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Let us assume you are a manufacturer of a USB Stick. If you have not decided on a term for this specific product it could very well be that you have product documentation, marketing collateral and all kinds of other written material with different names for your product. Y our USB Stick could also be called a USB flash drive, flash drive, USB memory key, memory stick, key drive, pen drive, thumb drive, jump drive, etc. All of these different terms would also be different terms in all of your target languages.
Since this is a consumer product, it could very well be that you translate into 35 languages. Can you imagine where this could lead?
As a best practice, a company should determine a name (term) before the product launches and then apply this term throughout the entire documentation.
Terminology Management in Translation
If you would use all the different terms in your documentation, not only would this be confusing to consumers, it would create high costs for translations. If you use different terms for the same product, you would hardly achieve any 100 % Matches, which is the lowest priced translations per word. If your technical writers and authors use and create new terms, this would enlarge your translation memory (translation database) and you would pay more.
So make sure to mention terminology to your Language Service Provider. If you have different terms from past documents, it can be fixed. If you have different terms for the same product for a good reason, it should be documented in the list of Terminology and you should clearly describe when to use which term.
Branding and Corporate Language
It is a recommended best practice to use the same term in all of your different kinds of documentation. For example, Product Manuals, Technical Data, Leaflets, Marketing Brochures, Website, Catalogs, and so on. By managing the terminology properly, you can more easily determine which term to use and this term would be highlighted as the approved term. To make sure that no other terms are used, in the description you could include that any other terms are prohibited. This would support your branding and improve your corporate language as everyone would clearly know what you are talking about.
