Establishing a Terminology Management System and terms base has become an increasingly prevalent part of any global product strategy.

Terms inherent to corporate strategy

Terms used in key messages to enforce a brand are inherent to corporate strategy, and can be considered as a corporate asset. This is why it is essential for a global company to clarify potentially confusing terms, and ensure their consistency across all communication media and countries. Terminology concerns all functions within the company since it represents a commodity used by all.
Experience has also shown that a terminology management system will greatly improve any localization process, effectively reducing time and resources required to maintain consistency and translation accuracy across multiple languages. It will also ease the terminology's integration with Translation Memory and authoring systems.

How to manage the multitude of proprietary systems and solutions that exist today

WhP offers its clients advice on creating and updating their terminology base using the processes and tools they have adopted. WhP has also launched an Open Source Initiative to obtain a standard tool designed and sponsored jointly by an Open Source community. This involves language service providers as well as large companies to provide solutions for the multitude of proprietary systems and solutions that exist today.
TBX is an Open Source, XML-based standard format for terminological data that promotes consistency, and facilitates the flow and exchange of terminological information. It was submitted to ISO on February 21^st, 2007.
TBX-Basic is intended for small to medium sized companies to offer Localization Service Providers (LSPs) a standard for developing their terminology resources, thereby optimizing interoperability and reuse between different localization tools.

The major steps involved in building a Terminology Management SystemS

Analysis and collection of existing data and identification of new terms

During the initial phase, existing data will be selected from a variety of internal sources such as glossaries, exclusion lists, abbreviations, and User Interface terminology, as well as Open Source information (MS Glossaries, standard terminology lists). A new set of key terms will then be added upfront. All these terms will be translated and validated.

Terminology extraction: Determining terminology involves going through a corpus (a text or group of texts) in order to identify concepts and their designations, noting any relevant information about a concept (such as definition and contexts) and about the usage of terms. Professional localization service providers also perform terminology extraction in the flow of translation. Any domain-specific or customer-specific terms are identified and entered in the terminology validation process.

Creation of a term list: All the extracted terms are stored in a term definition file.

A Terminology Management System is ideal for:

• Creating and managing subject field-specific terminology, and providing this information via a terminology data base, dictionary etc. to make it accessible in a complex, multi-market working environment.
• Serving as a reference for all those who need access to terminology: technical writers, translators, support people, management, legal departments, etc.

Although the ROI for setting up and managing an extensive terminology process is difficult, WhP has collected testimonials and evidence showing that a short-term ROI is quite possible.

For more information, request our White Paper on Terminology Management Initiative