TBX Version 3 is ready for implementation, dialect by dialect
TBX, or TermBase eXchange, is the international standard for representing and exchanging information from termbases.
If you are a tool deveoper, we recommend you begin by supporting an import feature for TBX Basic files.
The previous version of standard, TBX version 2, was published in 2008. TBX version 3 was under development for a number of years and was published as ISO 30042:2019.
Part of the new TBX standard lists or refers to a Master Data Category List, which lists all the data categories that can be included in a TBX file. This list used to be called the TBX Default list. This name has been discontinued under the new standard.
There may still be mentions of ‘TBX Default’ in external references. They should be understood to refer to the master list of TBX data categories.
TBX is expressed as an XML file. In TBX version 2, the root element of the file was ‘martif’. Whenever you receive a TBX file, please check the value of the type attribute on the root element. If the root element is <martif type='TBX' xml:lang='en'>, then you are looking at an obsolete TBX version 2 file.
In the new version of the standard, the root element must be ‘tbx’. The value of the type attribute must be the name of a TBX dialect, for example <tbx type='TBX-Basic' xml:lang='en'>
Each dialect is defined as a set of one or more modules. Each module establishes which data categories are allowed at which levels in the TBX data model and with what values.
TBX version 2 was expected to be constrained by a special data structure, known as an XCS file. However, in practice, the XCS file was often missing or ignored. TBX Version 3 provides dialect-specific schemas to constrain TBX files. This change addresses the single most common complaint about the previous version of TBX: if there was no XCS file associated with a TBX document instance, you didn’t know what to expect. In the new version there is no XCS file; there is a dialect name associated with a corresponding external schema so you know what to expect.
You can find more information on the dialects page.
HOW CAN TBX BE USED?
- Archiving the information in a termbase
- To support future software change
- Exchanging information between systems (three examples)
- Authoring (send monolingual information from a termbase to an authoring tool)
- Translation (send a subset of the information from a termbase to a translator)
- Data mining (export most/all information from a termbase for analysis using XML)
- Guiding the design of a new termbase for interoperability
For more information about TBX please see the posted content of this website.
Last updated: March 13, 2021 at 12:20 pm© 2021 LTAC Global, see About Us page for details on Licensing