Forum: CAT Tools Technical Help
Topic: Is TermBase eXchange (TBX) really an industry standard for terminology exchange?
Poster: CafeTran Training
Post title: Excel for exchange of terminology
[quote]FarkasAndras wrote:
If the glossary is simple (no synonyms, just one column per language) and you don't know what software the addressee has then xls is probably the best. Everyone can open an xls file and every glossary tool should be able to import it. [/quote]
I agree (apart from the synonyms part). I’ve never received a TBX file but many times an Excel file. Tools like SDL’s glossary converter can produce them for exchanging a MuliTerm base.
Rearranging and deleting columns in Excel is very easy. So is swapping of source and target language.
Tab-delimited is basically the same, with less extra data for the file format and also readable in text editors. You can paste a tab-delimited glossary in Excel for manipulation. That’s why I prefer them.
CSV are alike but can require field-surrounding delimiters like quotes, which adds extra characters and makes them more fragile to edit. You can import import them in Excel for manipulation.
Personally, I don’t like TMX for storing terms, since they have a lot of extra data and rearranging and manipulation is more complicated—though not impossible, with a dedicated TMX editor (or e.g. CafeTran). It has fans, but like I said: too complicated for my purposes. Editing a TMX in a text editor can easily lead to corrupted files that cannot be imported (opened) in other tools again. You have to know what you are doing (which is the case with the other solutions too ;) ). Note that TMX comes in many flavours. It’s also (therefore?) the file format with the most problems regarding exchange. Wordfast, for instance, is notorious for not wanting to open perfectly valid TMX files from other apps (you have to use work arounds like WF Anywhere).
Topic: Is TermBase eXchange (TBX) really an industry standard for terminology exchange?
Poster: CafeTran Training
Post title: Excel for exchange of terminology
[quote]FarkasAndras wrote:
If the glossary is simple (no synonyms, just one column per language) and you don't know what software the addressee has then xls is probably the best. Everyone can open an xls file and every glossary tool should be able to import it. [/quote]
I agree (apart from the synonyms part). I’ve never received a TBX file but many times an Excel file. Tools like SDL’s glossary converter can produce them for exchanging a MuliTerm base.
Rearranging and deleting columns in Excel is very easy. So is swapping of source and target language.
Tab-delimited is basically the same, with less extra data for the file format and also readable in text editors. You can paste a tab-delimited glossary in Excel for manipulation. That’s why I prefer them.
CSV are alike but can require field-surrounding delimiters like quotes, which adds extra characters and makes them more fragile to edit. You can import import them in Excel for manipulation.
Personally, I don’t like TMX for storing terms, since they have a lot of extra data and rearranging and manipulation is more complicated—though not impossible, with a dedicated TMX editor (or e.g. CafeTran). It has fans, but like I said: too complicated for my purposes. Editing a TMX in a text editor can easily lead to corrupted files that cannot be imported (opened) in other tools again. You have to know what you are doing (which is the case with the other solutions too ;) ). Note that TMX comes in many flavours. It’s also (therefore?) the file format with the most problems regarding exchange. Wordfast, for instance, is notorious for not wanting to open perfectly valid TMX files from other apps (you have to use work arounds like WF Anywhere).