In our previous posts we have looked at how to create a database and its associated dictionaries within the database in TermStar NXT. In this post, we will look at how to process a TermStar database with dictionaries received from a client or a translation project manager. This is particularly useful if you are working on a terminology management project whereby you receive the terminology database from a client.

In order to get started with a TermStar NXT database, you must link it to an ODBC driver. This may initially sound complicated, but it is actually a simple three-step process.

The most common format used by TermStar NXT databases is MS Access, i.e., the database is in MS Access format (.mdb). A database may contain one or more dictionaries, as we saw in previous posts. If you link the database, you will then see all the dictionaries that it contains. Before we get started with how to link databases, we recommend that you first put your database (.mdb file) in a folder where you can easily locate it or you could use the default folder provided by Transit (C:\Users\Public\Documents\Transit NXT\db).

Now let’s get started with how to link a TermStar NXT database in order to start using the dictionaries it contains:

Step 1: Go to Dictionaries > Dictionaries/Databases > Link Database from the Resource Bar at the bottom as shown in the image below:

Step 2: The ODBC driver selection window opens, whereby you have to select the ODBC driver. We will use the Access Database (Access) driver here since, as previously mentioned, the most common format for processing TermStar NXT databases is MS Access. Select Access Database (Access) and click on Next in order to select the database file via the Specify database file window as shown in the image below:

Click on Browse to select the file. We will use a file called Test.mdb in this example to show you how to link it. Navigate to the folder where your .mdb file is stored, select it and click on Next.

Step 3: The ODBC connection window opens up in which you create a new ODBC connection. Simply enter a name for the connection and Transit will do the rest for you. We recommend that you give the same name to the connection as to the database, as it is much easier to deal with multiple databases in this way. The name of the database (.mdb file) is filled in by default in the New ODBC connection field as shown in the following image. Just click on Finish to complete the process and you will be all set to use the terminology database.

The Test.mdb database used in this example contains two dictionaries: Test_TBX and Test_UserDefined. In order to open these dictionaries and start working on them, select Dictionaries > Open dictionary from the Resource Bar to open the Open dictionaries window in which you can see all of the dictionaries associated with databases that are linked to TermStar NXT, as shown in the following image:

Make sure you select the correct source and target language from the View tab in order to see the terms in the opened dictionary.

Your database is now linked to TermStar NXT and you are ready to work with the dictionaries it contains.

Once you have finished working on the terminology, if you wish you remove the database from TermStar NXT, you can do so. This is particularly useful if you do not wish to have a lot of databases linked at the same time, so as to avoid confusion. This is again a simple one-step process.

Go to Dictionaries > Dictionaries/databases > Manage dictionaries/databases from the Resource Bar to open the TermStar database expert window. Select the database (in this example we will delete the link to the database called Test.mdb that we created previously) and click on Delete as shown in the following image:

This will not delete the database physically from your computer, it will just delete the link to the database from TermStar. You can still see your Test.mdb file in the folder where you originally stored it and you can link it using the three steps above if you need to use it again.

We hope this post is useful for you. It is of great help to terminologists or freelance translators who regularly receive TermStar NXT databases from translation project managers. Do let us know if you have any questions on this matter. Also feel free to write to us if you want us to create a post on a specific topic. Stay tuned for our next post, where we will be looking at how to add dictionaries to an ongoing project in Transit.