Exporting Terms from a Multiterm Termbase

These videos show how to export only the source and target terms from a Multiterm Termbase into a txt file that can then be opened in Excel.

Multiterm 2009 SP4 was used for this process.

Exporting Terms in Multiterm

Opening the exported terms in Excel

Creating a Multiterm Termbase to Use in SDL Trados Studio

December 2015 Update: Read Paul Filkin's detailed explanation about the Glossary Converter, a great Open Exchange app that simplifies glossary management in Studio. For the original text of this post, please keep reading below.


This how-to guide will be divided in three parts tackling the main steps in termbase creation and use:

1. Creating a simple Multiterm termbase

2. Importing bilingual Excel glossaries into Multiterm

3. Using your Multiterm termbase in Studio


TWO IMPORTANT NOTES BEFORE YOU GET STARTED:

1. Multiterm is a separate program, it's not part of Trados or Studio. It needs to be downloaded and installed separately, and it appears as a standalone program in your SDL folder in your All Programs list in Windows. If you don't see it there, make sure to go to your SDL account and download and install the program from the My Downloads page.

2. Termbases cannot be created in Studio or Trados. The "Create New Termbase" you see in the SDL Trados Synergy main page or the "Terminology Management" button in the Studio home page are merely links that will take you to Multiterm, if it's installed in your computer.


Creating a simple Multiterm termbase

Multiterm can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be. In this example I will create the simplest kind of termbase: source term=target term. No other index fields will be included.


1. Open SDL Multiterm Desktop (in this example I will use SDL Multiterm 2009 SP4).

Once in Multiterm, Go to File, then select Create Termbase.

Save your termbase in the dialog box that opens:




After saving the termbase, the Termbase Wizard will open:


Click Next.

Click Next on Step 1 of 5 of the Wizard without making any changes.



In Step 2 of 5, enter a Friendly Name for your termbase. This is the name you will see when choosing your termbase in Studio. To keep things simple, I'll use the same name I used before.



Click Next. In Step 3 of the Wizard, choose your languages. In this example I will use English and Spanish. After selecting each on the left, click Add so they will appear under Selected index fields:



Click Next. For this simple termbase you can leave Step 4 blank, just click Next.


Also leave Step 5 blank. Click Next.


This completes the Wizard. Click Finish.




And with this you have finished creating your termbase. Clicking on the Catalog tab on the bottom left of your Multiterm screen will show you the termbase and its statistics. In this case the termbase has been created but it's empty.



To manually add terms, click on the Terms tab on the bottom left of your screen, click F3 or click on the Add New Entry icon right under the Edit menu. You will see the Entry screen, as shown below.



Double click on the little box next to the pencil icon and enter the term for each entry.




Press F12 to save the changes.


The term is now part of your termbase and therefore will be available when you use the termbase in Studio.

This concludes the basics of termbase creation.

To learn about importing bilingual glossaries from Excel files, read Importing Excel Glossaries into Multiterm.

To learn about using your termbases in Studio, read Using Multiterm Termbases in Studio.

Creating Bilingual Glossaries in Instant Text

Note: For more on text expanders please see Adding a Text Expander to My Translation Workflow and Emulating AutoSuggest Functionality with InstantText.

This is a short how-to for loading bilingual lists to Instant Text for quick glossary/termbase access in Instant Text. A big thanks to Emmanuel over at the Instant Text forum for explaining how to do this.

The short of it is that for this to work, the list needs to look like this:

source term=target term
(the = is an actual = sign)

Example:

absolute value=valor absoluto

My exported termbase from Multiterm looks like this:

source term TAB target term
(the TAB here means a tab space)

Example:
absolute value valor absoluto

If you start out with a simple text file that has the source term TAB target term sequence, the first step is to replace the tabs with =s and save the resulting file as a text file (*.txt).

Once you've done this, go to Instant Text, and right click on the Phrases Advisories, then select Importer.



In Importer, choose Formulas. In the Dialog that opens, choose the *.txt file you just created.

Enter a name for your new glossary.

Choose Yes when asked if you want to keep your current abbreviations.

And that's it!

Now go to Instant Text and click next to the word Glossaries, choose Open and select your newly created glossary.

When you double-click on it, you will see the contents of the glossary, with the source term on the left under the Short column and the target text on the right under Expansion.




With this, if your new glossary is active (either as the main glossary or as an Includes glossary), you will be able to start typing your source term and see the target term appear as the expansion when you hit the marker key.

In the example above, if I start typing addendum, I will see the bilingual entry and can expand the target form by either:

1. Writing the full word and hitting my marker key

addendum + marker key expands into anexo




or

2. Writing "adde2" (since addendum is the second entry in the list) and hitting my marker key.




Notice that for terms that have two words or more, spaces between words are eliminated when the source term is entered into the short form, as short forms don't admit spaces.




If you want to add new terms to your bilingual glossary, just remember that the target term needs to go in the Glossary Phrase Entry field and the source term, minus spaces, needs to go in the In Short field, as shown below:



By adding bilingual glossaries to Instant Text, we could have two kinds of entries available to us:

- Monolingual, to be used when you know the term and just want to take advantage of text expansion

- Bilingual, to be used when you need to refer to a specific termbase

And of course, how to organize these glossaries is entirely up to each translator. Instant Text is flexible enough to allow both monolingual and bilingual entries to coexist in the same glossary or to have separate glossaries for each.