What wildcards can I use in an Excel glossary to be converted to MultiTerm?

Question

This might be a stupidly easy question, but I've been searching the internet for a while without answer now, and I can't seem to find it out on my own by trying it out. 
 
 I'm making a termbase in Excel (I understand one would usually use MultiTerm itself instead of Excel if you're creating a termbase from scratch, but I'm a student and this is part of a school assignment that requires me to make the termbase in Excel first and then later convert it for use in MultiTerm), and I would like to use wildcards for certain nouns and terms that might appear both in plural and singular in texts. 
 
 For example "kasstroom genererende eenheid" in Dutch is one term, but its plural "kasstroom genererende eenheden" also appears in the text. I would need the term suggestion (the translation I entered for the term) to show up for both instances, while only having one entry in my termbase. 
 Other programs I've used have often used the asterisk (*), for example: I'd enter "kasstroom genererende eenh*" into the glossary, to indicate that the suggestion should show up for any text in the source text that starts with "kasstroom genererende eenh" and ends with literally anything else. 
 I've seen that in Trados Studio 2019 you can use the asterisk termbase searches to indicate the same thing, but I don't find any info on what wildcards I can use within the termbase itself for similar terms. 
 
 Hope this was clear, thanks in advance!

Nora Díaz · Accepted Answer

Hi Joeri, 
 
To add to Paul's explanation: use the pipe character (|) in your Excel file to add multiple source entries to a single target entry. For example: 
 
Spanish English 
todo|todas|todos all

Paul · Answer

Joeri Couvreur 
 
You can't use wildcards in the terms themselves in MultiTerm. Everything has to be defined. Wildcards are only used for searching.

Paul · Answer

Unknown said: Would there be another way to assign multiple source language entries to the same target language entry? In that case I could assign both the singular and the plural form to a single translation? 
 Joeri Couvreur 
 Of course. You use synonyms. So you have one entry for the term and as many synonyms as you like. You could also add picklists to the terms to reflect the grammar forms so it becomes clear which one to use when you have multiple source and target rather than always one target and many source for example. 
 This can also be reflected in a spreadsheet and still easily converted to an SDLTB. But make sure you know what the structure should be before you get carried away or you'll have a lot of editing to do afterwards.

Trados Studio > 3. MultiTerm

What wildcards can I use in an Excel glossary to be converted to MultiTerm?

Top Replies