Interview with the expert: What's terminology management all about?

[BARBARA] Thanks for the opportunity. I have really fallen on my feet when I landed in terminology management. It started at the Sprachen- und Dolmetscher Institut in Munich where I was one of three students who took a course in terminology management as part of my undergraduate studies in translation and interpretation (T&I). In Monterey, during my Masters in T&I I worked with French as well and compiled a trilingual glossary on EU terms by researching newspapers and official EU documents. Interpretation students told me years later that they were still using it.

After graduation, I joined J.D. Edwards where I officially took the job of German terminologist in 1998. Of course, I got a lot of practice there: designing a tool, teaching people how to research, and working with the ERP specialists on the terminology in English and German. But I also started studying the subject. When I was hired as terminology researcher at Microsoft, there were again lots of practical things to do in this field, starting with the creation of another proprietary terminology tool, teaching people enough basics and setting up thousands of entries.

[TOM] Great, I’ve been reading your blogs and I’ve definitely learnt a great deal from them. So, why do you think terminology management is so important?

[BARBARA] There are many angles that we could take. Let’s look at three.

1. Communication: a company must communicate clearly with customers to allow them to get the most out of their products

2. Clarity and consistency: a translator must assure that the translated text clearly and consistently communicates the intent of the author

3. Cost reduction: a team of technical writers or translators must use the same terms, and we wouldn’t want everyone to research the same thing over and over again.

[TOM] It’s definitely important then! So, can we just manage all of our terminology in a spreadsheet or is it more complicated than that?

[BARBARA] Well, a spreadsheet is better than nothing. For a small team with a small volume and only one or two languages, a spreadsheet is a good start. But be sure to set it up so that you can later integrate that data into a tool.

The more people need access, the more languages and products you cover, the more systematic you should go about it. And a terminology management system that allows many people to contribute, a few terminology experts to edit or approve the entries, and many people to use the entries will help you meet all three goals that we talked about earlier: communication, clarity and consistency, and cost reduction.

[TOM] So, is it important to integrate your terminology management process into your localization process? What about content creation, such as in technical communication, that must be important too?

[BARBARA] Many systems are set up specifically to serve translators or localizers. That is where the highest return on investment has been. Research it once, document it, use it in all documents, and in as many languages as you can.

But of course that is true for upstream processes as well. The source language must be clear and consistent. Not only because that enables the customer of source-language products. But the clearer the source language, the fewer problems you have later on downstream. For example, you have to eliminate fewer inconsistencies, fix fewer translation errors, deal with fewer questions or annoying e-mail threads. So, ideally you have the terminology management tool hooked into the authoring environment and give writers access to already standardized company terms or allow them to enter terms for new concepts.

[TOM] And how do you think terminology relates to branding for an organization?

[BARBARA] Terminology is all about branding. Why do you think Microsoft allows us today to download their corporate terminology in 99 languages? Branding.

Let me tell you what happened when I worked at J.D. Edwards. Some languages had a proliferation of target equivalents for the same concept. In Japanese, for example, the same technical concept could be expressed through three different terms used by one of the tech leaders, e.g. Microsoft, IBM or Apple. So, each time, the Japanese team had to make a decision what to go with.

Today, if a software company outsources a localization project from English into another language, smart translators will download the terminology from the Microsoft Portal and load it into their translation environment. Every time a Microsoft source term shows up in the source text, the translator gets the Microsoft equivalent as a suggestion.

So, because it is so easy to get to that terminology now, pretty soon, the tech world will speak Microsoft lingo in any language. If that wasn’t a smart branding move, I don’t know what is.

[TOM] Great thanks Barbara, it’s been fascinating getting such a ‘guru’ on terminology to talk with us. No doubt we’ll have you back on this blog very soon.

[BARBARA] My pleasure.

Barbara Inge Karsch holds a BA-equivalent in translation and interpretation from the Sprachen & Dolmetscher Institut in Munich and an MA in translation and interpretation from the Monterey Institute of International Studies. At J.D. Edwards and Microsoft, she worked as in-house terminologist for English and German, designed and implemented two large-scale terminology management systems, and trained hundreds of translators, international project managers, content publishers and terminologists. In May 2010, she started her own terminology consulting and training business, and is now solving the terminology puzzle for her clients. She can be reached at BIKTERMINOLOGY@GMAIL.COM