GlossaryConverter

There is a rather popular spreadsheet format that is basically a bilingual dictionary. Since most translators translate from one language into one other language, it is useful for small scale terminology lists. In Glossary Converter, this format is called multi-line format.                

It has one term term and one translation per line, and if there are multiple translations, there are multiple lines, like this:

Or sometimes, the duplicate source is just left empty

This format quickly reaches its limits when it gets even marginally complex. Take for example the not uncommon case of synonyms in both source and target. There is no way of representing synonyms in the source, and the targets have to be repeated. If you convert this to a termbase, car and automobile would become separate entries.

 It is also difficult to handle homonyms: how would you know if the two terms are referring to the same bank or to two different concepts?

you can carefully craft your spreadsheet and make sure homonyms don't follow each other directly, as below:

Anyway, it remains messy, and I didn't even start on having more than two languages. Glossary Converter supports both reading and writing this format, but it's not really recommended. If you want to use it, consider upgrading to the Extended multi-line format

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