Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to The Translation Show. I'm Emily McKenzie and today we'll be explaining why it's important for you to have a glossary when you're translating content from one language to another. First of all, what is a glossary? A glossary, also known as a terminology database, specifies which particular words and phrases you should use in all your online and offline content. The three most common types of glossaries are traditional glossaries, UI glossaries, and a list of untranslatable terminology. Traditional glossaries contain your company, brand, and industry's core terminology. UI or user interface glossaries are usually created by software developers and contain all the terminology that appears in an application to make sure that the same terms are used in supportive materials such as help sections and user manuals. Untranslatable terminology refers to any terms that should not be translated such as company name, product names, and trademarked or copyrighted names. Why is it important to have a glossary? Let's have a look at what can happen if you don't have a glossary. Imagine that you're launching a new product and somewhere during the initial development stages, an inconsistent term is used in the briefing documentation. This product is then adapted slightly to create 10 individual models, each with three different versions of the documentation. One for the installer, one for the administrators, and one for the final end user. These documents are then distributed in three different formats, print, web, and cd-rom. These products are then sold in 15 different countries and therefore all documentation needs localizing into the languages of these international markets. Did you keep up? The inconsistent use of one single term which could have been avoided through the use of a glossary has been replicated 1,350 times across 15 languages. Situations like this can be completely avoided by using glossaries. Glossaries offer other advantages too. Due to the consistency that they produce, over time costs for translation will be reduced and turnaround times will become shorter, increasing efficiency overall. So how do you create a glossary? If you have content in multiple languages, it's advisable not to delve into all of these at once. Instead, start with your home market. Identify the people who are responsible for coining terms in your business and get them to examine your written content. They should look at all forms of written content including your website, brochures, marketing materials, training materials, instruction manuals, and operating manuals. From these written materials, they should extract all the relevant terms and use these to populate the glossary. My advice here would be less is more. Don't feel like you have to include hundreds of terms in your glossary, just pick the most important ones. You should also provide some context for when these terms should be used. Providing information such as definitions, it's part of speech, i.e. whether it's a noun or a verb for example, complementary terms, and examples of specific documentation in which the terms are used will help users to know exactly how and why they should use specific words and phrases. To keep things simple, you should use the basic forms of verbs and nouns and avoid using prepositions and articles. Conducting a final spell check is also strongly recommended. Once you've done all this, you should ask a subject matter expert to review and validate all the terms that have been selected to populate your glossary. Important things to look out for are double entries, conflicting entries, inconsistencies between compound nouns, and the inconsistent use of product names. You can now start localising your glossary into all your other languages. I would recommend working with a language service provider for this step as most will already have a workflow in place for the translation of glossaries. You should also make sure to involve your in-country teams. Getting a native speaker from within your company to review the translated glossary will allow them to provide an insight into the most relevant localised term to include in the final database. After all, your global teams not only have the language skills but also a deep knowledge of your products and industry. You should make sure that you have a process in place for updating your glossaries as it's highly likely that there will be additions to your glossaries over time. First of all, when should you do updates? Updating your glossary in the middle of a project is not advisable. It's best to wait until the end of the project, once the content has been approved and finalised. Extracting any new terms from the content at this stage ensures that moving forward they will be implemented correctly and consistently. You should also think carefully about which person should look after integrating new words and phrases into your primary glossary. Perhaps a member of your team will be responsible for updating your primary glossary. But it's up to you to set this in place early on. Once translated, your language service provider should be able to implement the localised terms into your bilingual glossaries for future translation projects. It's also worth mentioning that there are various tools available to assist in terminology management, catering to glossaries of varying sizes. Well-known examples of such tools include SDL Multiterm, Termstar and Uniterm, although there are many others. I would suggest that you investigate the various solutions currently on the market and see which tool will work best for you. For large corporations covering several languages, it might be worth investing in a full terminology management system. I hope this has helped to provide you with a useful explanation as to why glossaries are so important when you're translating content. For more information about terminology management, head over to KnowHow, where you can download our full guide on the subject. See you next time for more translation tips.