Glossaries. They sound dry and boring to most folk. What do you do with them except look up words and phrases? When most kids were playing outside, I was busy reading the dictionary and making my own glossaries for many things. I loved to define words and give them meaning. If I didn’t know a word, it was marked and looked up. I then wrote it down in the appropriate glossary and continued. My mother and I made flashcards, and I studied the vocabulary. I guess you could say that I knew I was going to be working with words one day. With each language I studied, I made sure to start a glossary.

Now that I am all grown up, I use glossaries daily. I used to have my language students construct glossaries for their lessons, quizzes and exams. I still make my own and not just when clients ask me to. The great thing about glossaries is that you can make them be anything you need them to be. Start off by identifying the purpose of the glossary. Then find what you think is the appropriate vehicle for all the vocabulary goodness. I’ve used Excel for some spreadsheets here and there. It’s good for the basic glossaries, nothing too fancy.

I’ve given a few free versions of online translation memories a try. I like them for the most part. They come in handy for sharing information without having to upload documents every time you have a new version of your glossary. These are not always appropriate for all clients though.

Before you start to sit down to construct your glossary, ask yourself a few questions:

1. What purpose does this glossary serve?

1a. Is someone else asking me to construct this glossary? If so, what are their parameters that they gave me?

1b. If this is for myself, is it for consistency within a translation job or for my personal learning?

2. How large does this glossary need to be?

3. What details do I need to include? (You would think that this is self-evident, but that’s not always the case.)

4. What is the finishing point of the glossary? When will I know that I am done?

Feel free to adjust the glossary as needed. I once was halfway through constructing a glossary when I realized that not all the information I needed was being incorporated. I needed some quick reference points. So I added a column and plugged information away.

What do you do when making your own glossaries?