What is terminology?

What is terminology?
Managing client’s terminology can cause frustration for translation agencies, especially when attempting to translate terms without a clear understanding of their meaning. Terminology management allows you to achieve effective and accurate translations for your clients by organizing their terms and defining rules for their usage; ultimately ensuring that the correct term is used within a translation.

What is terminology?
What is a Termbase?
Why is it important to manage terminology?
What is SDL MultiTerm 2007 and what are the benefits?
How does terminology differ from a translation memory tool?
How does SDL MultiTerm 2007 differ from using a flat file glossary?
What terminology products does SDL TRADOS Technologies offer?

What is terminology?

Terminology is the foundation of all communication. At its most basic level it is the study and ultimately usage of words or phrases that have a particular meaning, these words or phrases are referred to as terms. Terminology is growing in importance as terms are becoming increasingly adopted by organisations to describe a company, product, service or even a unique selling point. The incorrect usage of terms in client translations can have a negative impact on translation agencies, causing inaccurate and inconsistent translations, which ultimately lead to poor customer satisfaction.

What is a Termbase?

A termbase is a central repository, similar to a database, which allows for the systematic management of approved terms. It provides definitions and indicates when a particular term should be used. A translation agency can share their termbase with a client or receive a term list from a client to populate an existing termbase. With access to a term base alongside your existing translation environment your business can produce more accurate and consistent translations.

Why is it important to manage terminology?

If left unmanaged terminology can become inconsistent, leading to translations that contain competing definitions, this lack of consistency means that translations cannot be re-used. The result of not being able to leverage terminology is that your translations become more time and resource intensive. This added to the lack of managed terminology can reduce client satisfaction and affect your ability to accept translation projects.

What is SDL MultiTerm 2007 and what are the benefits?

SDL MultiTerm 2007 has led the market for terminology management since 1990. It is a searchable database which allows you to create a list of multi/mono lingual terms and rules regarding their usage. Through SDL MultiTerm 2007 you can:

- Create a term base that is both multilingual and multidirectional
- Gain insight into your terms and therefore control
- Achieve increased efficiency in managing terminology by storing terms in a central repository
- Provide freelancers and corporations access to your termbase via variable access rights
- Increase the consistency of translations through access to approved terminology
- Improve client satisfaction by increasing relevance and consistency in your translations

How does terminology differ from a translation memory tool?

A terminology tool is a searchable database that contains a list of approved terms and rules regarding their usage.

A translation memory tool differs, in that it stores segments of text as translation units (in source and target pairs). A segment can consist of a sentence or paragraph.

Translation memory is typically used in conjunction with terminology.

How does SDL MultiTerm 2007 differ from using a flat file glossary?

Although a flat file can store terms, its ability to offer real business value over the long term is somewhat limited. This is due to flat files not being scalable, share-able or embeddable. To achieve maximum flexibility with your terminology, your tembase needs to be searchable in any direction, allow for limitless terms, users and languages. With SDL MultiTerm 2007 your term base is capable of growing with your business and your clients requirements.

What terminology products does SDL TRADOS Technologies offer?

SDL TRADOS Technologies delivers an intelligent family of Terminology tools that enable you to manage and share your terminology: