Instructions for using wildcards when providing target terms

We need your help to complete the target terms in a glossary that will be used, among other things, for term consistency checks.

In column B, please enter the equivalent term in the target language. Please do not simply translate the source term – this task entails some research to find out how that concept/object/reality is expressed in your language (the target language).

The term in the target language must be entered in its dictionary form (e.g. in singular, in lower case, etc.), according to what is common practice in your language, except for lexicalized inflected or capitalized forms.

Terms might vary so as to agree with their context through inflection (e.g. number, gender, conjugation, etc.), declination (cases like accusative, dative, etc.), derivation (suffixes to build lexical families), determination (e.g. articles, etc.). The glossary needs to reflect potential variability and we use wildcards to avoid having to write all possible forms.

If the base form of the word may change by adding a suffix, simply add an asterisk (“*”) at the end. For example:

(ENG) teacher → (ESP) the base form is profesor (masc, sing) but it might inflect in number and gender as profesora (fem, sing), profesores (pl, masc) and profesoras (pl, fem). In all cases, the base form profesor- does not change.

The target term would be: profesor*

If the target term contains a root that does never change and another suffix that might be replaced with different suffixes in different contexts, then use a pipe (“|”) to separate the invariable part and the variable part. For example:

(ENG) lawyer → (ESP) the base form is abogado (sing, masc), which can vary as abogada (sing, fem)

The target term would be: abogad|o

If there are several possibilities that are plausible (i.e. that are actually used in that domain and are equally correct) and do not have a common base/root, you should provide the different forms separated by a semi-colon (“;”). For example:

(ENG) household → (ITA) is expressed as both famiglia and nucleo familiare

The target term would be: famiglia; nucleo familiare

Do not use a stroke (“/”), a hyphen (“-”) or any other symbol to separate the alternative terms.

Be careful when providing alternatives (synonyms or variants). You only need to provide the equivalents of the source term that are actually used in that domain. You should not provide more terms than the ones/s that is/are actually used in your language (regardless of how many alternative terms may be used in the source language to express that concept).

In the few cases where the alternatives are part of the term/expression rather than the full expression, you can encircle them with parenthesis. For example:

(ENG) household → (ESP) is expressed as both núcleo familiar and núcleo doméstico (fictional example)

The target term would be: núcleo (familiar;doméstico)

If for any reason there's no target equivalent in your language, leave the cell empty – do not write “N/A”, “not existing” or anything at all, but please insert a pop-up comment (in Review → New Comment).

If you have the slightest doubt, please ask.