Terminology Management

Terminology Management

Much too often in industry, terminology management is still neglected out of different reasons. On the one hand, the - supposed - enormous efforts and high costs involved are flinched from, and on the other hand, a lot of people consider TM as of minor importance and subordinate it to more lucrative aims; or there's no insight in it's necessity, as the firm was too small to pay off.

All these statements are excuses and fundamentally wrong. Terminology management is imperative for everybody in the industries or services sector. The reason for this is as plain as can be and is reflected in our motto: Your aim is to sell products that meet the demands of your customers - and we want to optimally support you in this.

In this regard, a high degree of cooperation between translator and company would be desirable. Though in most cases, engineers and technicians do know the correct term for a specific device, they call it differently in their everyday language, and the marketing department has still another name for it. Already at this point, in your company, unequivocal definitions are crucial. How much more do we translators have to struggle to ascertain "approved" vocabulary from an official source, i.e. the customer himself, and then to relate it to a given apparatus, to be able to exclude confusions.

Terminology management certainly is part of the translator's work. Generally, however, it is carried out incidentally on a more or less professional level, and only takes effect, wenn the company has to ask back, why "that" component was designated with "X" on page 12 and with "Y" on page 249. This leads to increased time expenditures, delays and, ultimately, to higher costs - for everyone involved.

That's not the case with us. Translation and terminology management on a professional level are inseparable unities in the Übersetzungsdienst Knoppe. We want to help you to eliminate linguistic inefficiency and, together with you and already in the preparation phase, lay the a firm foundation for your documentation on foreign languages.

Accordingly, we offer the following services in the field of terminology management:

Build-up, structuring and maintenance of proprietary terminology

Homogenous usage by all translators

CAT (Computer Aided Translation)

Use of ultimative software (Trados Freelance 7.0, Star Transit XV)

One possibility - already successfully practised with other companies for years - would be to classify existing terminology in your company, to relate terms to the appropriate products, productions phases or other company aspects, to approve and release the terminology database created by us in view of its future use, and to continuously update the terminology pool of your company.

Here's an example for the management of our internal terminology: (GIF, 37k)

And here's another one for semi-automatic translations in combination with the Trados Workbench: (GIF, 37k), or here for a project in Transit XV (GIF, 80k).

We are aware of the fact that the diligent handling of our customers' data and information is a "must", explicitly requested and to be guaranteed. Data protection and confidenciality are a self-understanding prerequisite for us so that your terminology is only used for you, and that no other customer has in insight or access to it.