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Terminology Machine translation

Machine translation glossaries

An MT Glossary is a multilingual terminology collection used by machine translation models to enforce specific term translations.

Glossaries are managed in Tilde Term and can be applied by MT models configured in the Tilde MT platform.

Glossary Scope​

  • A glossary can contain terms for multiple language pairs.
  • Each term is defined per language direction.
  • During translation, the MT model automatically applies the relevant language direction.
  • Terms for unrelated language pairs are ignored.

Glossaries define terminology rules.
They do not control how or where they are applied.

Glossary Structure​

Each glossary contains term entries.

Each term entry includes:

  • Source term
  • One or more target terms
  • Enabled / disabled status
  • Matching attributes
  • Optional inflected forms

Only enabled terms are considered during translation.

Add a Term​

  1. Open the glossary in MT Glossary view.
  2. Enter the source term.
  3. Enter the target term.
  4. Save.

The term becomes immediately available for new translations once the glossary is used by an MT model.

Edit a Term​

To modify a term:

  1. Locate the term in the glossary.
  2. Open the term options.
  3. Update the source term, target term, or attributes.
  4. Save changes.

Disable or Enable a Term​

Each term can be enabled or disabled.

  • Enabled — the term is applied during translation.
  • Disabled — the term remains stored but is ignored by MT.

Disabling a term does not delete it.

Delete a Term​

To permanently remove a term:

  1. Open the term options.
  2. Select Delete.
  3. Confirm deletion.

Deletion cannot be undone.

Term Attributes​

Each term can be configured with the following attributes:

Translate​

Controls whether the source term is replaced with the target term.

  • Enabled — source term is translated.
  • Disabled — source term remains unchanged (useful for non-translatables such as brand names or codes).

Lock-case​

Controls case sensitivity.

  • Enabled — matching is case-sensitive.
  • Disabled — matching is case-insensitive.

Inflect​

Controls recognition of grammatical variations.

  • Enabled — inflected forms of the source term are recognized.
  • Disabled — only the exact source term string is matched.

Alternative Target Terms​

A source term may have multiple target variants.

  • Only one target term is active at a time.
  • The active variant is used during translation.
  • The active variant can be changed at any time.

Inflected Forms​

Additional inflected forms can be added to improve recognition.

Inflected forms help the MT model match grammatical variations of the source term while preserving the defined target term.

Delete a Glossary​

To permanently delete a glossary:

  1. Open the glossary collection.
  2. Select Delete.
  3. Confirm deletion.

Deleting a glossary removes all associated terms.

This action cannot be undone.