Terminology management

Words matter. And while the same word might have a different meaning for different people, you need to make sure you’re delivering precisely the message you intend. That’s why as your translation partner, we put a special emphasis on the careful, consistent, and accurate use of terms.

Terminology management is the process of collecting, selecting, and using the right words in both source and translated texts. This process is vital for any company, even when it’s performed implicitly. For example, the name of your company as well as the names of your brands and proprietary technologies all constitute an integral part of your intellectual property — and this property should be protected across all markets in which you operate.

Besides top-level brand terminology, your documents contain many less visible linguistic assets. Sometimes keeping them in order proves challenging, especially when texts are created by many people over long periods of time. This is where we can assist.

Our terminology management services include:

• analyzing your existing monolingual or multilingual documentation in order to select the most important and/or most frequently used terms
• proposing any corrections to your existing terminology where issues are found (such as when words are used inconsistently, thus creating a risk of misunderstanding)
• creating monolingual or multilingual glossaries to be used by authors and translators
• implementing automated checks of translated texts to ensure strict adherence with your requirements
• maintaining existing glossaries and requirements in accordance with the evolving needs of your business.

Our experience shows that terminology management can drastically reduce the time and cost of getting the best translation possible. It’s part of a holistic approach to quality assurance when developing documentation.