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Term Base eXchange (TBX)
About TBX
Term Base eXchange is the open, XML-based standard for exchanging structured terminological data. First released by LISA in May, 2002, TBX was submitted to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) on February 21, 2007, for adoption as an ISO standard. It is now being worked on within an ISO context (as ISO DIS 30042) and it is anticipated that it will be accepted by ISO Technical Committee 37 as a draft international standard (DIS) in Q2 2008. The version submitted to ISO is available on-line in XHTML format (see below).
Additional materials referred to in Annex F of ISO 30042 are available for download here. Note that the period for public comment has now closed.
Why Use TBX?
Managing terminology is one of the cornerstones of modern globalization, a crucial step in maintaining customer satisfaction, controlling international brand, and reducing support costs. This crucial process, however, is ignored or handled only haphazardly by many companies, and many others treat it only as part of localization, something that their LSPs manage for them.
TBX offers users the following advantages:
- Better control, both over the language that represents your company in and over your brand representation.
- Improved quality. Controlling terminology means that localized text is more likely to represent what you want it to and helps localizers maintain consistency and quality.
- Reduced localization cost and faster time to market. Sharing your terminology data with service providers helps them improve accuracy, reducing time spent in revisions and in terminology research.
- Freedom to use the right linguistic tools. By using open standards like TBX you are not limited to any one tool that may not be suitable for a specific project.
By allowing the free exchange of terminological data, TBX enables companies to take control of their terminology. It allows them to freely exchange terminological data with partners and LSPs without worrying about whether or not they all use the same tool, and because TBX is an open standard, TBX-format data can be easily integrated into authoring and content creation processes.
TBX specification
The TBX specification (DIS.2, February 2008) can be viewed online or downloaded from this page.
TBX Basic
TBX-Basic is a standard under development by the OSCAR Steering Committee of LISA. TBX-Basic is intended to be a lighter version of TBX, particularly suited to small or medium sized language industries. While the primary audience is localization service providers (LSPs), the format is also suited for any language application that requires a lightweight approach to terminology management, such as controlled authoring and content management.
Download the draft TBX Basic specification (PDF).
Additional TBX Resources (Annex F of ISO 30042)
Additional TBX resources, including the integrated schema referred to in Annex F of ISO 30042, are available from the TBX Resources page.
