Glossary

The following, whilst not exhaustive, is a glossary of terms relating to the translation industry:

Accredited translator: Translator who has received accreditation from a professional institute such as the ITI or the ATA. Accreditation — a requirement for membership — is usually issued on the basis of examination and experience.

Acrobat: A family of programs from Adobe used for creating and viewing PDF files.

Adaptation: Unlike a transcription (or literal translation), an adaptation is aimed at bringing the target text in line with the spirit of the language, thus producing a text which is not obviously a translation.

Alignment: A process that consists of aligning, i.e. creating equivalents, segment by segment, between a source text and the corresponding target text. The resulting table of equivalents will then be used as a translation memory. Alignment thus makes it possible to use previous translations carried out without translation support software. Even with the help of special software programmes, alignment operations nevertheless still require a considerable amount of manual intervention.

Computer-Aided Translation (CAT): The use of computers to increase the efficiency of human translators. CAT tools include translation memory, glossary, indexing, word processing and development software. Also known as a Translation Environment Tool or TenT.

Concordance: Relating a term to its context. In computer assisted translation (CAT), this more specifically applies to a function making it possible to obtain the list of contexts for the term, in order to define its sense more precisely and its equivalent in the target language.

Consistency: Quality of a text in which the same object or the same concept is always expressed by the same term (terminological consistency), or where the same action or idea is always expressed by exactly the same phrase or group of phrases (phraseological consistency).

Déjà Vu: Translation memory program, published by Atril.

Desktop publishing (DTP): DTP is sometimes offered by translators and translation companies/agencies as a value-added service to provide a one-stop solution for customers' publishing needs. They will usually have the special equipment required to handle languages that use different typescripts.

Electronic dictionary: A working dictionary on the computer (hard disk or CD-ROM). The functional operation of these dictionaries varies, depending on their editors. When associated with CAT software, these dictionaries make it possible to recognise source terms recorded within the dictionary and to propose an equivalent translation automatically.

em dash: - a dash with the same width as the letter m.

em space: A space with the same width as the letter m.

en dash: - a dash with the same width as the letter n.

en space: A space with the same width as the letter n

Free translation: Translation in which more emphasis is given to the overall meaning of the text than to the exact wording (cf. literal translation).

Fuzzy matching: A computer search technique that makes it possible to find not only the exact equivalent of the term needed, but also all the elements with a certain degree of similarity to it. This technique is particularly applied within electronic dictionaries or when using CAT, where it allows the translator to obtain, for example, the translation of an adjective on the basis of a corresponding noun included in the dictionary or the translation of a similar (but not identical) phrase already recorded in the translation memory.

FTP: The Internet File Transfer Protocol, which allows for the transfer of files (both uploads and downloads) from a central site on the Internet. FTP sites are useful for storing, disseminating and delivering files that may be too large to send as an e-mail attachment. ALT provides FTP access to clients upon request.

Gisting: Producing a rough or outline translation of a text to provide an insight into the subject and overall content of the source text. Being less expensive and less time-consuming than a "proper" (or "custom") translation, gisting can be used, for example, to determine whether a text contains useful information before a custom translation is commissioned. The term gisting is sometimes used in connection with machine translation, which is used by some translation providers for that purpose.

Glossary: In principle, and as opposed to a dictionary, a glossary is a specialised, single-language dictionary. It includes the term and its definition and possible additional attributes such as its source, field or even its gender and number depending on the needs for use.

Human Translation: Process in which humans carry out a translation task. This may include the use of computer technology to complete the task, but the technology used does not actually provide any translation; all translated text is written by the human translator. (See: Computer-Aided Translation)

Inbound text: Text intended for internal use, generally not seen by people outside the originating organisation. Includes internal correspondence, memos, work instructions, etc.

Language of habitual use: The language that a person is most familiar with, usually the language spoken in the country in which the person lives. Considered by some to be more appropriate than mother-tongue ( Muttersprache) as a measure of a translator or interpreter's ability to translate into the given language. In German usage, this distinction between mother-tongue and dominant language is not generally made.

Layout Files: Computer files used to create a document in its publishable format. Examples of layout file formats are Pagemaker™, Quark Xpress™, Microsoft Word™, and Framemaker™.

Legal translation: This type of translation represents a particular problem and a highly specialised field since the concepts within the various legal systems are not identical, and may not have equivalents in their counterparts.

Literal translation: Translation that closely adheres to the wording and construction of the source text. A literal translation usually appears "stilted" and unnatural and is therefore to be avoided unless there is a specific reason for translating literally. (cf. free translation)

Leveraging: Leveraging is the reuse of source and/or target text from one set of documents in a subsequent version of those documents (or web pages, software, etc.). It is often referred to as 'Translation Recycling and Reuse'.

Localisation: The global adaptation of a product (software, web site) to bring it in line with a market that uses another language. The localisation of software, for example, implies not only the translation of all the technical (manual, online help, etc.) and advertising documentation, but also the adaptation of the various screens, keyboard shortcuts, images and text areas, and not forgetting the indexing which must be completely recreated in the target language.

Machine Translation (MT): The use of computer software to translate text from one language to another. The current status of the technology allows for extremely fast conversion of text between languages. The quality of the resulting translation is limited to a 'gist' level--the reader can get the gist of the topic addressed in the document, but the translation is not of publishable quality.

Mother-tongue: One's native language. Often used as an indicator of a translator or interpreter's ability to translate into a particular language. Because a person who has lived in another country for many years (perhaps from childhood) may be more fluent in their second language than they are in their first (i.e. their mother-tongue), the term "language of habitual use" or "dominant language " is often preferred.

Native speaker competence: Oral and written command of a language equivalent to that of a person who not only learned the language as a child and has continued to use it as his/her language of habitual use, but who also has had some language training.

Outbound text: Text intended for publication, i.e. for a readership outside the originating organisation. Essentially designed to sell products and services. Includes PR articles, brochures, catalogues, advertising copy, etc.

PDF: Stands for Portable Document Format. Developed by Adobe to address the need for a universal format to share documents across different platforms that will look exactly the same without loss of any formatting information.

Per-Word Rate: A standard in the translation industry for calculating translation costs. ALT ascertains the source word count of the text to be translated and multiplies that by the per-word rate, which is usually in cents.

Pre-translation: Translation projects of some considerable size, and especially if they include the use of computer assisted translation software (CAT), require preparatory work on the texts to be translated. This particularly concerns a spelling check on the source text (in case of error, the terminology software does not recognise the terms), the conversion of files into a format accepted by the CAT software, a statistical and qualitative analysis of the source text, the preparation of the special dictionary, etc.

Professional Human Translation: Is the translation of text by accredited native language professional translators. Translation by professional translators is more accurate than machine translation, however, it is usually more expensive and requires more resources than machine translation.

Proofreading: Proofreading means the critical revision of a text. In translation, this task mainly consists of checking aspects of spelling, grammar and syntax plus the general coherency and integrity of the target text. Proofreading constitutes the translator's quality assurance; a factor that is always necessary within a purely human procedure. Proofreading should always be carried out by an experienced translator.

Repetition Rate: The amount the text in a document repeats. When measuring repetition, single words that are repeated are not assessed, but sentences are.

Recycling and Reuse: An alternative name for leveraging.

Revising: Reading a text to identify errors, inconsistencies, incorrect grammar and punctuation, poor or inappropriate style, and, in the case of a translation, conformance with the source text, and making appropriate changes and corrections to the text. In general, the number of revision stages is proportional to the demands on the text quality: a translation intended for publication may, for example, be revised by the translator and by one or two third parties (e.g. the author, a subject expert, a second translator, an editor), whereas an internal memo may not require any revision after translation. (What exactly revising and editing entail and how they differ is the subject of much debate. What is important is that the person commissioning the work communicates clearly what is expected of the editor.)

RTF: Stands for Rich Text Format. A standard established by Microsoft for cross-platform text and graphics interchange. Although RTF is not a very sophisticated format, it does a good job in storing font, color and formatting information, but page layout may not be always reproduced correctly.

Segment: In order to create the translation memory, the CAT software divides the source text into segments. The segment usually corresponds to a phrase, at least in running texts. Segmentation is governed by complex rules based, in principle, on punctuation. See also translation unit.

Single sourcing: Writing a document in one format and then automatically translating it into a number of other formats, for example, HTML for the web, RTF for help files and PDF for print. Fine in theory but very difficult to achieve in practice. Webworks Publisher is the only tool I've seen that comes close.

Source Language: The language in which text was originally written.

Source text analysis: A pre-translation process aimed at evaluating the qualitative and quantitative properties of the source text. The main purpose of source text analysis is to determine the procedures to be followed and the translation tools required in order to optimise work on projects of some considerable size. Among other advantages, analysis makes it possible to extract a list of terms and collocations and their frequency, to establish a list of terms not found in a specific dictionary, to analyse a term within its various contexts (concordance), to determine the repetition rate and the terminological and phraseological consistency, or to establish a provisional glossary.

Specialised language competence: Familiarity with the relevant subject matter and command of its special language conventions.

Target: In translation, and as opposed to "source", the term "target" designates everything related to the language into which the text will be translated. The "target" or "translated" text is the objective of the work to be carried out. The target language must be the translator's mother tongue.

Target readership: The group of people for which a text is translated, for example subject experts, novices, prospective customers. It is important to specify the target readership when commissioning a translation so that the translator can choose an appropriate style and vocabulary.

Technical translation: Because of volumes that are often high and the necessity of respecting absolute consistency, the translation of technical texts (installation, user or maintenance manuals, catalogues, data sheets) is today inseparably associated with the use of computer assisted translation tools and terminology analysis.

Text expansion: An increase in the length of the target text as compared to the source text.

TMX: Translation memory exchange format, designed to allow easier exchange of translation memory data between tools and/or translation vendors with little or no loss of critical data during the process. Supported by the latest versions of most leading translation memory programs. (For a full specification, go to www.lisa.org/tmx/tmx.htm)

Trados: Publishers of the Translator's Workbench translation memory program.

Transcription: As opposed to linguistic adaptation, a transcription is a literal (word by word) method of translation which is rarely applied with the exception of lists and catalogues.

Translating: The act of rendering written text from one language into another. (cf. interpreting)

Translating competence: Ability to render text into the target language correctly in terms of language, subject matter and idiomatic style, having regard to the text function of both the source text and the target text.

Translation agency: Provides translation and interpreting services, acting as middleman between customers and freelance translators. May offer value-added services such as typesetting, publishing, project management.

Translation company: Provides translation services using mainly in-house translators. May specialise in a particular field — such as legal, patents or technical — and may offer value-added services such as typesetting, publishing, project management. The term is often used synonymously with translation agency.

Translation Manager: Person in charge of managing a translation project. In large translation projects, the translation manager is responsible for liasing between customer and translators, coordinating the translation work (which may be carried out by several translators for each language), maintaining the terminology database, ensuring consistency of style and terminology, etc.

Translation memory: A translation memory is a data bank in which a source text and the corresponding target text are recorded in the form of translation units. This memory — the basis of CAT software — makes it possible to find passages that have already been translated automatically, or to find modified passages that it then submits to the translator for updating. See also: alignment.

Translation unit: A translation unit consist of the source segment and the corresponding target segment, recorded as equivalents in a data base. It thus constitutes the base unit for the translation memories.

Translator: Renders written text from one or more languages into an other language, usually into her language of habitual use. May offer additional services, such as desktop publishing or proofreading. (cf. interpreter)

TrueType: A popular scalable font format developed with the joint effort of Apple and Microsoft that did not want to adopt Adobe's Type 1 format for their operating systems namely MacOS and Windows.

Type 1: A scalable font format developed by Adobe that uses a subset of the PostScript language.

Unicode: A character encoding scheme which addresses the shortcomings of ASCII and other competing encoding schemes. Unlike ASCII, which has space for only 128 characters (7-bit), Unicode can store 65536 characters (16-bit) to cover virtually all alphabets in the world.

Word count: A standard measure of the size of a text. Translation projects, for example, are often priced on a per-word ( US ) or per-1000-word (GB) basis.