Glossaries in the dd_deepl TYPO3 extension

Quite often I get a question about how glossaries work in general and specifically in my dd_deepl TYPO3 extension.

What are glossaries in DeepL?

Normally, when you use online translation tools like DeepL or Google Translate or others, they provide translations using most acceptable terms for words that you use. However, if you are working in a specialized area, like, for example, law enforcement or biomedicine or spaceship building, then your area of expertise may use different translations for certain words in other languages.

Below are a few examples where you can see how an English word translates differently to German. Disclaimer: these examples were suggested by ChatGPT, I do not speak German and cannot verify them.

English word	Insurance/legal context	Marketing/product messaging
claim	Anspruch / Forderung	Aussage / Werbeaussage

English word	Legal context	Medical context	Product/IT context (as "use case")
case	Fall / Rechtssache	Fall / Krankheitsfall	Anwendungsfall

English word	Biology/medicine	Spreadsheets/IT	Telecommunications
cell	Zelle	Zelle	Funkzelle

Glossaries are a way for DeepL to provide special translations for such words. A glossary is created per “area of expertise”. There you list word pairs. One word is in the source language, and another is its translation in the target language. Each word pair stays on a separate line.

There can be many glossaries. They are attached to the same API keys. In other words, an API key could be seen as a container for glossaries. You can throw any number of glossaries there. Well, probably there is a technical limit on how many you can have, but for this article it is easy to say any number. You can have any number of “en-de” glossaries for different areas of expertise.

Then, depending on what site you have, you can “connect” a certain glossary to the site. Suppose you have one glossary for law and another for IT, and the third one for biomedicine. Currently, you are on a “law” website, so you take the id of the glossary for law and configure it in TypoScript:

code

module.tx_dddeepl {
  settings {
    glossaries {
      de-en = 1a7170f3-edab-4c66-949a-4db3dc6a233f
    }
  }
}

For the IT website, you will use a different glossary id:

code

module.tx_dddeepl {
  settings {
    glossaries {
      de-en = 688BFDB3-0286-4ABE-BA89-4BA525E9AE77
    }
  }
}

Small FAQ

Where do I get those glossary IDs?

When you upload a glossary using the backend module, you will see the ID there.

Where do I read more about it?

Two sources:

If you like infographics

Below is a nice infographic which shows you how exactly this works. Please do not download or use without permission.

Infographics: how glossaries work in the dd_deepl TYPO3 extension — This infographic illustrates how glossaries work in the dd_deepl TYPO3 extension