Making the case for terminology management

Translators know that managing terminology has several benefits, but how can you convince your manager, team or client that it is worth the investment?

In this post, we'll have a quick look at the following:

• What the benefits of terminology management are
• How they compare to the costs you need to consider when thinking about implementing a terminology management system

Sadly, many companies discover the importance of terminology management through costly mistakes. Here are a few examples:

• Clients are confused because the terms used in the documentation don't match those in the marketing copy
• Translators need to place multiple queries as they don't understand how certain ambiguous terms should be rendered
• Machine translation is of poor quality due to inconsistencies in the source text

Precision and clarity for higher quality

Most linguists have experienced the frustration of finding several terms used to identify one concept or one term used to define several concepts in content produced by the same company. Synonyms, homonyms, abbreviations, circumlocutions and spelling variants can make texts ambiguous for machine translation, human translators and, eventually, the client as well.

Managing terminology improves the quality of the original texts, reflecting on the localized versions.

Improved performance

Setting up a terminology workflow with clear tasks and responsibilities leads to several improvements.

Here's what you'll get more of:

• Higher accuracy
• More (re-usable) translation memory matches
• Faster validation process
• Clearer internal communication
• More uniform research process
• Improved reputation

And here's what you'll deal with less:

• Reduced text production, translation and editing costs
• Fewer corrections
• Shorter research time
• Faster training process

Brand identity and customer experience

Consistent terminology across company documents helps users retrieve the information they're looking for more easily and understand it faster. Every positive interaction with a piece of company content can turn into an opportunity to enhance the customer experience.

Search engines appreciate terminology consistency, too, and reward it with higher SEO rankings, increasing online visibility.

A solid terminology management plan ultimately contributes to building a stronger brand image with positive effects on corporate reputation.

Analyzing benefits vs costs

Translators and decision-makers can understand all the above aspects intuitively, but how can we turn them into something more concrete and tangible? The following questions can help outline a cost-benefit analysis for your organization or client.

Problem: What consequences has the lack of terminology management caused (low-quality texts, high translation costs, client complaints, lost business...)

Impact: How are these consequences quantified financially?

Scope: Make an inventory of the number of languages, documents or words involved. This will help determine whether your content volumes justify the implementation of content management or computer-assisted translation systems.

Goals/benefits: What goals should be achieved (higher quality across languages, faster turnaround times, improved reputation, better positioning)?

Costs: Consider the costs involved: setting up and maintaining a terminology management system, training employees, populating the database, and assessing feedback from multiple departments.

Success and risk factors: What factors could be crucial to reach (or fail to reach) the defined goals?

Comparison: Measure and compare the impact of working with and without terminology. Are the benefits higher than the costs?

Conclusion

With internationalization, companies need to attend to increasing priorities: more markets, target groups, products, legal requirements. Consequently, the demand for information in different languages and on different media has increased. Depending on their needs and expectations, companies might want to evaluate terminology as a potential solution within their marketing and language strategies.

In some cases, the costs could turn out to be higher than the desired benefits. Without analysis, however, these insights might never be revealed. Not managing terminology at all might be an even greater risk to afford.