TERMINOLOGY MANAGEMENT | WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?

Making yourself understood seems simple: you use the right linguistic code to express your ideas, and the receiver, who shares this same code, interprets and understands the message. Right? Well, if we think that communication noise can occur between people who share the same code, the same culture and who are part of the same social context, imagine the myriad problems that can arise if just one of these three aspects is dissonant between the speakers? ZAUM understands this issue and is ready to help you overcome terminology management barriers.

Think back on some of your marketing ads, training materials or the layout of your website. Now consider how hard it was to get a certain color, term, content, image, search result or, even more importantly, to gain your reputation. This all requires time, effort and money, and when it comes to image and reputation that all becomes even more important because, after all, these are two of the most valuable assets to a person or an organization.

This is one of the main considerations when choosing a professional translation service. Even if all of a company’s employees are fluent in the source language and feel comfortable translating some materials, you run the risk of bumping into very specific terminology issues and, above all, cultural elements.

It’s very easy to find practical examples online of famous brands that faced delicate situations, not only due to the content to be translated, but also because of localization issues, encompassing the entire cross-cultural and idiomatic context. So elements like icons, symbols, colors and signs need to be rethought and adapted during translation.

In November 2015, at the UN Climate Convention, where one of the most comprehensive climate agreements was reached between 195 countries, authorities were faced with the ambiguous use of the verbs shall and should when discussing goals. Shall carries a legal concept of obligation, while should leans toward moral obligations. In the case of an international agreement in which the actions of countries are subject to sanction in the international scenario, this detail can change everything and make it somewhat risky.

Another example, less global, which also carries a liability obligation, is a Berlin hospital which ran into problems during implant surgeries. The acting surgeons received a mistranslation of the surgical implant procedure. A step was specified in the source language, but when translated the word took on a completely opposite meaning, leading to the step being skipped. The result was that the patients had to undergo a second, corrective surgical procedure.

With the abundant availability of information, people have taken to researching products on the internet. There, consumers can find all the information that will influence their decision in the buying process, and a misused term can make your brand simply go unnoticed in this research phase. As such, terminology management makes your product accessible to search engines, and consequently visible to the consumer.

Although there are tools that store and update terminology, they aren’t much good if the person using them isn’t aware of the need for a refined glossary search and in-depth knowledge of the specific area.

The main challenge of terminology management is to get the right, unambiguous message to the audience, working around any unintended messages that could arise and cause dissonance. You can rely on this accuracy with ZAUM Language Services’ language localization solutions.