Managing Terminology in Commercial Environments

TERM 21 group members: Monika Baczynska, Isin Bengi-Öner, Marcin Erdman, Takako Kimura, Leonardo Laterza, Birgitta Meex, Duyga Özge Demir, Neil Ramsay, Grzegorz Wisniewski, and Gülhan Öz

Colloquium Presentation:

1. About the speaker2. Summary

1. Commercial environment2. Business value3. Typical terminology problems4. Best practices5. Term extraction & post-processing6. Glossaries

3. Practical usage4. Feedback

Agenda

Kara Warburton’s background:- Was Head of Terminology Management at

IBM for 15 years- Now works as freelance terminology

consultant

About the speaker

Challenges for terminology in a commercial environment

Any company operating globally needs to manage its terminology

Over 60% of organizations that have a terminology database are NOT translation companies

1. Commercial environment

Large-volume content production◦ Trend of authoring in XML (DITA)◦ Corporate terminology

- Term checker, spell checker, search engine◦ Multilingual, multipurpose database

- Proper identification of strings in the source- Term extraction from content - Pre-translation of terminology

◦ Centralized terminology services

1. Commercial environment

Four points were covered here:

1. Importance of terminology in texts2. Importance of terminology resources3. Benefits of managing terminology4. Role in supporting business goals

2. Business value

The speaker mentioned four problems:1. Inconsistencies (main problem)2. Lack of exact term equivalence between

languages3. Mistranslations4. Ambiguous terms (e.g. acronyms and

polysemous terms)

→ Fixing problems in the target language can be a problem!

3. Typical terminology problems

This section of the presentation is addressed when we look at the practical usage of

terminology management

4. Best practices

5. Term extraction & post-processing

Who should do it?

• Terminologist

Who shouldn’t do it?

• Content creators• Translators

What is needed?

• Term extraction tools

Why?

• Keep consistency • Improve output

What to include, what to remove?

• Keep relevant terms• Remove the noise

Do customers need glossaries? → E.g. study in IBM

Glossaries should be…◦ Single source from database◦ Monolingual

6. Glossaries

Structure of the glossary◦ Head term◦ Definition◦ Abbreviations◦ Synonyms

6. Glossaries

Extract Term

Clean up the “noise”

Pre-Translate

Incorporate into TD

Practical Usage

• Toolo Separate application ORo Term extraction module in a CAT toolo Exclusion dictionaries (general lexicon words + more)

• Process

Remove the “noise” Decide on proper nouns and acronyms Reduce terms to “building blocks”

oRemove compounds: memory map, memory map location, memory map configuration

Criteria for preserving terms: key concepts, frequent occurence, visible places

Add new terms (look at context sentences)

Cleanup

Terms ready for translation into

target language

Sent to experts in a particular

field

Pretranslate

Central database of terminology◦ Different ways of usage

Usage by the content creators/translators◦ Push approach

Incorporation into database

• Term attributes– Hints on usage– Term status (deprecated, preferred…)– Credibility

• Maintenance– Constant improvements– Feedback from translators

• Term checkers (e.g. Acrolinx IQ)

Time ran out…

So the speaker didn’t have time to cover:

7. Terminology databases—standards, interoperability principles

or

8. Repurposing

Topics not covered

Pros The speaker gave a brief overview of her

background Key points of terminology management

were covered in a clear, structured way Examples from real-life situations were

provided Statistical information was used to reinforce

the message Graphics were used to aid understanding

Feedback: Pros

Cons Time management could have been better No handouts—not environmentally friendly, but they might

have helped the audience keep up No screenshots—these might have helped ensure the

presentation finished on time Formatting issues arising from having prepared the

presentation on a Windows machine but then giving the presentation using a Mac

As this was a tutorial, the speaker could have adopted a more audience-engaging style (e.g. using task-based scenarios to introduce problems and then eliciting/explaining possible solutions)

Feedback: Cons

* Might have been interesting to know how terminology management in commercial environments differs from that in non-commercial environments