Accurate and consistent use of terminology is essential for effective business communications in any language. Lack of clear terminology leads to ambiguity, inefficiency, and ultimately costly errors. This is just as true for translated documents as for the original source documents.

Take the example of a User Guide where translated screenshots employ the term "Printer preferences" while the translated help content refers to "Printer options", causing confusion for end users. At the other extreme, think of the repercussions of inconsistent labelling of medical products or critical engineering components.

Translation terminology management is all the more important when translating terms across languages and markets. Ideally, a source language glossary is already available at the outset of a project – if a source language glossary does not exist, Lloyd International can work with you to create one. The key terms in the source glossary are then translated into the target language(s).

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What is a Translation Glossary?

A translation glossary is a translated list of approved terms, created and agreed by a process of consensus between a translator and a client, approved by the client company’s authorised reviewers. This is a standard service offered by Lloyd International Translations. The approved terms could include any company- or product-specific content ranging from standard abbreviations, names, technical terms and phrases; software strings; legal terms; ingredient lists; catalogue items; to branding and strap lines and more. Other identifying information such as "context" or "reference" may also be included in the glossary.

Why are glossaries important?

Access to reliable, accurate terminology is the cornerstone to achieving high-quality multilingual content cost-effectively. The upfront costs incurred in creating a glossary at the start of the project are usually more than offset by the considerable savings down the line, by minimising the time and cost subsequently spent on researching and correcting terms, and by ensuring consistency within and across documents. At the end of the project, the client reviewer should be looking at a near-perfect document.

The short-term benefits of translation glossaries include:

	Improving translation consistency, quality, and turnaround time
	Reducing the need for reiterative review cycles
	Ensuring regulatory compliance of technical terms
	Supporting distributed teams of contributors: authors; translators; proof readers and reviewers, whilst maintaining central control
	Reducing time-to-market

There are also many longer-term advantages:

	Supporting consistency in multinational marketing and branding
	Producing content that is more understandable to customers
	Improving web site search results
	Helping employees, business partners and customers communicate effectively

How does translation glossary creation and development work?

Lloyd International's experienced linguists use state-of-the-art tools to build glossaries and define how product, technical, marketing and legal terms should be used across multiple languages. The steps we follow are:

	Agree with the client which terms to include
	Create a file for translation
	Send the file to the in-country translator with a pdf file which shows the context
	Send the translated terms back to the client reviewer for approval
	Import the file into a translation glossary management program such as Trados MultiTerm or similar projects on the market, depending on the client's requirements (Transit TermStar, Déja Vu, SDLX TermBase).

The translated glossary is then used throughout the translation process and further terms are added when they arise.

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