Technical Terms Translation Database

This post is also available in: Français (French)

One of the most important aspects of technical translation is translating the technical terms used. This Technical Terms Translation Database is at the heart of the technical translation process.

Above is essentially the process of collecting terms for reference.

There are 3 objectives of collecting translation terms.

1. Standardise terms during a project
2. Constitute an extensive reference base
3. Generate statistics of terms

Purpose of the translation database

• Retain and standardise vocabulary on a project (like a termbase)
• Provide search vocabulary for other projects
• Provide synonyms and a deeper understanding of terms
• Vocabulary, project tracking, wph, stats, link with accounts
• Calculate translation volumes per month, customer and type of work
• Store agency contacts, email addresses, logins to agency portals

Design of the translation database

At the outset, I stored my translation terms in Evernote and on Google sheets. But after a while, searching for terms previously encountered was quite time-consuming.

I designed the translation database to store translation terms in source and target languages (French to English). It could be adapted for any language pair.

Terms are attached to a project but as they are in one table, I can easily search for any term from any project.

I realised that the database could also be used to generate statistics about projects and the domains in which I work. This is part of an ongoing attempt to define my profile as a technical translator.

The translation database table structure

The essential tables are described below in a summary class diagram.

See more examples of systems analyses in UML

A term can be attached to only one project. A possible adaptation would be to allow terms to be attached to more than one project. Terms may have significantly different meanings depending on the context.

The Essential Fields

The technical translation process: Start a project, complete the number of words, the agency and end customer, the number of the estimate in accounts.

The agency table includes the contact details for the agency their payment conditions (30, 45 or 60 days), price in currency for translation, MTPE, Revision or Audiovisual.

So we have a project which links back to the agency and all terms are within a project.

Translation database functions

The advantage of a bespoke database is to create functions tailor-made to your process. The essential requirement for me was to store terms and then be able to search for them from one location.

Search for terms

So while a project constrains terms just to a project, which helps to standardise terms with a project, terms are also available for search across all projects. So when working on a project, I often search for a term to see if I have come across it in previous projects and how I handled it. The following fields are searchable.

Statistics produced with the translation database

I have set myself some objectives as part of managing my business, notably the number of words per month, average word rate and financial objectives based on the volume done.

I calculate statistics of the number of terms in the database against the number of words translated in that domain

Calculate the number of terms by domain

The number of words per period to help me track whether I am in line with my objectives on the number of words.

Average word rate

Average translation rate: I measure the time taken for each project in Trello Plus and with the total number of words for each project calculate the number of words translated per hour. Access then calculates the average

Terms stored in the translation database

Two important fields: the chosen term in my target language (English) and the alternatives. This helps me reflect on the most appropriate term during translation.

At the end of a project, I may send a list of terms to the customer with the target files to show them the alternatives considered or for customers to choose the appropriate industry-specific term.

I store the abbreviations in French and English. It is often important to spell out an abbreviation to confirm its meaning and to determine, with customers, whether an abbreviation should be translated or left as is.

Deduplication of translation database terms

Terms may come up in more than one context or project. Sometimes the same word may mean different things in different contexts, or be combined with a strict duplicate.

Before building the database, I stored terms in Google Sheets, one for each project. So I had some work to do to combine these sheets together into the database and to help, built a deduplication function to combine terms.

This function is still useful to combine terms encountered on current projects. I take care though only to combine terms if they have the same meaning and are essentially synonyms, in which case the English term of one goes into the ‘alternative field’ of the other.

Quality Checks

Part of my quality process is to check and standardise the terms used in my translation. Antidote helps me to do this because it highlights unknown and repeated words, providing a focus on the terms used.

The Antidote corrector can be launched directly from Trados using the SDL Antidote plugin.

With Antidote, you can check:

• Grammar and spelling
• Complex phrases
• Double spaces
• Passive voice

The grammar and style checks in Antidote encourage you to think about the meaning.

Standardising translation database terms

This is the recording and standardisation of terms in ‘everyday’ translation. Writing down terms and weighing the synonyms leads to a better understanding.

What term to use?

Is there an industry-standard term?

‘Animation à interval courte’ is not ‘short term management’ but ‘short interval management’, a standard term in visual management screens for Lean Management.

Reversible ratchet handle, rack wrench, stud wrench, open-end spanner, strap wrench, offset wrench, screw key are all variations of different types of spanner (clé in French)

A text may use similar terms, or one might translate terms using similar words only to realise that two similar terms are indeed the same (particularly for large projects).

The project vocabulary list serves as a reference for the terms used and to standardise them during proofreading.

Terms for return customers

Customers may come back to you once you have ‘learnt’ their technical or industry vocabulary. So this may be useful as an opportunity.

The database allows you to pull up the vocabulary for the customer to work on repeat projects.

At the same time, all terms are available for search, no matter what project.

Analysis of project domains

Where there are more words than terms, it means I just ‘get on with the project’ and don’t need so much support. Where there are more terms than words, it is generally because I went out to look for support and found a detailed online source.

See here for credits to some of my sources including Tech Dico, Le Grand Dictionnaire du Quebec, Linguee and specific data sources.

I have done a lot of words in computing (112k) but only have 1000 terms.

I collected many industrial terms because it was not my original speciality and a field that I wanted to focus on.

Scientific: these words came from a large project for Electrostatic discharge (ESD) specifications and guidelines for an electronic component manufacturer.

Legal and Business may overlap with ‘management’ with many (24) smaller projects of around 1500 words.

In Electrical Engineering and Nuclear, I integrated a large terms’ database (42k) but have never specifically categorized a project in that domain.

I leave Electrical and Mechanical Engineering separate, because together would create a distinctively large category and would distort statistics.