Glossaries
A glossary pins a source term to its target translation so it comes out consistently across the whole document. It’s the difference between a name rendered twelve different ways and a name rendered once.
On this page
What can a glossary entry hold?
Each entry maps a source term to its target, with optional structure:
- Variants — alternate spellings or inflections to treat as the same term (“cookies” alongside “cookie”).
- Do-not-translate — lock the source string into the output verbatim, for names, product IDs, code identifiers.
- Forbidden targets — translations that must never be used (a common wrong rendering, a deprecated name).
- Context hint — one line on how the term is used or why it’s pinned. It sits with the term’s other optional details: part of speech, gender, number, domain, and an example sentence pair.
When should I pin a term, and when should I not?
Most words don’t belong in a glossary. Pin a term only when the translation is a real decision: non-obvious jargon, a brand-voice choice, a proper noun to lock verbatim, a word with several spellings to unify, or a wrong rendering to forbid.
Skip 1:1 cognates, standard abbreviations (e.g., etc., Inc.), filenames and URLs, and ordinary vocabulary — pinning those just adds noise. Not sure? Run an auto-build on a document you’ve already translated; it extracts candidates and you accept, reject, or edit them in bulk. See Build from a whole document.
How do I manage glossaries from the library page?
The Glossaries page groups your library into tabs: everything, personal, one tab per team, and items shared with you. The search box matches names and content, so typing a term finds the glossary that holds it even when the name says nothing about it. Where your glossaries carry languages, a language filter narrows the list to one direction.
Each card shows its first term pairs and its counts, and a preview opens on hover with the full picture. The card menu (⋮) covers the rest: rename, duplicate (a detached copy you own, useful for a per-client fork), auto-build from a document, move to a team, share, and delete. Deleting asks you to type the glossary’s name, and there is no undo.
The glossary’s own page carries the same actions. Export and Share sit in its header, and a ⋮ button beside them holds duplicate, merge, move to a team, and delete; renaming is the pencil on the title. A glossary still waiting on an AI sync review shows a Review pending badge and a Review button at the top of that page, so the review is reachable without going back to the library.
How do I find every place a term is used?
Every term row has a find-uses button. It opens the Search tab in the editor sidebar (also Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+F) with the term and all its variant forms filled in, and lists every block where any form appears, with a count per form. Blocks where the source term is there but the translation is missing the target term are flagged, which makes it a free consistency spot-check: exact text matching, instant, no AI and no cost. The deep version of that check is the AI glossary audit below.
The same panel works as a plain word search: type anything, pick source, translation, or both sides, and click a result to jump to it. From the Glossaries page it opens in a dialog with a document picker. See The editor.
How do I translate one glossary into several languages?
A glossary can hold one translation per language for every term. Set the source language and a primary target on the glossary, then add more target languages as you need them. The glossary page lays them out as a matrix: one row per term, one column per language, with a coverage count on each language so gaps are visible.
Fill missing with AI sits on each added language. It is scoped to the terms that are still blank, so the estimate you confirm is exact rather than a ceiling, and a second run after a partial fill costs only what is left. It works on the languages you added, not on the primary target, which stays hand-curated. Values written this way arrive marked for review: they work in translations right away and carry an AI label until you edit or approve them.
When a document uses the glossary, translation reads the terms for that document’s target language. A glossary that does not include the language still contributes its do-not-translate flags and variant forms, and the run setup says so on one line before anything starts. Glossaries where you never set languages behave exactly as they always have.
| Way in | What it does | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Type it in | You write the translation straight into the matrix cell. | Free |
| Accept an auto-build candidate | A build run on a document in that language fills the terms the glossary already has, instead of adding duplicates. | Billed with the build |
| Fill missing with AI | Translates every term with no value in that language yet. Existing values are never touched. | Exact figure, shown before you start |
How do I merge two glossaries?
Open the ⋮ menu on the library card, the same menu on the glossary’s own page, or the menu in the editor sidebar, and pick Merge…. Choose the glossary to bring in. It is only read, and nothing about it changes. Merging is free: no words are spent either way.
Picking one writes nothing. It opens a review of what the merge would do: how many entries it adds, how many blanks it fills where a language had no translation, how many it skips because both sides already agree, and how many hold a different translation on each side. Every one of those is a row you decide: drop an arriving entry, drop a fill, and answer each disagreement on its own row with the two values in front of you. Keep all and Take all settle the disagreements in one go when you would rather not read them individually. Long lists show the first 30 with the true total beside them, and the rest follow whichever of those two choices is in force. Nothing is written until you press Merge.
You do not have to assign languages first. If either glossary never had its source and target language set, Transept reads them off its own entries and saves them before the merge runs, so the preview and the write agree on where each value goes. A brand-new empty glossary takes the languages of whatever you merge into it, which is what makes “create one, merge several into it” work. Two glossaries that both stay unlabelled merge the way they always did, one target column into the other.
The merge stops in two cases. One glossary knows its languages and the other’s entries could not be read: set them by hand on that glossary’s page and merge again. Or the two read from different source languages, which nothing can reconcile, because their source terms are not in the same language to begin with.
While the merge screen is open, Literess can tell you what it currently holds and change those settings for you. Pressing Merge is still your click. See What Literess can do.
Can I upload a CSV of terms into a glossary?
Yes, when you create it. The Create Glossary dialog has an Upload tab that takes a CSV, TSV, or TXT term list, and a Paste tab for the same thing straight out of a spreadsheet — one term per line, columns in the order source, target, context hint, separated by a tab or a comma. Leave the header row out, or it arrives as a term. A glossary that already exists takes terms one at a time, or in bulk by extracting candidates from a document you have already translated. Export runs the other way: a glossary exports from its own page as CSV or TBX, so your terms can move to other tools.
How do I check that the glossary was actually followed?
Run the glossary consistency check: it scans the translated document and flags terms whose translations do not match the glossary — a missing target, a wrong rendering, a do-not-translate violation. It is the signature check on the Client document starting point, a ready-made Check against glossaries & style guides block in the workflow builder, and a pre-built Glossary review workflow for documents that are already translated. See Building workflows.
What is the difference between a glossary and translation memory?
A glossary pins individual terms; translation memory matches whole segments from your past work. They are complementary and both apply during translation — the glossary makes sure a name comes out the same way every time, the memory makes sure a sentence you have already translated comes back in your own wording. See Translation memory.
Does a glossary need languages set to work?
No. A glossary with no languages set works the way it always has: one source term, one translation, applied to every document it is attached to. Assign languages when you translate the same material into several targets and want one glossary instead of several near-copies.
What does the AI label on a glossary translation mean?
That value was written by Fill missing with AI and nobody has reviewed it yet. It is used in translations regardless. Editing it or approving it clears the label, and translations you typed yourself never carry one.
Does merging change the other glossary?
No. Only the glossary you merge into changes. The other one is read and left exactly as it was, so you can merge the same glossary into several without side effects. The merge itself costs nothing: it compares entries directly instead of asking a model.
Do I have to set the languages before I can merge?
Usually not. Transept reads a glossary’s languages off its own entries and saves them before the merge runs. You set them by hand in one case: an unlabelled glossary whose entries could not be read, merging with one whose languages are already known. Two glossaries that read from different source languages cannot be merged at all, because their source terms are not in the same language to match on.
Still stuck? Ask Literess in the app, or write to [email protected].