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# Creating Glossaries

When localizing computer software, especially into languages where IT terminology is not available, new IT terms need to be created. If a glossary of computer tems does not exist in that language, then one needs to be created as these terms stand as a ‘backbone’ in the translation work.

## Resources

- KiPot
- How to make a simple glossary

## How glossaries are created

The process of creating new terms involves joint work of linguistic and computer science experts. The development of new IT terms requires that the linguistic expert fully understands the meaning of the IT term and its context before trying to match or extend the meaning of a word in the destination language.

In the words of Alberto of the KiLinux team: “After completing our first Swahili IT Glossary of 700 terms we understood very quickly two things: the first is that the glossary of 700 terms requires to be extended constantly and second the extended glossary requires a constant and fluent communication between our technical team and Swahili linguistic experts. Oral communication was never an option since answers were required promtly. Email was not suitalbe either, since we wanted all participants to have the possibility to take part in the deveopment of all new tems, which would lead to an enormous amount of mails sent back and fourth between the projects participants. We needed an online communication tool that would facilitate the communication, and therefore, KiPot was developed.”

## Hacking a glossary from existing translation

One option to create your first cut glossary is to use existing translations and translatable applications.

The first step is to create a list of potential glossary words.

    $ pogrep --search=msgid -e '^\w+(\s+\w+){0,1}$' -i templates -o short-words
    $ rename .pot .po `find short-words -name "*.pot"`
    $ pocompendium glossary.pot -d short-words/

Optional: edit the POT file to remove words that shouldn’t be in the glossary. See pogrep and short strings first for more information on the regex used to extract the words.

Now the glossary POT file is eady for populating. The next step is to take your existing translations and populate the POT file to create your first cut language glossary.

    $ pocompendium compedium-XX.pot -d XX/ # Create a compendium for the XX language
    $ cp glossary.pot glossary.po
    $ msgmerge --compendium=compendium-XX.po --update glossary-XX.po glossary.pot
    $ po2csv glossary-XX.po glossary-XX.csv

Your glossary is now in CSV format in the file glossary-XX.csv