the project page, click Glossary
  2. Click Import
  3. Drag & drop your Excel file into the import dialog
  4. On the Import Spreadsheet dialog, label each column by using one of the options from the dropdown menu:

  1. Click Import

Back to Top

How to export terms from the Glossary

This feature allows you to export the whole glossary in a multilingual Excel file. To export the glossary:

  1. On the project page, click Glossary
  2. Click Export

Back to Top

How to edit Glossary terms

You can edit Glossary terms directly from the GL Strings dashboard or you can do it via an import.

To edit the terms from the dashboard, simply access the Glossary and click on the term that you wish to edit.

To edit the terms via an import, you should first export the Glossary and make the edits directly in the Excel file. Once you complete the edits, you can import the Excel file back into the GL Strings Glossary.

If you decide to edit your Glossary terms via an import, you should take the following rules into account:

Adding or editing terms

  • Don't remove the ID column from the Excel export. IDs are needed to match the edited terms in the Excel file with the existing terms in GL Strings.
  • Terms that aren't associated to an ID will be added as new terms.
  • New terms replace existing terms (e.g. if there are 3 synonyms for FR and the imported file contains just one term, all FR synonyms are replaced; meaning only the one imported term will be in the glossary).
  • To replace one term for another, simply enter the new value in the corresponding Excel cell.
  • If you don't select a header for a column, this column will be skipped during import.
  • It is not possible to import terms for target languages if the corresponding term does not exist in the base language. You must add the term to the base language first in order to add a translation for the target language.

Removing terms

  • If you remove one, multiple, or all terms from a column and then select a header in the Import Spreadsheet dialog, the terms that have been removed from this column will be deleted from the Glossary. This applies to the base and target languages as well as the synonyms columns.

  • To remove all the content from your Glossary, keep the ID column and an empty column for the base language. During the import, label both columns with its corresponding header (ID and Base Language).

  • If you remove a synonyms column, all the synonyms from that column will be removed from the Glossary.

Back to Top

How does the translation editor interact with Glossary terms?

Glossary terms are highlighted in the translation editor in red in the source language when they are missing in the translation (1) and in green if they were inserted correctly (2). The highlighting is only visible when editing a translation.

There is also a Filter option With Issues > Glossary Term missing to find all entries where Glossary terms were not translated correctly.

Back to Top

How does a Branching project interact with Glossary terms?

The glossary is active for all the Branches within your project.

Back to Top