Articles and Stories

January 29, 2013

Why is a glossary important for every client?

Just like every family, every company uses specific terms and vocabulary known only to the family members or to the people working at that company; you can almost say that companies speak their own ‘language’. An internal lexicon is a tool or document that helps you control consistency problems.

Here is a simple example: Titles are normally company specific. If the company employs project managers, you want “Project Manager” consistently on all documents and not ‘Account Manager’ on some, even if both mean essentially the same.

Another simple example are the many words that exist for ‘memory stick’: USB stick, USB memory key, USB drive, USB flash drive, flash drive, key drive, pen drive, thumb drive, jump drive, and probably more.

Imagine being a production company of a memory stick… The first thing you do is to identify your memory stick with the name you find most appropriate. Assuring that everyone in your company uses that same word should be easy, as you refer to it every day. But it becomes a complex issue as you attempt to localize your documents into multiple languages. Since ‘memory stick’ can have multiple names in English, the likelihood of having just as many names in other languages is very high. Translating terminology from one language to another can be extremely complex, time consuming, and expensive.

When we translate words that can have multiple names, we start by creating a glossary and then ask our client to confirm or revise certain terms, or we send our completed translation to the client for a final review and approval. If a client does not have a person speaking the language, then we will suggest an appropriate term.

An effective glossary serves as a guideline for a translator. The glossary should not only contain the term, the definition of the term, and the translation of the term, but it should also provide context to help the translator understand the proper usage of the term. For some countries, it might be important to also include language-specific rules, such as using the personal or impersonal mode of address within a particular country.

For every client and every language, a glossary is kept for future projects. The glossary helps translators assure that each time a pre-translated word or term appears, it is used consistently and correctly. A glossary becomes even more important when you use more than one translator. This is especially true in the case of tight deadlines when many translators may be working on various files of a project at the same time.

By managing your terminology properly in all languages, we automatically support your company image.