CSV formatting guidelines for glossaries

File structure

A CSV (Comma-Separated Values) file is a simple text file that contains one entry per line.
Each line represents a row in a table, and each value in that row is separated by a comma (,).

Example:

en-US,it-IT
Hello,Ciao
Good morning,Buongiorno
Thank you,Grazie

The first line must contain the headers, which define the languages of your glossary (e.g. en-US, it-IT, fr-FR, de-DE).

Supported headers

Use ISO language codes with a hyphen (-), not an underscore (_):

en-US, it-IT, fr-FR, de-DE

Formatting rules

Use commas (,) as column separators, not semicolons (;).
All rows must have the same number of columns — for example, if your header has 2 languages, every line must have 2 values.
- If one translation is missing, leave the cell empty but keep the comma:
  Hello,
If a value contains a comma, wrap the entire value in double quotes (" "):

"12,5 km", "12,5 km"

If a value contains quotes, double them inside the field:

"He said ""Hello""", "Ha detto ""Ciao"""
Avoid extra spaces before or after commas.
Always save the file in UTF-8 encoding to preserve accented characters (é, è, ü, ñ, ç, etc.).

Common mistakes to avoid

❌ Incorrect	✅ Correct
`it_IT,en_GB`	`it-IT,en-US`
`Animal skills (riding);Besterie (équitation)`	`Animal skills (riding),Besterie (équitation)`
`12,5 km,12,5 km`	`"12,5 km","12,5 km"`
`Hello`	`Hello,`
`“test`	`"test"`

File encoding and saving

When saving your CSV file, select CSV UTF-8 (Comma delimited) as the file format.
This ensures special characters and multilingual content are preserved correctly.

This article is about:

what a CSV file is and how it’s structured
which header format is supported (e.g. en-US, it-IT, fr-FR)
how to handle commas, quotes, and missing values
common formatting mistakes that cause import errors
how to save your file in UTF-8 encoding for a successful upload