Is it allowed to use a multilingual Termbase in a translation project? Do we risk the dreaded "not supported culture"?

Question

I'm using a multilingual Termbase with one its languages German. Where can I fix the "DE-01" as an invalid culture identifier? Thanks.

Paul · Answer

Hello Ozzie, 
 
Of course this is allowed. But to be honest I've never seen this before. Where did you get the termbase from? Can I see it? 
 
Thank you 
 
Paul

Paul · Answer

Hi Ozzie, 
 
The problem is not the Glossary Converter. It is MultiTerm Convert, but I still can't get to the problem you had. I can only get DE-01 as a language code if I convert a DE and EN TBX to a generic German and English XDT/XML. Then, because there is no specific variant stated MultiTerm Convert uses EN-01 and DE-01. 
 
Now, if I then create a new termbase using the XDT then MultiTerm ignores the fact the languages are generic and suggests DE-DE and EN-US. So I have to remove these and add back the generic languages if this is what I want. 
 
But irrespective of whether I change the languages or not I still can't get this error when I add the termbase in Studio. Very strange but good you seem to have resolved the problem. 
 
Regards 
 
Paul

Paul · Answer

Unknown said: In other words, coding like "EN-01", "DE-01", etc. should not happen ever. That's my opinion. 
 Of course you are entitled to your opinion, but tell me how you would handle a capability to not specify a variant? 
 MultiTerm supports you not selecting an variant. This can be very useful because it means you can use one language for all variants of the language without having to save de-AT as de-DE when it's not. It also allows you to use attributes for the language codes instead and as MultiTerm doesn't do any kind of linguistic check on what you are saving as terms this gives you a lot of flexibility since you can then set certain variants as forbidden if you like as part of a verification check. For example: 
 https://multifarious.filkin.com/2014/04/08/yanks-versus-brits/ 
 So using these main languages instead of the sublanguages can be very helpful. 
 Now, the convention is something else altogether. The Glossary Converter just uses DE because it's more modern. But MultiTerm Convert is a pretty old codebase so probably required a fully designated language for every language used. But if you don't specify the variant because want more flexibility it has to use something... I suppose DE-01 and EN-01 was as good as any in those days. But this is so old I'm guessing completely! 
 Today we use Microsoft LCIDS which consists of three ISO standards: 
 
 ISO-639 - language code
 
 Gives us EN, or DE for example

ISO-3166 - country code
 
 Gives us en-GB, or de-AT for example

ISO-15924 - script tag (occasionally used)
 
 Gives us ff-Latn-SN, or sr-Cyrl-CS for example

Studio always requires a fully qualified variant, so you will never see EN or DE in an SDLXLIFF or an SDLTM. But MultiTerm can. Anyway, my original post was just explaining what was happening and not trying to justify it in any way. In my tests MultiTerm happily ignored DE-01 anyway so I didn't get the error you did. Probably not worth worrying about it anymore unless you can reliably find a way to reproduce it? 
 Regards 
 Paul

Trados Studio > 3. MultiTerm

Is it allowed to use a multilingual Termbase in a translation project? Do we risk the dreaded "not supported culture"?