Using a glossary makes translations more consistent, saves translators’ time in researching the related terminology, and helps prevent automatic translation from translating phrases incorrectly.
There are times you may want to translate a word or phrase a specific way, such as a company slogan or specific terminology. Or, you may not want to translate a word at all, such as your company name.
In these cases, you can add the terms to your WPML glossary and define exactly how you want them to appear in your site’s translations.
How the Glossary Works
When you add a new glossary entry, it becomes available in the Advanced Translation Editor for translators to be able to reference. They can view a list of defined terms by clicking on the Glossary icon when translating a page or post.
The glossary icon when translating a page in the Advanced Translation Editor
If you use automatic translation, you can choose to override the translation with your defined glossary translation. When enabled, the translations of any words or phrases defined in the glossary will be applied automatically.
Glossary entries are case sensitive, and the term must match exactly what is defined in the glossary to apply the translation.
Please be sure to review any content that uses glossary terms with automatic translation, as the glossary applies translations only as you define them. It does not make grammatical changes such as making them plural, capitalized, possessive, a different tense, etc.
Adding and Managing Glossary Terms
You or your site’s translators can add glossary terms as you translate content in the Advanced Translation Editor. To do this:
Click the Glossary icon and click the Add New button.
Add the term in the default language, the preferred translation in the secondary language, and a brief description.
Click the Save button.
The glossary entry will be available and applied on all future pages and posts.
Adding a new glossary term in the Advanced Translation Editor
If your site uses multiple languages, you can easily add glossary entries and translations into each language by going to WPML → Translation Management. To do so:
Click the Automatic Translation tab, then click Glossary.
Click the Add New Entry button and specify the language, term, and description, and click Add to Glossary.
Click the Plus icons to add your preferred translation for each of your site’s languages, or click the Copy to All icon if you don’t want to translate the term in any language. If you do not define a translation for a language, the glossary will not apply in that language.
Adding a new glossary term
It is not currently possible to delete glossary translations for specific languages, but you can delete the entire term and all its translations by clicking the Trash icon.
