The Terms of Business
Saving Money Through Terminology Management
By Kara Warburton
Chair, LISA Terminology SIG
kara@ca.ibm.com
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According to Kara Warburton, chair of LISA’s Terminology SIG, most companies are still unaware of the need to invest in terminology development and active management of terminological resources. Recent work by the Terminology SIG has helped demonstrate that investment in terminology management and development can deliver a tangible return on investment, not just intangible benefits such as improved quality or customer satisfaction. In this article Warburton outlines the activities of the Terminology SIG, including a new survey on terminology practices, and looks at changes in attitude in the GILT industry that may presage a brighter future for awareness of the importance of terminology.
For several years now, LISA members have
recognized the value that managing terminology brings
to the localization industry. It’s the Terminology
SIG’s job to make sure that terminology management
remains a focus area for improvement, even if that means
looking beyond the GILT industry itself. Because indeed
it’s not just about translation. The message is
simple, to quote IBM’s Globalizing
your e-business web site: “Managing
terminology supports your corporate brand image, and
makes your products easier to use, easier to translate,
and easier to adapt to global markets.”
Yet getting enterprises to focus resources
on this activity continues to be a challenge.
Maybe they should consider what happens
when you don’t manage terminology. Again according
to IBM’s Globalizing
your e-business web site: “Without
controls, terminology can cause problems that will
cost your company money and customer satisfaction.”
We’re talking about increased support calls,
escalating translation costs, increased time to market,
and sometimes even product failure. Could you afford
to ignore these effects on your bottom line?
I can hear terminologists now echoing
these statements in the business cases that they present
to the bestowers of project budgets. But often the
information required to unlock the safe is more quantitative
than qualitative: “How much money will we save?”
or “How much productivity will we gain?”
Members of the LISA Terminology SIG know from experience
that it is very difficult to obtain reliable quantitative
data to support a terminology management business
case.
Following the publication of its last
report, Terminology
Management - A Comparative Study of Costs, Data Categories,
Tools, and Organizational Structure,
the Terminology SIG is conducting a brief survey among
LISA members to help validate the conclusions of the
report among a broader audience. Please take the 5
minutes required to complete this
survey, which is available on the LISA
home page. In parallel, the SIG is brainstorming about
how to build a business case for investing in a terminology
process and tools (SIG members Paolo Vanni of PeopleSoft
and Mark Childress of SAP have presented this topic
at conferences), and I will report our findings during
the LISA
Forum USA in Washington, D.C.
The focus of terminology work is beginning
to shift away from translation into other domains
such as content authoring and search technologies.
But this shift is not occurring fast enough in my
opinion. I keep wondering, why are the commercially-available
terminology management tools so frequently buried
within translation tools? Have you ever heard of an
English writer using a translation memory system?
Many, if not most, terminology problems originate
in the source language. Little wonder that few source
language writers or product developers have even heard
about managing terminology! Content authoring systems
in general lag far behind localization systems in
providing terminology management functions. And having
a fully-integrated solution for both authoring and
localization is a pipe dream. In order to change this
situation, we must stop thinking about terminology
as a “translation problem.” It is a globalization
challenge that starts the moment that an idea to create
a product is hatched. This view is shared by other
SIG members such as Paolo Vanni of PeopleSoft and
Raphael Prono of Xerox.
Paolo’s experience shows that
inconsistent use of terms in software user interfaces,
online and printed documentation, marketing collateral,
and web content often comes to light only during translation,
when it is too late to correct the problem efficiently.
The costs associated with improper terminology management
at the source can be staggering, especially for companies
with vast amounts of source material to be localized
in multiple languages. A more effective solution would
be to start the terminology process during the software
application development phase, working closely with
engineers and technical writers to define a set of
core terminology and approved forms (long forms, abbreviations,
acronyms, etc.) to be researched, pre-translated,
and documented in an enterprise-wide termbase.
Raphael agrees. “We have come
to realize that terminology management becomes a waste
of time if this activity is solely performed by the
localization vendor/translation department,”
he says. “The trouble in this situation is that
translators and terminologists facing erroneous or
inconsistent source terms keep having to solve authoring
problems with no hope of stopping them from reappearing.
Our primary goal now is to educate our customers so
they understand the long-term benefits of managing
terminology from the source down. When we put a process
in place with our customers where both authors and
translators can openly communicate and contribute
to a common terminology database, our customers get
the benefits of it at different levels:
- better authoring and translation
quality through consistent terminology re-use and
- translation cost reduction through
higher re-use of legacy source material (using TM
technology)
This sounds simple
enough, but convincing customers to change their ways
of authoring is the hardest part of it.”
Take a look at the agenda
of the Terminology
in Advanced Multilingual Communications (TAMA) conference,
hosted by TermNet (The International Network for Terminology),
a LISA GA member. The first two topic themes are “Information
Management” and “Content Management.”
Similarly, the program of the upcoming LREC
conference of the European Language Resources
Association focuses on multidimensional aspects such
as using terminology for information retrieval and
knowledge management. And the upcoming Localization
World Conference is holding a day-long terminology
management summit where authoring, information retrieval
and terminology extraction are as prominent in the
program as localization itself.
LISA first drew our attention
to the importance and challenges of terminology extraction
two years ago in the report of the Terminology
Management in the Localization Industry survey.
Now, terminology extraction is gaining recognition
as an essential activity in the localization process.
It appears as a key topic on conference agendas such
as those mentioned above. Tools vendors are clamoring
to add terminology extraction to their tools, and
some companies, such as IBM, have developed their
own term extraction tools.
With the interests of
the localization industry on my agenda, I attended
the ISO TC 37 (Terminology and Other Language Resources)
meetings in Oslo, Norway. I noted with interest that
a new work item will be proposed to develop a set
of data categories and a markup framework for lexical
resources. This proposed standard will take the principles
upon which LISA’s TBX was developed for terminological
(concept-based) resources and apply them to lexical
(word-based) resources. Bilingual lexicons used to
support the localization process are often of the
latter type and so we will follow this initiative
closely.
ISO TC 37 is also responsible
for the Codes
for the Representation of Names of Language (ISO 639)
standard which is so prevalently used throughout the
localization industry. Quite a stir arose when the
suggestion was made that ISO may charge for the use
of these codes. On September 30, 2003, ISO settled
the matter by issuing a press
release reaffirming free-of-charge use.
We have a long way to
go before we can say that we have a handle on managing
terminology. Many companies are still in denial that
they need to do anything at all. The localization
industry can feel proud for showing leadership in
this area. We must continue to lead, one step at a
time. Business case guidelines will be the next step.
But I’m sure you share my satisfaction in seeing
the localization industry show its counterpart, the
software development industry, a thing or two about
building global solutions!
Kara
Warburton is responsible for defining
IBM's terminology strategy, including tools, processes,
and data management. Her primary goal is to extend
the focus of terminology management from translation
to content management. She is also a published author
and public speaker on the subject.
Kara is a Canadian delegate
to ISO TC 37, which defines ISO terminology standards,
and the IBM representative on OSCAR.
She holds a Master's degree in Terminology from Université
Laval and has held positions as translator, information
developer and university professor. Kara can be reached
at kara@ca.ibm.com.
Reprinted
by permission from the Globalization Insider,
4 November 2003, Volume XII, Issue 4.3.
Copyright
the Localization Industry Standards Association
(Globalization Insider: www.localization.org,
LISA: www.lisa.org)
and S.M.P. Marketing Sarl (SMP) 2004
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