Glossaries

Glossaries define how individual terms are translated. They secure binding terminology — product names, role titles or fixed phrases — that would otherwise be translated differently depending on context. Glossaries apply to both text translation and document translation.

Personal and Global Glossaries

The overview separates two levels:

• Meine Glossare (my glossaries) – glossaries belonging to the signed-in user, created via Glossar hochladen (upload glossary). Any authorised user can add their own glossaries here
• Globale Glossare (global glossaries) – company-wide glossaries, created via Globales Glossar hochladen; with no entries, Keine globalen Glossare verfügbar is shown

Note

Global glossaries can only be created and managed by administrators. Personal glossaries under Meine Glossare are open to all authorised users.

Each entry shows the name, the language direction as a source/target pair, file size and creation date, plus a context menu and a download button.

Structure of a Glossary File

A CSV or TSV file needs exactly two columns — source and target — with a header row containing the language codes. Every further row forms a term pair:

de	en
Umsatz	Money Explosion
Geschäftsjahr	Year of the Potato
Vorstand	Council of Wizards
Besprechung	Nap Time

Note

The example values come from a training glossary and are deliberately exaggerated so that the effect of the glossary is immediately visible in the translation.

Beispiel-CSV herunterladen (download sample CSV) in the upload dialog provides a template in the expected structure.

Uploading a Glossary

Glossar hochladen opens a dialog with all details for the new glossary.

Field	Meaning
Glossarname	Freely chosen name under which the glossary is later offered for selection
Quellsprache	Language of the left column
Zielsprache	Language of the right column
Zusätzlich die Gegenrichtung anlegen	Creates a second glossary for the reverse direction from the same file
Datei auswählen (CSV, TSV, XLIFF, TMX)	Selection of the glossary file

The dialog names the permitted formats explicitly: a CSV, TSV (.tsv/.tab), XLIFF (.xlf) or TMX file. TMX files are converted to XLIFF automatically.

Note

Glossaries always apply in one direction only. A German → English glossary does not apply to an English → German translation. Zusätzlich die Gegenrichtung anlegen creates both directions in one step; they then appear in the overview as two entries with the same name and different language directions.

Limits for TMX Files

The dialog points out a size restriction: translation providers limit glossaries to 10 MB. TMX files whose content fits within this limit are used in full for document translation. For larger files, a term glossary is extracted automatically — only short, term-like entries of at most 5 words or 50 characters are kept, whole sentences are discarded, and the most frequent terms are taken up to the 10 MB limit, with a maximum of 50,000 entries.

Applying Glossaries

An uploaded glossary is available in both translation areas as soon as the chosen language combination matches the glossary’s language direction:

• In text translation via the selection field below the input and the Glossar automatisch anwenden checkbox
• In document translation via Glossar auswählen before starting the translation

If no glossary matches the language combination, the interface reports Kein Glossar für dieses Sprachpaar. Applying a glossary is optional: even when one exists, you can translate without it.

Danger

Glossaries are case-sensitive. An entry only applies on an identical spelling. Terms that should apply in several spellings must be present as separate entries in the glossary.

Related Topics

• Translate text – glossaries in real-time translation
• Translate document – glossaries for file translations