Duplicate entries do not merge on import

Question

I often turn glossaries into Termbases, but the problem I always run into is that may glossaries have multiple terms in the same entry. For example (my languages are English and Portuguese): English term: dog - Portuguese terms: cachorro, c&atilde;o. If I simply import the entry that way, when "dog" appears in the source segment, the translation will appear as "cachorro, c&atilde;o" in the Term Recognition window. So what I do is I add another line in the Excel sheet I'm going to import into the termbase so that I have one line with "dog - cachorro" and another line with "dog - c&atilde;o", which creates two entries. What I want, in that case, is that the two entries are merged on import so that "dog" will show up in the Term Recongition window, followed by two entries in Portuguese: 
 cachorro 
 c&atilde;o 
 I have tried choosing the import definition "Synchronize on Term" which is described as "Add entries as new entries. However, if entries with the same term exist already, then the entries are merged ." But after the import, the only entry is just "dog - cachorro" and the second line, "dog - c&atilde;o" is cimply eliminated and the two Portuguese terms are not merged into one entry for "dog".

Walter Blaser · Accepted Answer

Christopher 
 Your setting is not in line with the way MT Convert works. If you have synonyms for a term (e.g. cachorro and cao), you need to put those into separate columns (not rows), meaning you need to have two columns labelled "Portuguese ". If you have two rows in the Excel sheet, MT Convert creates two entries in Multiterm because the basic rule is "one Excel row = one MT entry". MT Convert will take all columns with the same label and insert them as synonyms in the termbase. 
 This works fine but is tedious because you need to create as many columns in your Excel for each language as you have synonyms in maximum. In addition, you also need to duplicate all the child fields of the term as well, which might result in a very large Excel. 
 I would suggest you drop Multiterm Convert and use the Glossary Converter instead, as Paul suggested. 
 This has the advantage that you ned only one column per language and can separate the synonyms inside the column using he separator character (|). 
 Walter

Paul · Answer

Hi Christopher, 
 
It looks like a bug to me... will check if this is on the fix list. In the meantime why not organise them like this in the spreadsheet with a pipe symbol separating the synonyms. Then use the Glossary Converter from the OpenExchange instead? 
 
cachorro|cão 
 
Much faster and toublefree. You just drag and drop your excel file into the converter and the MT termbase is created. 
 
Regards 
 
Paul

Trados Studio > 3. MultiTerm

Duplicate entries do not merge on import

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