Why do you need terminology management? Simple—it saves you time and money. Not only that, but terminology management helps improve quality and consistency. What’s not to love?
CASE STUDY: CORRECTING TEXT THAT IS DISJOINTED BECAUSE OF A LACK OF TERMINOLOGICAL UNIFORMITY
THE CHALLENGE
You’re about to send out a complex project proposal when you realize that your translation firm hired different freelancers for the job, each of whom used a completely different tone and terminology. Now you have a disjointed text that has lost the meaning of the original. What do you do?
OUR SOLUTIONS
A financial company came to us after having subcontracted its proposal to an international translation agency who, in turn, had sub-contracted it to a wide variety of freelancers. A lack of experienced translation management, poor planning, and a random selection of linguistic resources resulted in an incoherent, inaccurate, meaningless document.
First, we worked with the client to try to salvage what we could. Then we selected a senior terminologist with a combined expertise in insurance and finance to extract and standardize the terminology. We used a CAT tool in order to accelerate efficiency and then had the documents reviewed by the lead translator.
The process was executed with exactly what the client needed and none of what he didn’t. The result was a cost-effective and time-efficient solution that provided a single tone and incorporated the most recognized industry terms. To top it off, we created an evolving terminology database for the client’s ongoing needs.
Here are some recent examples of clients like you who benefit from our terminology management services:
- A major North American bank had updated its credit and lending manuals and was then obliged to comply with the newly imposed international financial reporting standards, or IFRS. The documents totaled more than 80,000 words and had to be translated according to local and international rules, thus requiring two sets of French documents. We assigned a team of experienced terminologists to this project because the concepts to be covered were completely new. Thanks to the comprehensive lexicon they developed, the translators worked extremely efficiently. When an expression in the original language could be translated into French in several ways depending on the context and the accounting rules, they did not waste time looking for the appropriate equivalent because the research work had been done. As a result, the whole process was much faster, and the client paid only a fraction of what it would have cost if they had hired an accounting firm.
- A large financial institution needed to host its terminology database to make it accessible to all stakeholders, including suppliers. We exported all the data from the database and converted it to XML format. In addition, we replaced the terms that were no longer in use, eliminated duplicates, ensured that all the fields were filled in correctly in the correct format, and carried out a final quality control before making the database accessible. Finally, we offered the translation service staff of the client tailor-made training sessions on the functioning of the database, as well as a document describing in detail the operations to manage and feed it. This solution allowed our client to invest a minimum of time and resources in the project while ensuring the consistency and efficiency of their communications.
- A multinational real estate firm decided to restructure its entire operations and needed to update all of its job titles. By working in close collaboration with the decentralized human resources department of this client, we gathered all the necessary information from the various stakeholders in the regional departments in order to establish a comprehensive Spanish and French lexicon of existing job titles (many of which had been translated in different ways over the years). We also created new job titles for the entire company. Since this restructuring, we continue to manage terminological changes for this client, as well as updates to their lexicon.