Entry IDs and updating terminology data in QTerm and memoQ

When importing terminology data from CSV, both memoQ and QTerm offers to "update" existing term base entries based on entry ID.

The point of this is to export a term base, make changes in the exported file to a specific entry (like changing a term in entry #53), and making sure that when importing the file, the changes actually update the modified entry or entries (and only them), rather than importing them as new ones.

But the logic of the "update" is very different for QTerm and memoQ.

memoQ term base update

memoQ will overwrite existing term base entries completely, with what it receives from the CSV file. Consider the following scenario:

• You have a term base with three languages: English, German, French
• In the term base, you have existing terms for English and German in the entry where the ID is "1"
• You have a CSV file, which contains English and French terms (and no German)
• You import this file and tick the "Update existing entries based on ID" checkbox.

What you may expect is that you get all three languages in the resulting entry. But what happens is that the import will completely overwrite the existing entry, and you lose the German term.

QTerm term base update

QTerm will merge the contents of the existing entry in the term base and the one in the CSV file you are importing. Consider the following scenario:

• You have a simple bilingual term base, you export it into CSV from QTerm
• You open the resulting CSV file, and change a term
• You import this file back and tick the "Update based on entry ID" checkbox.

What you may expect is that the term gets modified in QTerm to the one you modified it in the CSV file. What happens instead is that you get an additional term, so there will be (at least) two terms for that language, the original and the modified one.