Terminology management is the identification, approval and upkeep of the target-language equivalents of the organisation's own concepts. This page defines the scope of the item.
Scope
Extracting concepts from existing documents, presenting the alternatives together with their reasons, building the list after approval and entering findings in the list fall within this item.
Out of scope
The decision itself belongs to the organisation. The supplier does not decide which equivalent will be used; it presents the options and their effects.
How the first list is built
It is not written from scratch; the concepts that occur most often are extracted from the organisation's existing documents. This method is fast and also captures the real need.
What goes into the list
The organisation's own concepts, technical terms specific to the field and disputed equivalents. Ordinary words that have a single equivalent in the dictionary do not go in.
What each row contains
The equivalent, the context and the reason for the choice. A row without a reason leads to the same debate being reopened a few months later.
Approval
The list is submitted to the organisation for approval. If the approving authority is not defined, the list is not applied and every translator goes back to their own preference.
Maintenance
Corrections that come from feedback are entered in the list. Maintenance is not a separate exercise but a step within the job.
Checking that it is applied
Term deviations are scanned for automatically. The existence of the list does not produce consistency on its own.
Ownership
The list is the record of the organisation's decisions; its ownership rests with the organisation and it is handed over in an open format.
Format
A file that can be opened in only one system does not count as delivery. Common and open formats are used.
In multilingual organisations
The concept list is held jointly at the centre, and the equivalents are separated by language direction.
Unit of measurement
Set-up is assessed according to the number of concepts extracted and the volume of source documents; maintenance, for its part, runs within the workflow.
Rejected equivalents are recorded too
Recording the options that will not be used, together with their reasons, prevents the same suggestion from coming up again months later. In practice this is often the part of the list that saves the most time.
Provisional decisions are flagged
Equivalents that could not be tied to an approval are kept in a separate list and submitted periodically for approval in bulk. A provisional status that is not flagged turns into a permanent decision without anyone noticing.
Organisation names and job titles
Because the names of departments, products and job titles appear in every document, they make up the most heavily used part of the list. An inconsistency in this part is noticed sooner than errors in the content.
With more than one supplier
If the organisation works with different parties, keeping the shared list at the organisation becomes essential. Otherwise each supplier builds its own language and nothing is left that could be called a corporate language.
Takeaway
Terminology management is the item that stops corporate language from depending on individuals. Extracting the concepts from existing documents, a reason on every row, approval resting with the organisation and maintenance embedded in the workflow: without these four, the list exists as a document but not in practice.