UTX Specification Version 1.11
Table of Contents
0.

Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 3
0.1.

Background ................................................................................................................................ 3

0.2.

Goal ........................................................................................................................................... 3

1.

Intended users.......................................................................................................................... 3

2.

Target domains ........................................................................................................................ 4

3.

Definitions ................................................................................................................................ 4
3.1.

UTX dictionary............................................................................................................................ 4

3.2.

Dictionary administrator.............................................................................................................. 4

3.3.

UTX converter ............................................................................................................................ 5

3.4.

Term .......................................................................................................................................... 5

3.5.

Entry .......................................................................................................................................... 5

3.6.

Translation direction ................................................................................................................... 54.

UTX file...................................................................................................................................... 6

5.

Header ....................................................................................................................................... 6
5.1.

Dictionary information................................................................................................................. 6-

5.1.1.

License (optional)

7-

5.1.2.

Bidirectional (optional)

7-

5.1.3.

Dictionary ID (optional)

7

5.2.

Column definitions...................................................................................................................... 8

6.

Body .......................................................................................................................................... 8
6.1.

Source term (mandatory) ........................................................................................................... 8

6.2.

Target term (mandatory) ............................................................................................................ 8

6.3.

Part of speech (mandatory) ........................................................................................................ 8

6.4.

Term status (optional) ................................................................................................................ 8-

6.4.1.

provisional

9-6.4.2.

approved

9-

6.4.3.

non-standard

9
-1-

-

6.4.4.

forbidden

96.5.

Concept ID (optional) ............................................................................................................... 10

6.6.

Other optional columns ............................................................................................................ 12

7.

Preferred MT functions .......................................................................................................... 138.

UTX guidelines ....................................................................................................................... 14

9.

8.1.

General guidelines ................................................................................................................... 14

8.2.

Guidelines particular to the English language ........................................................................... 14

8.3.

Guidelines particular to the Japanese language ....................................................................... 14
Version history ....................................................................................................................... 15

Document information
Author/owner: AAMT Sharing/Standardization Working Group
http://www.aamt.info/english/utx/

Status: official release
Last updated: May 25, 2011
Document language: English
All Rights Reserved, Copyright (C) AAMT, 1996-2011-2-

0. Introduction
0.1. Background
When using rule-based translation software in a CAT (computer-aided translation) workflow, specialized
terminology, names of persons, and place names in the source document are often not included in basic
system dictionaries, and they are not translated as well as one would expect. It is well established, however,that core terminological information (source and target terms) without additional details, if terms are wellchosen and appropriate for a specific domain, is sufficient to increase the adequacy and accuracy of MT(machine translation). Unfortunately, user-created dictionaries are often incompatible across different MT
systems, rendering the effort to create such dictionaries futile. To address this issue, AAMT (Asia-Pacific
Association for Machine Translation) <www.aamt.info> has undertaken to establish a set of specifications
for sharable dictionaries, which can be used across different MT systems. AAMT created its first version of
specification, UPF (Universal PlatForm), with support from IPA (Information-technology Promotion Agency,
an institute in Japan) in 1995. In 2006, AAMT started to create new specifications to reflect and incorporate
the subsequent advancement of technology and the changing usage of MT. In 2007, the new format
received a new name "UTX," short for universal terminology eXchange. UTX is an open standard. In
2009, AAMT has established UTX-Simple, which is intended to the simple, tab-delimited version of UTX. As
AAMT learned that more complex functions can be achieved by TBX and TBX-Basic, it has focused on
developing UTX-Simple. In April 2011, UTX-Simple changed its name to "UTX," dropping "-Simple."
AAMT also produces and collects open user dictionary data for specialized domains. AAMT also hopes tocreate a user community for generating, sharing, and accumulating user dictionaries in a sustainable way.

0.2. Goal
The goal of UTX is to create from a user's viewpoint a simple, easy to make, easy to use dictionary thatcan be used by MT systems. UTX places emphasis on usability and simplicity over advanced manageability
and lossless conversion.
The same UTX dictionary can be used by different manufacturers' translation software. In addition, a UTX
dictionary is human-readable, and can be used as a glossary that does not involve translation software at all.
When a user of translation software makes the effort to prepare user dictionaries, they are fragmented anddispersed, and thus not effective. Also, even a simple plain text file is difficult to share or to reuse, unless its
format is standardized. However, if a single UTX standard is adopted, shared dictionaries can be usedwidely across various tools, such as translation software from different manufacturers, and are also highly
reusable.
UTX is suitable to be used, for example, in the process of rapid compilation of glossaries from multiple
resources, or distribution and reuse of glossaries across a wide range of applications. For a more complete,long-term terminological management, TBX may be suitable.

1. Intended users
UTX is specifically designed to be used by end users of translation software, or translators. UTX does not-3-require any advanced technical knowledge of linguistics, grammar, XML, MT software etc. to create, edit, or
use. UTX can be made from a minimum of data for both source and target language.

2. Target domains
UTX can be used in any domain of translation, but should be specific to some subject or topic, such as ICT,
medicine, law, or engineering. Ideally, a domain should be highly specific, such as "Ruby (scripting
language)," "cardiovascular surgery," etc. If a dictionary contains distinctly different domains, each domainshould form a separate dictionary. By doing so, it is easier to manage dictionaries, and dictionaries can beeasily reused by combining with other dictionaries.
UTX may not be suitable for translation of non-specialized, general contents. When used for generalcontents, the benefit of UTX is limited. The framework of UTX assumes that the target MT system alreadyhas a well-developed system dictionary. UTX can increase the adequacy of translation where the existing
system dictionary cannot. Non-technical terms can only be included in a UTX dictionary when they havespecific meanings and target terms within the domain.

3. Definitions
In this section, some key UTX-related terms are defined.

3.1. UTX dictionary
A UTX dictionary is a collection of terms within a particular domain. It is designed to be both human andmachine readable. In the context of UTX, a UTX dictionary is sometimes simply called a "dictionary."
However, unlike a dictionary in everyday context, a UTX dictionary may or may not contain definitions ofterms. Definitions can only be useful for human readers, but not required for MT.
A UTX dictionary serves as a dictionary for translation software to improve accuracy and fluency. A
dictionary created by a user is called a "user dictionary." On the other hand, a "system dictionary," is adictionary built in an MT system.
A UTX dictionary can also be used as a glossary for translation. It can be directly viewed and edited withtext editors and spreadsheet applications. It can also be used from terminological tools for terminologicalchecking. A UTX dictionary must be compiled with a terminological consistency, because it is a glossary to
be used as a basis of wording.
A bilingual dictionary contains terms in source and target languages. In some cases, a monolingual
dictionary may be compiled, containing terms in only one language. A monolingual dictionary may be used
for terminological checking.

3.2. Dictionary administrator
While a dictionary may have multiple contributors, a dictionary administrator is ultimately responsible for adictionary and defines the framework of a dictionary. The dictionary administrator would decide whether anentry is approved as an appropriate entry for the dictionary, as explained in "6.4.2 approved." If thedictionary is compiled by a single individual, the dictionary administrator is also the contributor.
-4-3.3. UTX converter
UTX converter is a generic name for a tool that converts a UTX dictionary to/from other formats.

3.4. Term
A term is a headword of either the source or target language. It should be the basic form of the word(lemma) such as a headword of a dictionary. See "8 UTX guidelines." In terms of UTX, a term is a technicalterm in a specific domain. A "word," in contrast, refers to a grammatical unit that represents a notion, which
may or may not be in a UTX dictionary.

3.5. Entry
An entry in a UTX dictionary is formed by a pair of the terms in the source and target language, with some
additional information. A UTX dictionary should follow the "one term, one meaning" rule, that is, one term
carries only one meaning in the specific domain of the dictionary. Thus, a source term ideally has a single
target term, and together they form a single entry. When a UTX dictionary is opened as a text file, a single
entry forms a single line, with a hidden paragraph character at the end of each line.
If a target term needs to have multiple target terms (thus multiple meanings), the rationale must be justified.
This promotes an effort to compile a glossary in a systematic manner. Although exceptional, when multiple
target terms are required, concept ID can be specified to indicate the same concept (see "6.5 Concept ID(optional)").
UTX is most effective when used in an organized authoring/translation project. It is assumed the author of
the source document, such as a technical writer, is making an effort to use coherent terms following a styleguide. When UTX is used in a less-organized project, its effectiveness may be limited.

3.6. Translation directionA UTX dictionary typically contains terms of a source language and a target language. In this case, thedirection of translation (translation direction) is primarily one way, i.e. from the source language to the target
language. Such a dictionary is called a unidirectional dictionary. For example, consider a JapaneseEnglish UTX dictionary.
Source language: Japanese
Target language: English
Primary translation direction: Japanese to English
Some terms in a unidirectional dictionary may be used for the reversed direction. In this case, the source
language becomes the target language, and vice versa.
A bidirectional dictionary is a dictionary where all terms are known to be usable for the reversed
translation direction. In this case, a UTX converter may export the entire dictionary to another unidirectional
dictionary whose translation direction is reversed. For example, an appropriate UTX converter can convert aJapanese-English UTX dictionary into a new English-Japanese dictionary, with all terms reversed.
-5-Some terms, especially "non-standard" terms are only appropriate for the primary translation direction. In
other words, some terms are not appropriate as translation when used for the reversed direction. Deviations
from the norm, such as alternative spellings are treated as "non-standard." "Non-standard" terms areincluded in a dictionary only because they have to be accommodated to be processed, no matter how they
are undesirable. See "6.4.3 non-standard" for more details. When only some entries have "approved" term
status (see "6.4.2 approved"), only these entries may be exported as a reversed dictionary to be used forthe opposite translation direction.
In case of a Japanese-English UTX dictionary, if only some of its entries have approved status, these canbe exported as a new English-Japanese dictionary using an appropriate UTX converter.

4. UTX fileA UTX file should be encoded in UTF-8 without BOM (byte-order mark). BOM is a special character that isoften used to identify UTF-8 encoding in Windows, but it is not used in other OS. When included, it cancause a compatibility problem. Types of encoding can often be selected when saving a text file.
The new line code is "¥r¥n" (CR+LF). A new line code is a set of special characters that represent the endof a line. In a Windows environment, CR+LF is often the default setting for most of text editors, and no
special attention is required.
The file extension is ".utx."
A UTX file consists of the following:
1. Dictionary information. See "5.1. Dictionary information."
2. Column definitions. See "5.2. Column definitions"
3. Body consisting of the entries (tab delimited text). See "6. Body."
1 and 2 form the header.
Entries can be commented out by placing "#" at line start.

5. HeaderA UTX header consists of two mandatory lines that begin with "#." As an option, one or more lines thathave been commented out can be added between the two mandatory lines for a description of the dictionary.

5.1. Dictionary information
The first line of the header consists of necessary information about the UTX file, delimited by semicolons. It
is specified as follows:#UTX <version>; < source language >/< target language>; <date created>;<creator>; <license>; <bidirectional (optional)>; <dictionary ID (optional)>;<other optional fields>
 Source language/target language: ISO 639 and 3166 formats-6-

Example: American English: en-US, Japanese: ja-JP etc.
This is similar to language tags in HTML and XML:
<http://www.w3.org/International/articles/language-tags/Overview.en.php>
 Date created: ISO 8601 format
Example: 14:28 (00 seconds), April 10, 2011 in Japan Standard Time (GMT plus 9 hours) isrepresented as:
2011-04-10T14:28:00+09:00

5.1.1. License (optional)
The license of dictionary can be declared in the form of Creative Commons, public domain, or other formsof license. It is strongly recommended to clarify how the dictionary can be shared and used.

5.1.2. Bidirectional (optional)
When all terms of a dictionary are known to be used in the opposite translation direction, the dictionary canhave a "bidirectional" flag in its header (see 5.1.2 Bidirectional (optional)). In this case, individual term status
does not need to be indicated, because all terms are assumed to be approved.
The following shows an example of a header:#UTX 1.11; en-US/ja-JP; 2011-04-15T10:00:00+09:00; copyright: AAMT (2011);
license: CC-by 3.0; bidirectional

5.1.3. Dictionary ID (optional)
A dictionary ID is a unique identifier for a dictionary. It consists of four case-insensitive alphanumericcharacters chosen by the dictionary administrator. It may be required to distinguish dictionaries when
multiple dictionaries are merged. If two dictionaries happened to share entries with the same concept ID(see 6.5 Concept ID (optional)), unrelated entries could be grouped into one group of entries. Unique
dictionary IDs can help avoid such a situation. A dictionary ID is not mandatory. It can be added when
multiple dictionaries need to be merged.
Example:When merged, unrelated entries may be grouped without IDs to distinguish a dictionary.
Entries

Concept ID

Dictionary A:

outlet76531

Dictionary B:

instantiate

76531

With dictionary IDs, entries happened to have the same concept ID can be distinguished even when theoriginating dictionaries are merged.
-7-

Entries

Concept ID

Dictionary ID

Dictionary A:

outlet

76531

AD64

Dictionary B:

instantiate

76531

5d32

5.2. Column definitions
The second line, or if there are additional descriptive lines, the last line of UTX header (also begins with"#") includes a set of column definitions. Column definitions consist of three mandatory columns, followed by
optional user-defined columns, separated by tab characters. The details are explained in "6. Body," as thecolumn definitions and the body are closely related.

6. Body
The body of a UTX consists of entries in each logical line.

6.1. Source term (mandatory)
The first column src contains source terms, that is, terms in the source language.

6.2. Target term (mandatory)
The second column tgt contains target terms, that is, terms in the target language. The target language
column is mandatory, however, in the case of monolingual dictionary, it can be left blank.

6.3. Part of speech (mandatory)
The third column src:pos contains parts of speech for the source term.
UTX has following parts of speech:
noun / properNoun / verb / adjective / adverb / sentence
If the part of speech is unknown then leave it blank.
sentence should only be used when necessary. Entries of pairs of translated sentences should be stored
in a translation memory rather than a dictionary.

6.4. Term status (optional)
An entry can optionally have one of four term statuses (provisional, approved, non-standard, or forbidden)
to indicate the terminological state of the term. Term status (term status) is only managed for the primarytranslation direction of a dictionary. If term status needs to be managed for the reversed translation direction,
a separate dictionary should be compiled.

-8-6.4.1. provisional
The term status "provisional" means that an entry is entered into a dictionary by a contributor but not yet
checked by the dictionary administrator. As a provisional status is temporary, the dictionary administrator is
expected to promptly decide if the term should be any of "approved," "non-standard," or "forbidden," asexplained below. The dictionary administrator may also choose to exclude (delete) the term from thedictionary.

6.4.2. approved
The term status "approved" means that an entry has been approved by the dictionary administrator. An
approved status indicates that the term MUST be used. The rationale could vary, but usually because it is atechnical term within a specific domain or it belongs to a glossary of an organization. If the word form of theterm has variations, such as "plug-in" and "plugin," only the approved form should be used.
When there is a clear reason, a source term can have multiple target terms (thus multiple entries), but only
in one entry is its term status approved.
If its term status is "approved," a term can be "reversed" to be used for the opposite of the translation
direction that is defined in a dictionary (see 5.1.2 Bidirectional (optional)).
An approved term is always bidirectional. When there are multiple translations (thus multiple entries) to asource term, and a user choose to use them for a reversed translation direction, an approved term will be
the only valid term among multiple translations.
If the dictionary has a single contributor, the contributor (who is also the dictionary administrator) may
choose to assign the "approved" status immediately after adding an entry to the dictionary. Alternatively, thecontributor may also choose to leave the status blank or assign "provisional," until he or she can confirm
that the new entry works fine in the translation project.

6.4.3. non-standard
The term status "non-standard" indicates one or more non-standard source terms. Non-standard terms are
only permitted to accommodate variations of source terms. Non-standard terms should not be used astarget terms. If a UTX dictionary is used as a glossary for authoring of documents (rather than translation),
non-standard terms should not be used as terms, because they are entered in the dictionary so that a MT
system can translate even if the author of the source document used improper words that are not approved.
See Table 1: Example (English to Japanese). In this example, the official, approved form of the term"plugin" is "plugin," but not "plug-in." Here, the term number 7 is marked with "non-standard." This isbecause the term pair "plug-in"/"プラグイン" is included so that a MT system can processes a document
contains the term "plug-in" by mistake.

6.4.4. forbidden
The term status "forbidden" means that an entry includes a target term which SHOULD NOT be used.
-9-Such words are explicitly forbidden from linguistic, social, terminological, branding, or other viewpoints. A
target term may also need to be suppressed to avoid conflict with different domain-specific dictionaries,
when a translation tool does not properly honor the priorities among multiple dictionaries.
A forbidden term is usually accompanied by a term that is not forbidden, i.e. an approved term, a provisionalterm, or a term without a term status. For example, in the context of ICT, an English term "window" is very
unlikely to be translated as a Japanese word "窓," which means an opening in a wall. Instead Japaneseword "ウィンドウ" must be used to refer to an certain area on a computer screen. The term "窓" may need
to be explicitly suppressed if the MT system cannot handle it appropriately.
A forbidden term could have an approved status in a reversed entry. Also, a non-standard term could haveforbidden status in a reversed entry (for example, if the concept ID is the same).
It is preferable that a translation tool has a mechanism to suppress the use of forbidden terms
systematically. It is possible that a term is forbidden in one dictionary, but if the same term exists in anotherdictionary, it may not be forbidden. In other words, when using a set of dictionaries in a translation tool, theforbidden status may differ among the dictionaries. A translation tool or a UTX converter tool should
preferably have a mechanism to detect such conflict.
Forbidden terms can be extracted to be used for terminological check outside of a translation tool.

6.5. Concept ID (optional)
When there are multiple entries with different term status, use a "concept ID" to indicate that they share thesame concept. If a source term has only one target, concept ID is not required.
A concept ID consists of serial, unique numbers within a dictionary. A concept ID must be a numeric valueof up to ten digits. When multiple dictionaries are merged, entries with the same concept ID can be
distinguished by their dictionary IDs.

- 10 -

Table 1: Example (English to Japanese)(Term number)

src

tgt

term statusconcept ID

1outletコンセント

approved73

2

outletアウトレットforbidden

73

3

power point

コンセント

non-standard

73

4

PowerPoint

PowerPoint

approved

5

outlet store

アウトレット ストア

approved

6

plugin

プラグイン

approved245

7

plug-in

プラグイン

non-standard

245(Term numbers are given only for the sake of explanation. They do not exist in a UTX dictionary. Part ofspeech is mandatory, but not shown.)
In the above example, term numbers 1, 2, and 3 point the same concept. So do 6 and 7. In 4 and 5,
concept ID is blank because they follow "one word, one meaning" principle, therefore, no other entries exist
that need to be distinguished. Note that the word "アウトレット" is forbidden as the target term of "outlet,"but it is approved as a part of the word "アウトレット ストア." Also note that where multiple entries sharethe same concept ID, there is only one approved term. All others are either forbidden or non-standard.

- 11 -

Table 2: Example (Japanese to English)

src

tgt

term statusconcept ID

コンセント

outletapproved

73

アウトレットoutletapproved

98

コンセント

power point

forbidden

73PowerPoint

PowerPoint

approved

アウトレット ストア

outlet store

approved

6.6. Other optional columns
The fifth column and any other additional columns are optional; a user can define as much information as
he/she wants to. Additional columns for conjugation and variation are described as the following: in the case of defining some form of the source term: src:some_information
 in the case of defining some form of the target term: tgt:some_information
For English, the following symbols denoting some_information are pre-defined:








plural: plural form
3sp: third-person singular form
past: past tense form
presp: present participle form
pastp: past participle form
comparative: comparative form
superlative: superlative form

A hyphen "-" is used to explicitly indicate that a property does not exist for the word in a particular language.
For instance, as the English word "information" has no plural form, you may specifically use "-" to indicate it.
Example of pre-defined symbols:#src tgt src:pos src:plural src:3sp src:past src:pastp src:presp
src:comparative src:superlative
Example of actual content:- 12 -

#UTX 1.11; en-US/ja-JP; 2011-04-15T10:00:00+09:00; copyright: AAMT (2011); license: CC-by 3.0
#src

tgt

src:pos

term status

src:plural

early adopter

アーリー アドプター

noun

approved

early adopters

fast

高速な

adjective

provisional

optional

省略可能な

adjective

approved

optional

オプショナルな

adjective

forbidden

save

保存する

verb

approved

7. Preferred MT functions
UTX works better if MT systems have the following functions: A sound system dictionary for non-technical terms

 Capability of using a set of multiple user dictionaries
 Priority of longer compound words over shorter words
 Capability of suppressing the use of forbidden entry- 13 -

8. UTX guidelines
8.1. General guidelines
In general, a UTX dictionary should only contain technical terms of a specific domain. In most cases,
entries are nouns, especially compound nouns. Translation accuracy can be improved by collecting, sharing,and reusing the data of fine-tuned bilingual translations which are not included in translation software out-ofbox. Sentences should not usually be included in a UTX dictionary, except when it is appropriate to treat
them as a kind of "words." As a rule, UTX should be separated from translation memory, which is a bilingual
database of sentences, rather than words.
For example, a term like "XML declaration" can be correctly translated into its Japanese equivalent, "XML宣言" by just registering it in a user dictionary. Basic vocabulary like "window" should not be included,
because such a word is already contained in the system dictionaries of translation software.











Add only one translation for each entry.
Avoid basic words in the system dictionary.
Define the specific domain of the dictionary clearly.
The basic form of word should be entered (singular form for a noun, root form for a verb - as you would
see in a commercial dictionary).
Any comments should be noted separately in the comment field, not as a part of the entry.
Choose only the single, most appropriate translation corresponding to a source term. If it has multiple
DISTINCTLY different meanings, they can be treated as separate entries.
Do not add words that are dependent on a specific MT system.
Alphabets and numbers should be written in single-byte characters, not multi-byte characters.
Do not use ellipsis (…) to indicate a variable within an entry.
Do not add any comments directly in a mandatory field; add a comment by either adding a comment
column in the dictionary table or by adding a comment line that begins with "#."

8.2.

Guidelines particular to the English language Always begin an entry with lowercase (except proper nouns).
 Do not include articles such as "a", "an" and "the," except in the special case that it is a part of a proper
noun.

8.3.

Guidelines particular to the Japanese language 半角カタカナなど機種依存文字は使用しない。
 サ変動詞は「する」で終わる。例：強調する
 形容動詞はadjectiveとして示す。
 形容動詞は「な」で終わる。例：静かな 音引きは省略しない。例：ユーザー、セキュリティー、コミュニティー
 中黒(middle dot)は省略しない。もしくは半角スペースで代用する。
- 14 -

 すでに定着しているものを除き、カタカナ語、和製英語は避ける。

9. Version history
UTX-Simple 1.00 (November 10, 2009)
 Initial release.
UTX-Simple 1.10 (November 22, 2010)
 Overall revision.
 Added term status, dictionary administrator, bidirectional, concept ID, dictionary ID, and preferred MTfunctions.
UTX 1.11 (May 25, 2011)

Renamed UTX-Simple to UTX (without "-Simple").



Clarification of some topics.

UTX 1.11 (November 10, 2015)
(Errata) Fixed ISO 8601 date format.

- 15 -