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If you have an official glossary for your business, extending it into different languages is a simple matter of sending it out for translation. You can help the translators by providing any pertinent reference materials, to guide them in their word choices. The translators will endeavor to find equivalent terms in each language that capture the shades and nuances of your source terms. After the translated glossary is delivered, it’s extremely important that you subject it to in-country review and share the reviewers’ findings with us, once the glossary has been finalized. Please remember that a glossary is a living document, and that any additions or updates to your source glossary must be mirrored in every language. Constant maintenance of the source is required, preferably by one author or the smallest possible team, to ensure consistency.
If you’ve already been working in multiple languages without the benefit of glossaries, it’s never too late to create them. Readers and translators can put your existing documents through the process of terminology mining, to produce glossaries by extraction, for use and adaptation in further projects. In-country review is just as essential for glossaries created once the translation of your materials is underway – your glossaries may not be set in stone, but they’re meant to be standards, and they’ve got to stand up to close scrutiny in your target markets!
