## Glossaries

- Usage

- File format

- How to create glossaries

- Using Trados Multiterm

- Common glossary problems

Glossaries are files that are created and updated manually for use in OmegaT.

If an OmegaT project contains one or more glossaries, any terms in the glossary which are also found in the active segment will be automatically displayed in the Glossary viewer.

## Usage

To use an existing glossary, simply place it in the /glossary folder after creating the project. OmegaT automatically detects glossary files in this folder when a project is opened. Terms in the active segment which OmegaT finds in the glossary file(s) are displayed in the Glossary pane:

The word before the = sign is the source term, and its translation is (or are) the words behind =. The vocabulary entry can have a comment added (see "transitive verb" for the second item). The glossary function only finds exact matches with the glossary entry (e.g. does not find inflected forms etc.). New terms can be added manually to the glossary file(s) during translation (for example in a text editor), but newly added terms will not be recognized until the project is reloaded.

## File format

Glossary files are simply plain text files containing three-column, tab-delimited lists with the source and target terms in the first and second columns respectively. The third column can be used for additional information. Glossary files can be either in system default encoding (and indicated by the extension `.tab`) or in UTF-8 (the extension `.utf8`). The Unicode encoding (UTF8) is to be preferred for obvious reasons.

## How to create glossaries

The method here is foolproof, when followed in a reasonably careful fashion. You need OpenOffice.org Writer for it, so - if you haven't already done so - download and install OpenOffice.org. Launch OpenOffice.org and open a new text document or launch "OpenOffice.org Writer".
In the empty document, enter your glossary terms as follows: a source-language term, tabspace, the target-language term , tabspace, a comment or explanation for the item, and a Return. Tabspace is the tabulator key on the lefthand side of the keyboard. If you do not want to add any comments, you can drop the second tabspace. A "term" can be a single word or a whole phrase. On the second line, enter the second term and its translation.
When you have finished entering the terms, you will have two "columns" of terms, source-language terms on the left and their target-language terms on the right, and possibly a third column, containing you comments and explanations, The tabspace (→ in the example below) and Enter (¶ ) characters can be made visible by clicking on the ¶ icon in the Writer's Standard writer bar. Here's a few lines of an English -German glossary:
word →Wort→das (-/e/s, Wörter/-e)¶
small house→Häuschen→das, (pl Häuschen)¶
dog →Hund→m, f Hündin ¶
horse→Pferd→n, m Hengst f Stute n Fohlen¶
Do NOT use OpenOffice.org's "columns" function to create columns: just separate each source and target-language term pair with a single tabspace.
When you are finished with the entries, Select File > Save As. In the "File location" box, enter a name for your glossary file, followed by the extension ".utf8" (e.g. "MyGlossary.utf8"). For "Filter", select "Text Encoded (.txt.)". Uncheck the "Automatic file name extension" box and activate "Edit filter settings":
Confirm with OK. A dialog box appears with two options: "Keep current format" and "Save in ODF format". Select "Keep current format" to save in text encoded file format. In the ASCII Filter Options dialog (see below), select "Unicode (UTF-8)" as the character set:
Confirm with OK.
After creating an OmegaT project, copy or move this file into the project's \glossary folder. If the project is already open, reload it after copying the glossary file. You can make changes to a glossary file whilst it is being used in project. Glossary changes are being detected approximately once every second and modifications loaded transparently in the background, so there's no need to reload the project after saving the new glossary file.
When a segment containing a source-text term is opened, the glossary pane will display glossary entries for those items in the source segment that can be found in the glossary (or glossaries - you can have more than one available, and they can be stored in subfolders of glossary as well).

### Using Trados Multiterm

Glossaries created using Trados Multiterm's text export function for example can be used as OmegaT glossaries without further modification, provided they are given the file extension `.tab` and the source and target term fields are the first two fields respectively. If you export using the system option "Tab-delimited export", you will need to delete the first 5 columns (Seq. Nr, Date created etc) before the two items of interest.

## Common glossary problems

Problem: No glossary terms are displayed.
  Possible causes:

- no glossary file in the "glossary" folder
- glossary file is empty
- the items are not separated with a TAB character
- the glossary file does not have the correct extension (.tab or .utf8)
- There is not an EXACT match between the glossary entry and the source text in your document - for instance when the item is in plural
- the glossary file does not have the correct encoding
- there are no terms in the active segment which match any terms in the glossary
- one or more of the above problems may have been fixed, but the project has not been reloaded.

Problem: In the glossary pane, some characters are not displayed properly (but the same characters are displayed properly in the Editing pane).
  Possible causes:

- the extension and the file encoding do not match.

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