Terminology management is key for ensuring consistent, accurate translation by applying client and domain-specific terms. It is not just nouns which are important in terminology management but action verbs also as these too are domain-specific. Appropriate use of collocations, phrasal verbs, stock phrases enriches a translation. Terminology management also helps in ensuring that client-specific style guide and orthography issues are handled properly: should two words be separated by a hyphen or not, which words should be in title case, which synonym is forbidden, among others.

Acronyms, synonyms and abbreviations can be frustrating, especially when attempting to translate them without a clear understanding of their meaning. Terminology management allows us to achieve effective and accurate translations by organizing these terms with a clear set of rules for their usage; this ensures that the correct term is used within a translation.

CAT tools enable active terminology recognition i.e. translations of terms stored in the terminology database are automatically suggested while translating documents. Although a flat file (such as Microsoft Excel) can store terms, its search function is static, not interactive. Flat files are not scalable, shareable or embeddable. A terminology termbase is searchable in any direction, allows limitless terms, users and languages. We also use a Terminology Verifier to check for possible non-usage of the target terms and to check for terms which may have been set as forbidden.

We can create customized client-specific termbases by adding descriptive fields (such as gender, status (approved, forbidden), notes, definition, among others) to provide more information about the term and save time in researching. We can insert digital media files such as images, sounds or video, add hyperlink to URLs and other terms to give 360 degree understanding about a term.

*Inhouse Research:

• Subject-specific bilingual / monolingual dictionaries – printed / CD-Rom
• Subject-specific handbooks / encyclopedias / textbooks
• Chemical Abstract database (for patents in Chemistry, Pharma and allied fields)