Terminology Challenges

Yulia Akhulkova, ITI Ltd.

Ways to Manage Terminology Effectively

Term (Latin: terminus — limit, border)a word or group of words designating something,

especially in a particular fieldor

smth. to be translated consistently throughout the text

Term (Latin: terminus — limit, border)a word or group of words designating something,

especially in a particular fieldor

smth. to be translated consistently throughout the text

What Is TERMinology?

TERM: Silicon Valley (EN source) (СиликоноваяДолина RU target)

सि�सि�कॉ�न वै� (HI target)

The system/science of Terms

http://dictionary.reference.com

We All Use Terminology

in everyday life and work

TERM CONTEXT

Please raise your hands.Please raise your hands.

Who uses Glossaries?

Most of us?

TERM CONCEPT

TERMINOLOGYMANAGEMENT

AS FITNESS

FOR PRODUCTLOCALIZATION

Typical (Software) Localization Workflow

Graphics: translations.com; alchemysoftware.com; eqho.com

Glossary Development must go in Parallel with

Documentation Writing

Content=Documentation+Unified Terminology Storage

Graphics: FLDSMDFR (“Cloudy with a chance of meatballs”) from youtube.com

• Independence from CAT-tools. No need to– train resources for each new TM tool– convert glossaries between CATs

Unified Terminology Storage & Management

Benefits & cost reduction

• Easy customers’ involvement in localization More relationships with customer Prompt understanding and approving => less

terminology corrections => save Time & Money

• Product Community involvement It’s hardly possible to Integrate Users into CAT,

but it’s easy in unified terminology storage

Software developer perspective

LSP perspective

User perspective

No glossary => No pain

In localization projects each term should be:Additional support point

Low cost checkpoint

TYPICAL ILLUSIONS: False Friends

No glossary => More pain:

Without a Terminology Management System (TMS)• Terminology is hardly controlled• Translation is inconsistent• Errors are easily propagated and hardly found

Usual problemReducing costs on term mining

Term Mining

Usual ways•Term extraction utilities, based on statistical methods•Manual gathering from bilingual content at the localization stage•Ideally: in parallel with technical writing

Amount of terms, added by user.Key Performance Indicators

Example. No terminology on significant project. No time and/or budget for term mining

Localization-without-terminology is a Minefield

On-Click Add to

the Glossary!

Give the team a chance!

Term Confidence Level

Which Term you should

Trust?

The Glossary you gathered and saved in the Unified Storage

is your Intellectual Asset

which can be successfully reused

because it is independent from CAT and other formats.

Smart Term Mining Results

How do we manage gathered terminology in lots of different formats?

Software developer

Context Data:PDFs, HTML, etc.

Context Data:PDFs, HTML, etc.

Data to localize:.json, .xml, .js, RC, .yml, etc.

Data to localize:.json, .xml, .js, RC, .yml, etc.

Localization Vendor

Independent Testers

and Reviewers

Loc. BuildsLoc. Builds

Data

Bilingual CAT formats

.xliff, .ttx, etc.

Quality AssuranceCompetence

Control of the initial data transforming Correctness

ENVIRONMENT

PROPERLY ORGANIZED

Case Study. Effective Environment for Successful Terminology Management

Software developer

Context Data:PDFs, HTML, etc.

Context Data:PDFs, HTML, etc.

Data to localize:.json, .xml, .js, RC, .yml, etc.

Data to localize:.json, .xml, .js, RC, .yml, etc.

Localization Vendor

Independent Testers

and Reviewers

Bilingual CAT formats

.xliff, .ttx, etc.

Loc. BuildsLoc. Builds

Terminology Storage & QA

Infrastructure

Terminology Storage & QA

Infrastructure

Data Terminology

Over-managed Term Management Systems

LSP example:No possibility to add a term directly to client’s TMS =>

We sent a request as per instruction and waited.3 months passed, no term was added.

My Terminology Management Tool already supports all languages. Enough for proper terminology control

Choose the tool with minimum level of false positives in terminology check!

In flectional languages

Linguistic Support in TMS must not mean only storage,

but associated Quality Assurance procedures

TYPICAL ILLUSIONS: False Friends

Case study. Fast Terminology Control.Be able to check quality level of linguistic

services!

Example. Brilliant glossary on the project.Are terms translated properly throughout the translation?

Unified TMS to easily interact with QA-tool to build a terminology check report on the selected glossary.

• Tags

• Consistency (duplicates, reverse duplicates)

• Spelling

• Numbers

The same applied to

Language Specifics: Morphology

TMS Morphological control

must vary depending on the language

• Lots of false positives• Multipage QA-reports

Chinese: comparing 2-3 sequential bytes in glossary with the same bytes in translationRussian: up to 12 variants of the same word possiblePunjabi: 15-20?

Case study. Be language-scalable! Use different language pairs and projects in TMS

Example. Multilingual project. Lack of terms in one of the languages in TMS (new team involved).

Give the team a chance to utilize examples of other languages!

Multilingual glossary with concepts for users to consider the meanings of the terms

Formulate and Prioritize Your Needs

Include in Term Management System

Source and Target

Context

Concept

Term Confidence Level

Integration with QA

Different language pairs and projects

Formulate and Prioritize Your Needs

Learning the glossary by editors and terminologists

Manual notifications on changes in Excel, Google-docs

Terminological plug-ins

Generalities

Exclude from Term Management System

Exclude from Term Management System

avoid delays in preparing glossaries for localization of your product

check the work of language services provider increase quality of the localized productsave time and money

Illustrated Problems and Solutions. How to:

Unified Terminology Storage

and Management!

SUMMARY.PROPER TERMINOLOGY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

TO MAKE YOUR TERMINOLOGY FIT!

The work of the person, who makes terminological decisions

—The thing you can’t exclude from

terminology management

Terms live their own life, from birth to death, and you need to treat them

properly to make them fit and working

Your Questions

THANK YOU!धन्यवा�द

@ititwitbit.ly/yulia-akhulkova