Terminology Management

Establishing a Terminology Management System and a termbase has become an increasingly prevalent part of any global product strategy.

Terms inherent to corporate strategy

Terms used in key messages to enforce a brand are inherent to corporate strategy, and can be considered as a corporate asset. This is why it is essential for a global company to clarify potentially confusing terms, and ensure their consistency across all communication media and countries. Terminology concerns all functions within the company since it represents a commodity used by all.
Experience has also shown that a terminology management system will greatly improve any localization process, effectively reducing time and resources required to maintain consistency and translation accuracy across multiple languages. It will also ease the integration of terminology into translation memory and authoring systems.

How to manage the multitude of proprietary systems and solutions that exist today

WhP offers its clients advice on creating and updating their terminology base using the processes and tools they have adopted.

Most of our clients manage their terminology using spreadsheets. However, two standards for terminology exchange have been developed by the industry.
TBX is an Open Source, XML-based standard format for terminological data that promotes consistency and facilitates terminology information interoperability. It is now part of the ISO standard 30042:2008.
TBX-Basic is a lighter version of the TBX standard and is intended for small and medium sized companies.

The major steps involved in building a Terminology Management System

Analysis and collection of existing data and identification of new terms

Corpus creation: First of all, a corpus needs to be assembled : it is a collection of several relevant sources, dealing on a precise subject matter. Open Source information can also be used (MS glossaries, standard terminology lists). At the same time, existing internal terminology data such as glossaries, exclusion lists, abbreviations and GUI labels can be used to create exclusion lists, for example. When necessary, this data will be translated and validated.

Terminology extraction: It consists in going through the corpus to identify significant concepts and the corresponding terms, and noting any relevant information about a concept (such as a definition and a context sentence) or the usage of terms. Domain-specific or customer-specific terms are identified and enter the terminology validation process. Terminology extraction can be performed before a project starts, in the flow of the project, or after the project delivery.

Creation of a termbase: All the validated terms are organized and associated with the necessary data categories (definition, context, usage, part-of-speech, ...), and stored in a spreadsheet or a termbase.

A Terminology Management System is ideal for:

Creating and managing subject field-specific terminology, and making it accessible in a complex, multi-market working environment.
Serving as a reference for all those who need access to terminology: technical writers, translators, support people, management, legal departments, etc.

ROI for setting up and managing an extensive terminology process is not easy to assess. However, WhP has collected testimonials and evidence showing that a short-term ROI is quite possible.