By Jennifer O Neill, FS, UTC Terminology is one of the basic buildings blocks of content. But, if you let your terms run wild without any control or management, your content risks being badly bitten by poor quality and usability, and savaged by increased translation costs. You may even scare away your customers! Although many writers unfortunately seem to think that terminology management largely happens during translation, most terminology problems start with the source content. The impact of mergers and acquisitions, company restructurings, and outsourcing mean that there can be problems even before you start writing. In this session, you will learn: --How a company’s business model can impact terminology management. --Why it’s important to manage your terminology. --How to cope with “contaminated English”. --Why a style guide isn’t the best place from which to manage your terminology (particularly if you plan on translating). --How to structure your termbase to suit multiple uses.

1. Are You Being Mauled By Your
Terminology?
Jennifer O Neill
Localization Specialist
jennifer.oneill@fs.utc.com

2. Content Needs Terms But…
Untamed Terminology Can Bite…
… And Bite Bad

3. Why Does Terminology Matter?
Poor
terminology
is bad for
business
Poor terminology:
• Impacts content quality &
consistency
• Impedes communication
• Decreases customer satisfaction
• Hinders content reuse
• Decreases productivity
• Increases time to market
• Increases translation costs
• Corrodes your company’s branding

4. It disciplines words.
Lets you use the same words consistently
within and across different communication
types (such as manuals, help, GUIs,
marketing materials…).
And lets you do this across multiple
languages.
What’s Terminology Management?

5. Example of Terminology Gone Wild
English
Operating temperature *
Working temperature
Ambient temperature
Ambient temperature range
Temperature range
Temperature
* = Approved term
French
Température de fonctionnement *
Température fonctionnement
Température de service
Température d’utilisation
Température opérationelle
Température
It’s difficult for a customer to search for a product feature when the
products themselves don’t know what a feature is called

6. “Terminology management makes
content discoverable”
Andrew Lawless
Multilingual magazine, March 2016

7. What Can Impact Terminology
Management
1. Organizational change
2. Business models
3. Department/product silos
4. Customer needs
5. Terminology management process

8. 1. Organizational Change
Case study: My company over the last 20 years
• Mergers & Acquisitions have brought together 24+ companies
globally over the last 20 years
• Also several organizational restructurings
• Some companies are now simply product brands, and some
have been integrated into other product brands

9. My Business Unit

10. Organizational Change & Technical
Publications
• Flip-flopped between Adobe FrameMaker and MS
Word depending on which US Technical
Publications dept. was in charge
• Number of product groups handled by a Technical
Publications dept. varied depending on M&As and
organizational restructuring
• Went through three different style guides
• When terminology was managed, it was managed
from the style guide but … our terms in one guide
never followed us to the style guide of the next
Technical Publications dept. in charge
Impact on terminology = We need to be able to
manage our terms regardless of organizational change

11. The Problem with Style Guides…
Cover stylistic issues related to terms . No info on part of speech,
deprecated terms, product group …
Little incentive to standardize terms. Only around 350 terms listed
in this guide shown (500+ products documented by writers)
Product-specific style guides. Tend to reflect the needs of the
Technical Publications dept. that created the guide
Difficult to share terminology. Can’t easily share the term list with
other company departments and translators

12. 2. Business Models
• Product development done in-house or outsourced
to OEMs
• Products sold through distribution sales channels or
directly through own sales offices.
Can impact translation reviews, and therefore terminology management,
during the localization process.
Much harder to get distributors to review content than your own teams.
OEM = Original Equipment Manufacturer

13. OEMs produce software/hardware that are sold to many companies
worldwide.
Video security technology changes quickly so manufacturers often outsource
product development and manufacturing to OEMs. OEMs drive down
production costs due to economies of scale.
Product differentiation is important in a competitive market
Using another company’s terms can weaken brand identity
Outsourcing to OEMs
Impact on terminology = We want our approved terms used in the GUIs, not
another company’s.

14. Dealing with “Contaminated” English and
Unapproved Terms
OEMs have their own terms, which can differ from our approved terms
OEM1 uses “Auto erase“
OEM2 uses “Expired time” (Chinglish)
UTC Video approved term is “Auto delete mode”
--
OEM uses “Circular recording” (Chinglish)
UTC Video approved term is “Overwrite”
---
OEM uses “Facility time” (Chinglish)
UTC Video approved term is “Schedule”
OEM uses “Auto flip”
UTC Video approved term is “Image flip”
---
OEM uses “Dehaze”
UTC Video approved term is “Defog”
---
OEM uses “Power dome”
UTC Video approved term is “PTZ dome”
Impact on terminology = We need somewhere to record deprecated terms and
to record from which OEM they originate.
We need to be able to share a subset of our approved glossary with OEMs.

15. 3. Department/Product Silos
Product integration is increasingly important
• Increasing number of products with similar features
• Increasing number of products that need to be used together
• Increasing number of localized products and languages
• Local teams increasingly working globally with other teams
But
• Terminology is still unfortunately too often project-based
Product groups create their own terminology in isolation
• Silos make sharing terms across products and departments difficult

16. Definition: A display technique where camera images (video tiles) are displayed on more than one
monitor.
One product calls it Picture Wall but another calls it Multiscreen
---
One product group uses Primary Stream and Alternate Stream
But another product group uses Main Stream and Substream
And another one uses Primary Stream and Sub Stream
(and then there’s the issue of editing. One product group had 4 different ways of writing
“Substream” in its software.)
Impact on terminology = To standardize our terms across products, we need to be able to track
which term comes from which product.
We need to centralize terminology management to help minimize the silo effect.
Silos make terms hard to share.
Some of our video products use different terms for the same functions.
Impact of Silos on Product Integration

17. Terminology is a Shared Resource
Successful terminology management should make it easy to share terms
(and their metadata) between all the different groups in a company, such
as:
• Technical Publications
• Product Management
• Marketing
• Sales
• Engineering
• Technical Support
• Training
Manage terms centrally
Terms can get political!

18. 4. Customer Needs
Local & Global
Customers want understandable, useful information – in their
language…
… and the company wants them to have the information
affordably and on time.
Want to burn money on your translations?
Ignore your terminology.

19. Localization and Terminology Management
• Catch problems early: Too often terminology problems are discovered at
the localization stage when it’s then too difficult and/or too expensive to
fix
• Translation quality: Poor translation quality seriously discourages in-
country reviewers from reviewing translations
• Shareability: Plan how you will share your translated terms in the
terminology management tool with other groups
• Cost considerations: Standardizing terms will probably
involve cleaning your translation memories
Impact on terminology = Standardize and validate
terms in all required languages.
Get a budget to manage translated terminology.

20. 5. Terminology Management Process
• Take charge of your terms!
Manage both your source and translated languages. Terms
don’t manage themselves.
• Organize your terms by concept
• Get management support to help deal with the:
 Politics
 Cost
 Time required

21. • Manage our terms regardless of organizational change
• Use approved standardized terms in our content for all required languages
• Record deprecated terms and, where necessary, record from which OEM they are
coming
• Able to share a subset of our approved glossary for OEMs to use
• Track which term comes from which product group to help standardize our terms within
and across products
• Maintain the glossary regularly as new products and their terms are added
• Centralize terminology management
• Needs of English and translated terms jointly considered
• Share terms across all languages with other departments and our sales offices that also
produce content about our products
• Get a budget to manage terminology
What We Needed To Do

22. The Cost and ROI of Terminology Management
It’s hard to calculate the cost of mistakes and the spread of inconsistent
content.
Terminology costs tend to be hidden in the general overhead of producing
content.
Implementing terminology management can incur significant upfront costs.
It’s hard to prove the return on investment
because it’s less visible.
But customer satisfaction is priceless!

23. Implementing Terminology Management
Get a “Term Trainer” on board
Source language terms:
• Start building a glossary of the English terms using an agreed taxonomy
• Centralize terminology management so that everyone can see what’s
been agreed
• Document your process
Translated terms:
• Get the English glossary translated and approved by your in-country
reviewers. Get your sales offices on board
• Manage both source and translated terminology together
• You may also need to clean your translations memories

24. Term: Decide which terms to include, acronyms, abbreviations, company & product names, terms that have caused
confusion, preferred synonym of a term
Part of speech: Noun, verb, adjective (at least 80% of terms in a glossary will be nouns)
Definition: Short description of the valid term
Context: Provide a short example of text where the term is used (optional)
Channel: Define the product channel that uses the term
Product group: Define the product group(s) within a channel that use the term
Source of term: Originates from the user interface or documentation
Invalid (deprecated) terms: Invalid terms that should not be used
Source of invalid terms: Which invalid terms come from which supplier
(if third-party content is used, for example)
Status: Define whether it’s pending approval, approved, or obsolete
Term owner: Who is responsible for managing the term
Comments: Extra information about the term, such as whether or not it is to be translated.
Our Term Taxonomy

25. • Significant improvement in translation quality
• 1600+ terms standardized and approved in English and multiple
languages
• Much better knowledge about where our terms are used
• Terms managed from product development stage
• In-country reviewers make time to review translations (terms &
content)
• Improved time-to-market for translations
• Management supports terminology management
• OEMs use our approved terminology in our products
• Can now share our standardized terms (all languages)
with other groups, such as Marketing and the sales offices
The Benefits So Far…

26. • Need to get approved terminology accessible online to
everyone
Currently still managed from Excel
• Need to get approved terminology translated into more core
languages
• Not always possible to standardize terms across products
but increasingly we know where we use different terms for
the same thing
• Incorporate new products groups into our terminology
management process
• Terminology needs to be continually managed
Work Still To Do…

27. Summary
• Terminology management takes effort and funding. Get management on board!
• Terminology must be an integral part of the product development cycle from
inception to sale – in all languages
• Design a taxonomy for your terms that suits your content and business needs
• Centralize your terminology management. Don’t make it project based
• Plan from the start to easily migrate the English term base to a terminology
management tool
• Maintain the glossary. An out of date glossary is a dead glossary
• Don’t ignore the impact of organizational change and business models on the
terminology management process
• Think long term, not short term