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Dictionary management

Dictionaries are bilingual entities used by the MT engine to enforce translation of certain terms. Dictionaries enable users to control and define how key terminology should be translated.

Dictionaries work like a "search and replace" feature in a text editor program. After this operation is complete, the MT (Machine Translation) engine translates everything around the match. The translation only captures words spelt as in the Dictionary, with the same punctuation (an extra space or additional punctuation inside the phrase will prevent the system from recognizing the term). Ensure the right source and target language are uploaded for a Dictionary.

Dictionary creation guidelines

  • Dictionaries should be domain-specific and only include one translation for a term
  • Dictionaries should contain phrases (units composed of at least 2 words) or dedicated terms (units that cannot be mistaken for something else)
  • Dictionaries must not include one-word entries that can stand for several parts of speech
  • Dictionaries should include both singular and plural forms for nouns as separate entries, if they are necessary
  • Dictionaries must include all the different spellings of a given word as separate entries
  • Dictionaries must not include entries which are variants of the source term, separated by a slash
  • Dictionaries must not include the following symbols: & : <>
  • Dictionaries will enforce the case of the terms included in the entry list
  • Dictionaries should be organized alphabetically to spot duplicates or inconsistent translations

Dictionary naming conventions

  • Do not create Dictionaries with the same name, not even across different Language Pairs
  • Do not include the following symbols in the Dictionary name: /:*?\"<>|$@

Dictionary usage

  • Dictionary translation is enabled for selection only after the source and target languages have been selected. It will not be enabled if the source language is set to Auto-Detect.
  • Dictionaries are specific to each language direction. Translation using a particular language pair needs to invoked at translation time.
  • Dictionaries can be imported and exported as XML files. Particularly useful if you want to edit the dictionary in an external editor.