Creating, translating, and approving company-specific multilingual terminology is necessary to help businesses improve communication, maintain brand consistency, and increase efficiency. To ensure that the terminology is accurate, consistent, and effective, it’s essential to follow best practices throughout the entire process.
From establishing a clear workflow to ensuring successful communication and collaboration between teams, these best practices will help businesses create and maintain functional multilingual terminology that supports their global communication efforts. Here’s a closer look at the best practices to follow along with.
What Is Company-Specific Multilingual Terminology?
Company-specific multilingual terminology refers to specialized terms, phrases, and jargon used within a particular company or organization that is communicated across multiple languages. These terms are unique to the company’s operations, products, services, and industry. The company may develop them internally or through collaboration with external partners, such as translators or language service providers.
Having a standardized set of company-specific terminology confirms that all parties use the same language, reducing the risk of misunderstandings, errors, and miscommunications.
Developing a company-specific multilingual terminology database typically involves conducting extensive research and analysis to identify and define key terms and concepts used by the organization. The database is then maintained and updated regularly to reflect changes in the company’s operations, products, services, and industry trends. This database serves as a reference for translators, writers, and editors working on company-related content to ensure that the language used is consistent and accurate across all languages.
What Is the Importance of Terminology Development?
Terminology development is an essential process for businesses that communicate across different languages and cultures. It involves creating a set of standardized terms and phrases that are used consistently across all communications, both internally and externally. Here are some reasons why terminology development is important:
- Consistency: By creating a set of standardized terms, businesses can ensure that their messaging is consistent and clear, regardless of the language or culture of their audience.
- Efficiency: Jargon development can save time and effort by eliminating the need for translators and writers to reinvent terminology constantly and translate the same terms repeatedly.
- Accuracy: Standardized expressions can help guarantee that translations are accurate and convey the intended meaning of the original text.
- Branding: Consistent phraseology can help businesses maintain their brand identity and messaging across multiple languages and cultures.
- Compliance: Terminology development can help businesses ensure compliance with industry standards and regulations.
Terminology development is essential for businesses that communicate across different languages and cultures. It can improve consistency, efficiency, accuracy, branding, and compliance, ultimately supporting the success of a business’s global communication efforts.
How Translation Services Are Vital for Consist Translations
Translation services can play a critical role in guaranteeing uniformity for company-specific multilingual terminology translations. They can help create a unified terminology database for the company, verifying that all terms and phrases are translated precisely and uniformly across all languages.
Translation services can also use specialized translation software that includes terminology management features to store and manage the company-specific terminology database. This allows translators to access the database and use the same terms and phrases frequently, ensuring that all translations are aligned with the company’s branding and messaging.
Additionally, translation services can provide a team of professional translators who are experts in the specific industry or subject matter related to the company’s operations. These translators can work closely with the company to understand its terminology and ensure that translations are exact and relevant to the target audience.
What You Need to Include in a Translation Style Guide
A translation style guide is a document that provides guidelines for translating content across multiple languages and cultures. Here are some elements that you may want to include in a translation style guide:
- Brand voice and tone: Recommendations for the voice and tone of your content, including whether it should be formal or informal, conversational or professional.
- Grammar and punctuation: Advice for grammar, punctuation, and spelling, including rules for capitalization, hyphenation, and abbreviations.
- Terminology: A list of approved terminology and their translations, along with guidelines for their usage.
- Formatting: Requirements for formatting, including headings, lists, tables, and other content elements.
- Localization: Advice for localizing content to fit the cultural context of the target audience, including considerations for cultural references, idioms, and sensitivities.
- Style preferences: Instruction for style elements, such as voice, tone, and grammar.
- Approval process: Protocol for reviewing and approving translations, including who is responsible for final approval.
- Glossary: A glossary of key terms and their translations, along with context and usage notes.
- Examples: Examples of translations for common phrases and terms to help provide a clear sense of what is expected.
Including these elements across multiple languages and cultures, ultimately supports the success of your global communication efforts.
How to Create a Translation Style Guide
Creating a translation style guide can help ensure your messaging is consistent and effective across multiple languages and cultures. Here are seven steps for creating a translation style guide:
- Identify your target audience: Determine who your target audience is for your translated content, including their language, culture, and preferences.
- Identify branding: Identify your brand voice and tone and how it should be conveyed in different languages and cultures.
- Determine guidelines: Establish guidelines for grammar and punctuation, including rules for capitalization, hyphenation, and abbreviations.
- Create terminology glossary: Develop a terminology glossary that includes a list of approved terms and their translations and guidelines for their usage.
- Formatting standards: Establish formatting standards for headings, lists, tables, and other content elements.
- Include cultural considerations: Incorporate cultural considerations into your translation styles guide, such as cultural references, idioms, and sensitivities.
- Refine translation guide: Test and refine your translation style guide with translators and editors to ensure that it’s practical and easy to use, and refine it as needed.
By following these steps, you can create a translation style guide that helps provide worthwhile content in the translation.
Understanding Management Processes for Multilingual Terminology Translations
Developing and managing multilingual terminology is essential for worthwhile global communication. Creating a translation style guide and terminology glossary, using translation memory software, and establishing clear management processes can help in your translations while saving time and effort.
By following best practices, businesses can better communicate their brand message and maintain their brand identity across multiple languages and cultures. With the right tools and strategies in place, businesses can navigate the challenges of multilingual communication and succeed in the global marketplace. To better understand how your organization can benefit from terminology translation across multiple languages, contact International Language Services today.
