How do you build and manage your glossaries?
Thread poster: Cintia Allsup
Cintia Allsup
Cintia Allsup  Identity Verified
Brazil
Local time: 22:07
English to Portuguese
+ ...
Mar 26, 2010

I still haven't found my best way to build and manage my glossaries. I started building them on Excel, but then I stared to use Wordfast Pro and I imported them into WF. Then I found myself adding new terms as I translated on wordfast glossary and realized after a while that my Excel files were forgotten. So...I am not sure if I just stick to WF glossaries or if I keep building them on Excel and importing every time I use WF. Sounds crazy? Any ideas?

I appreciate....
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I still haven't found my best way to build and manage my glossaries. I started building them on Excel, but then I stared to use Wordfast Pro and I imported them into WF. Then I found myself adding new terms as I translated on wordfast glossary and realized after a while that my Excel files were forgotten. So...I am not sure if I just stick to WF glossaries or if I keep building them on Excel and importing every time I use WF. Sounds crazy? Any ideas?

I appreciate.)
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Brian Young
Brian Young  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 19:07
Danish to English
Excel as a dictionary Mar 26, 2010

I don't use any CAT tools, so I can only give a limited response. I keep an Excel sheet running, and enter new words in the first column, and translations and notes in adjacent columns. After new editions I just sort the whole list alphabetically, by the first column. It works as a short dictionary over words that I have used, but might either have forgotten, or have trouble recalling. These are normally words connected to business, finance, law, accounting. This works for me. I wouldn't know an... See more
I don't use any CAT tools, so I can only give a limited response. I keep an Excel sheet running, and enter new words in the first column, and translations and notes in adjacent columns. After new editions I just sort the whole list alphabetically, by the first column. It works as a short dictionary over words that I have used, but might either have forgotten, or have trouble recalling. These are normally words connected to business, finance, law, accounting. This works for me. I wouldn't know anything about importing a list into a CAT tool.Collapse


Tom in London
 
Tomás Cano Binder, BA, CT
Tomás Cano Binder, BA, CT  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 03:07
Member (2005)
English to Spanish
+ ...
What are your long-term goals? Mar 26, 2010

Glossary and term management has two completely different approaches depending on your long-term goals:
- Keeping easy bilingual lists without any bells and whistles for quick use with work.

- Or/and keeping a proper termbase with categorised, multilingual entries, all with description, images, indication of source, grammar information, etc. etc.

Both things are necessary for serious translation work, I reckon.

Now that you are starting in this busine
... See more
Glossary and term management has two completely different approaches depending on your long-term goals:
- Keeping easy bilingual lists without any bells and whistles for quick use with work.

- Or/and keeping a proper termbase with categorised, multilingual entries, all with description, images, indication of source, grammar information, etc. etc.

Both things are necessary for serious translation work, I reckon.

Now that you are starting in this business is the time to think about this and, if you decide that you need a termbase (I'd say you do), you could start exploring software options. The state-of-the-art tool is SDL's Multiterm (which you should not use without training as it is not very intuitive), but I reckon there are other options.


[Edited at 2010-03-26 18:21 GMT]
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NMR (X)
NMR (X)
France
Local time: 03:07
French to Dutch
+ ...
I am in the same situation as Cynthia Mar 26, 2010

Wordfast is really fine for building glossaries (bilingual terminology lists such as Tomas calls them).

But after a while I got back to the Excel files. Not only I have two source languages, but I don't work always with Wordfast – often I translate directly from a PDF into Word, or in a CMS, or with the client's applications.

This is how it works now:
- all my glossaries are in Excel with four columns (client abbreviation, source 1, translation, source 2 – th
... See more
Wordfast is really fine for building glossaries (bilingual terminology lists such as Tomas calls them).

But after a while I got back to the Excel files. Not only I have two source languages, but I don't work always with Wordfast – often I translate directly from a PDF into Word, or in a CMS, or with the client's applications.

This is how it works now:
- all my glossaries are in Excel with four columns (client abbreviation, source 1, translation, source 2 – the translation column is in the middle for practical reasons, but this is just a personal preference). Sometimes more columns if I want to keep definitions, for instance.
- for small projects I leave it as it is, don't use the glossary function but I consult the Excel files if necessary. (such as Brian does)
- for bigger projects I create a temporary WF glossary in .txt which I read as Glossary 2 in Wordfast. In Glossary 1, which is empty at the beginning of the project, I send all the new terms I encounter while translating. At the end of the project, I copy Glossary 1 into the Excel file and sort the columns, so that the termbase is ready for the next time.
- for really big projects, it can be useful to transform the TM into another glossary when you're about halfway (read the TM into Excel, delete all colums other than source and target and save this as .txt, then read this in WF as Glossary 3). It speeds up translation hugely, but this depends on the project.
After the project, I delete all the WF glossaries, I don't keep them.

Hope this gives some ideas?
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Heinrich Pesch
Heinrich Pesch  Identity Verified
Finland
Local time: 04:07
Member (2003)
Finnish to German
+ ...
Depends on your tool Mar 26, 2010

If you use Wordfast, you use the glossary function and enter terms while translating, if SDL, you have Multiterm or Termbase, and if you use Transit you have Termstar. Termstar is very easy to use.

I don't use glossaries much, except for work that comes regularly. If I stumble on something I don't know I evoke the context search in order to find earlier translations.

Regards
Heinrich


 
Florence St (X)
Florence St (X)
Local time: 03:07
English to French
+ ...
Looking for a concordancier tool - automated lexicography Apr 8, 2020

Hi everyone,

About this subject, I am looking for a Concordancier. Before there was AntConc, a free concordancier helpful to create a quick lexicon from a .txt corpus, but it's no longuer up to date, so you can't run it on Windows 10.

It was quite useful and even searching keywords from a list.

AntConc: https://www.laurenceanthony.net/software.html
... See more
Hi everyone,

About this subject, I am looking for a Concordancier. Before there was AntConc, a free concordancier helpful to create a quick lexicon from a .txt corpus, but it's no longuer up to date, so you can't run it on Windows 10.

It was quite useful and even searching keywords from a list.

AntConc: https://www.laurenceanthony.net/software.html

Thank you for your ideas,
Florence
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