The Importance of Glossaries in Translation: Building Your Own Efficiently (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Welcome back to another Insider. I hope you had a wonderful week and you're ready to talk translation. We have been talking about resources and building our resources because it is a very important part of our business and the way we do our job and today we talk about glossaries. I will be addressing the importance of having a good glossary and how to build your own. So stick around, let's talk about glossaries. As I mentioned before and even in my previous videos, having a good glossary is a very important part of your business, it's a very important resource. Not much, for example, for those of you that might be using a CAD tool. Since your CAD tool usually builds its own glossary and every single time you insert a new project in your CAD tool, that tool is going to search for all those words that have been used in previous projects and automatically suggest them as a translation for that particular part of the text. However, and as I mentioned and I may be doing a video about CAD tools, you know I don't use them, but of course I know how they work. But today I'm not talking about CAD tools, I just mentioned the CAD tools because, for example, if you have a CAD tool, your CAD tool will be able to build up its own glossary and therefore you don't really need to have one because your CAD tool is doing that for you. But if you don't use CAD tools, it is very important to have your glossaries. And why? Think about it. It will be your own version of your own CAD tool, even though it's not going to work as a CAD tool because, obviously, you do not build it with the capacity of automatically suggest translations for certain terms within a project. Obviously, your glossary is not going to do that. However, it will help you with your projects because, let's say, if you work, and most of us have a specialization, it is likely that you use the same type of term quite frequently in your projects. And if the first time that a term occurs in one of those projects, if you search and if you insert that term in your glossary, if you're doing another project and that term appears again and you have doubts again, you may look first in your glossary to see if you have it there and if it's not there, then you will go and do a search. So this is why glossaries are very important. I remember when I did my course to prepare myself for the Deep Trans, and because that course was a preparation for the Deep Trans, it was also a very comprehensive course about translation. We really addressed all the aspects of translation back then. And this was something that was spoken about and this is one of the things my teacher had explained back then that it was very important to have a glossary because it is a very important tool. It may avoid unnecessary time wastage on unnecessary searches because if you do a search once and you already have a translation for that word, you insert it in your glossary and then if that occurs again, as I said, if you work in a specialization, which most of us do, even if you are a general translator, that will happen as well. Even more so, I would say, because there's a repetition of words that always occur and they keep on occurring. And then, obviously, you already have it there, it saves you time and it gets you a little bit more organized in the way you conduct your business. So it is very important. How to create your glossary? Well, I created my glossary in a very, very simple way. I used Microsoft Access. It's very simple because it is a tool that allows you to build your glossary and separate it in different sub-glossaries. So what I did, I created a database, the main database on Access, where I insert every single term and, of course, the table will have all the support that I need for that glossary and then I insert the terms on a form that I created based on that table and on that form I will then set the different subjects. For example, I have a sub-glossary for business and finance, I've got another sub-glossary for legal terms, etc., etc., for aviation because it's one of my main specializations and so forth and so forth. So it is important that you do that and it's a simple, easy way. I would say you can build up the whole database, I wouldn't waste, it wouldn't take you more than, I would say, two hours if you want to build it fancy and I must admit I did, putting all everything in your form, etc., etc. Two hours, I would say it's a reasonable time for you to build up everything and then you just need to start, you know, populating that database with all your terms, all your words and that is another part of your job that I believe it's very important. Every single project that you do, please open your glossary, I always have that database open and then if you need to search for a term, I will search for that term. If I do a research and I find a new term, I insert it on the database straight away so I don't forget about it and my database keeps on increasing and keeps on having all the data that I really need to future projects. So it is important that we do this, it is very simple, it's a very simple thing to do and I may do something on how to build this glossary, I'm even thinking about something like that in terms of a course, so watch this space, there will be some more things coming and I think it's part of your business tools and it's part of something that I consider very important because it really saves you time. Some of us don't use CAD tools, I don't and having a good glossary, it's the next best thing, I would say, because you don't have the CAD tool to go there and automatically suggest a term and once again I say even if you have a CAD tool, the CAD tool is not going to do the project for you, you still have to look and find if the suggestion that the CAD tool is giving you is the correct one for your project, so bear that in mind. But you search for the term, you see what you find or what you found in your previous research and then you see what adequate option is for that particular project. Sometimes you might even need a second research to see if there is more terminology that you can find and of course there is always glossaries online, I have spoken about this in a previous video where I was talking about our resources and those are very important and you know that and so those are something that you need to be very careful and when you choose, for example, glossaries online, make sure you choose from a reputable source and some very important body and recognized body in that particular field, so you know that glossary will be the best. So this is for the ones that you might use online for certain terminology and of course, and I've already said that as well, some clients when you work for companies, mainly companies, I wouldn't say that other types of clients would do that, maybe some agencies as well, and they give you their own glossaries when you start working with them or sometimes, and this happened with me with one of my current clients, when you start working for them, you kind of start building up that glossary, building up that terminology. I remember I started, I also work, as you know, in the casino game industry and when I started working for them, we kind of have that period where we set up a certain terminology that should be used throughout all the documents that were to be translated into European Portuguese for that particular company, so that is another thing that might happen if you work for, for example, a corporate client and sometimes even agencies give you already a glossary of the words that they want to use for a certain terminology and they give you that terminology, so you use it in all the projects that you have to do for that particular client regarding to that particular company, so this is what may happen in regards to glossaries. It is a very important tool and it is one that you can, as I said, build very easily and if you have it open throughout your projects and every single time you do a research and find a new term, if you put it in your database, you'll have it all there. If it happens again, you will have the term there and you don't need to search again, so this is something that is very useful, very good and will save you lots of time. So for today, I hope you really liked this insider. I hope it really gave you ideas about how you can build up your own glossary. It is simple, as I said, very, very simple. You can use Microsoft Access and you will get one done in basically no time and of course, then there will be many other options that you may search for. Obviously, I'm just suggesting the one that I'm using because it's something that we all have Microsoft Office because it is a tool that we need for our work, so we all have Microsoft Access, so it's something that we are not going to pay extra to have that done because we already have that application with Microsoft Office, so that's why I'm suggesting this, but obviously, there will be plenty of other options that you might find and it is something that I think is very important. As I said and I always say, if you have any questions, please feel free to put your questions down below and I'll be very happy to answer or if you have any suggestions for a future video, some subject that you would like to see discussed in our insider, please suggest and I will be, as I said, very, very happy to address it. Before I go, you know, put a like on the video and subscribe the channel with a little click on the bell so you get a notification of a new insider every week. Before I go, I would like to thank you all for watching, see you next week, have a good one, thank you, bye.