Welcome back for Issue Eleven of Your Own Terms, the biweekly comic about Sir Terminus: Crusader of Logic, Manly Valor, and Multilingual Terminology Management.

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Welcome back for Issue Ten of Your Own Terms, the biweekly comic about Sir Terminus: Crusader of Logic, Manly Valor, and Multilingual Terminology Management.

For this week’s comic, we thought we’d take a small break from Terminus’ shenanigans and focus a bit on the trials and tribulations of translators, the proverbial lifeblood of everything we do in the translation and localization industry. We hope you enjoy

Translators out there… got any other fun ones to share?

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Welcome back for Issue Nine of Your Own Terms, the biweekly comic about Sir Terminus: Crusader of Logic, Manly Valor, and Multilingual Terminology Management.

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More on Terminology Management:

When talking about terminology management, a lot of emphasis is placed on managing terms in a multilingual context. While this is an important step in ensuring quality translations and consistent branding abroad, people tend to overlook the fact that terminology management is most efficacious when applied as a preventive measure early on in the source-authoring stage of a product’s development cycle.

In a single organization, many departments contribute to the different forms of written communication that accompany a product. Regardless of the type of product, it’s not uncommon to have anywhere from four to ten operative groups from different offices around the world writing content simultaneously. Without a glossary in place to guide the development of this content, you run the risk of different terms being applied to the same concept.

Now, to most people, this doesn’t really sound like a big deal. But consider this: Your organization develops an electronic device with a brand new, never-before-seen function. Your hardware engineers decide to use Term A to refer to this function on the device’s LCD screen, whereas your software engineers use Term B to label this function in related software UI strings. At the same time, your technical writers, who are working on writing the Help menus, user manuals, and training documents, etc., use Term C to refer to the same function. And then your marketing team uses Term D to, yet again, refer to the exact same concept.

What’s your customer going to think when he buys the device on account of Term D, but then has a problem with Term A on the device itself, because it doesn’t match Term B in the accompanying software, so he looks in the Help menu only to find that Term A and B are alternately referred to as Term C? He’s going to throw your product out the window and pray that someone drives over it with their car.

Yes, mixing up your terminology is that confusing to the end-user. And yes, this type of inconsistency affects the quality of your branding and adds significant costs in terms of post-sales support, re-printing, levied fines for refused shipments, and the list goes on.

So be sure and manage your terms from the source, folks—and do it early on in the product development cycle, ideally before source-authoring even begins. It’ll save you a lot of hassle, a lot of time, and a lot of money in the long run, especially when you decide to localize your content into several dozen languages.

If you’re interested in reading more about the benefits of terminology management, check out this article that details 10 Good Reasons to Manage Your Terminology. Alternatively, check out TermWiki.com, where you can sign up for a free account and start managing your multilingual glossaries right away.

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Welcome back for Issue Eight of Your Own Terms, the biweekly comic about Sir Terminus: Crusader of Logic, Manly Valor, and Multilingual Terminology Management.

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About today’s comic:

Removing my marketing hat for the moment, I’d actually like to talk about the inspiration behind today’s comic. A while back, Renato Beninatto made a reference to “All your base are belong to us” on Twitter. Naturally, being a gaming geek, I was thoroughly impressed, especially because members of his (there’s no nice way of saying this, really, so at the risk of sounding ageist:) “age bracket” don’t tend to keep up with nerdy memes as much as say, Generation Xers who grew up with this stuff. That’s not always the case, obviously, but my brothers and I tend to get blanks stares from our parents whenever we refer to lame stuff on the internet. But that just goes to show that Renato’s a pretty cool guy.

Anyway, his Tweet reacquainted me with this outdated yet still hilarious internet meme, and because it’s a direct result of translation problems, I was instantly set on including it in the comic one day.

Fast forward to a few days ago when I was writing the script for this week’s comic. I went to our Head Italian Linguist for a translation of “Oh my God, it’s a full on double rainbow!”, the infamous phrase that made Double Rainbow Guy go viral on Youtube back in July of this year. To give her a bit of context, I showed her the video and, after watching it, she said, “You know, only Americans come up with crazy things like this.”

The thing is, that’s not true. I’m sure there are tons of Double Rainbow Guy-equivalents from different countries all over the web, but because native English speakers (particularly Americans and the British) are, for the most part, notably uninterested in the goings on of the rest of the world (aside from various surface-scratchings on the Discovery Channel), a lot of potentially hilarious stuff is overlooked. (For example, did you know that in China a large portion of young internet users say “Oh My Lady Gaga!” instead of OMG? Not comedic gold, necessarily—but still, it’s pretty interesting.)

In order to fix this, I went in and added a category for internet memes on TermWiki.com. I think it’s a pretty good platform for defining these memes, and doing so in a multilingual context. Because the data is interconnected so well, now my Chinese friends can understand why geeky Americans laugh when someone makes an “All your base are belong to us” reference. And my Egyptian friends can enjoy the more recently popular and delightfully ridiculous contraptions in the Troll Physics trend. From there, they can also share with everyone else some of the hilarious stuff that goes on in their respective countries and languages.

I’ll admit that, on the one hand, explaining these things runs the age-old risk of ruining the joke by trying to break down why it’s funny. On the other hand, it always feels good to be let in on an inside joke. And that’s all internet memes are, really: big, viral inside jokes.

So yeah. That’s the story behind this week’s comic. If you’ve got any funny internet memes to add, feel free to sign up for a free account on TermWiki.com and add away! As always, translations into other languages are definitely appreciated.

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Issue Seven of Your Own Terms, the biweekly comic about Sir Terminus: Crusader of Logic, Manly Valor, and Multilingual Terminology Management.

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More information:

When dealing with auditors, it never hurts to be precise. For that matter, it’s best to be precise in all aspects of your business, especially if you’re working in highly regulated sectors, like pharmaceuticals, biotech, or medical devices. TermWiki, the localization industry’s first completely online, wiki-based and collaborative terminology management system, enables you to bring a new degree of precision to your product documentation by providing a one-stop platform for the collaborative terminology development, management, translation, and dissemination processes. When it comes to the Life Sciences, there’s no room for error when the international compliance of your product is on the line—just ask your auditors. Better yet, ask your friendly neighborhood LSP.

• Test drive TermWiki yourself at TermWiki.com.
• Click here to read “10 Good Reasons to Manage Your Terminology.”
• Check out more detailed information on TermWiki.

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Issue Six of Your Own Terms, the biweekly comic about Sir Terminus: Crusader of Logic, Manly Valor, and Multilingual Terminology Management.

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More information:

TermWiki, the localization industry’s first completely online, wiki-based and collaborative terminology management system, was developed with MediaWiki software, which, unlike the development platforms of other terminology management systems on the market, is especially open in terms of infrastructure—and thus highly customizable.

Every organization manages their terminology differently, and because of that, there really isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. With TermWiki, you don’t have to worry about getting “locked in” by rigid software that forces you to adapt your workflow to the limitations of the system. There are currently tens-of-thousands of extensions available for MediaWiki software, a testament to the fact that this PHP-based application can be easily tweaked and prodded to meet your individual terminology management needs—and it’s not going to cost you an arm and a leg.

Check out www.TermWiki.com for a free test drive.

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Issue Five of Your Own Terms, the biweekly comic about Sir Terminus: Crusader of Logic, Manly Valor, and Multilingual Terminology Management.

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More information:

It’s no joke—we love talking data categories (which, admittedly, has never made us cool at parties). The fact of the matter is, the way in which you manage terminological attributes in your glossary has a direct effect on the usefulness, consistency, scalability, and integrability of your multilingual termbase. When looking for the right terminology management system for your organization, you should pay attention to how new data is entered and what measures are in place to minimize human error.

In traditional terminology management models, you generally have one of two options for entering new records. The most common way is to create entries outside of the terminology management system in a spreadsheet application. This is all well and good, but the problem with spreadsheets (aside from complete lack of traceability) is that they don’t enable you to avail yourself of “pick lists,” or drop-down menus with finite values for a given data category.

Without pick lists, the terminologist (or translator, project manager, etc.) has to enter data manually, which is less efficient, and which also paves the way for introducing human error. For example, if someone simply misspells a data category, then you are going to encounter problems when you go to import, convert, or migrate your terminological data to another system.

The other method of adding new terms and translations is to enter them directly into a terminology management system. As long as the system has an intuitive interface, users can take advantage of the productivity gains inherent in pick lists and ensure the consistency of the data they enter. Consistent data is key to producing a versatile glossary, because it’s absent of any variables that might otherwise muck up your import, conversion, or integration processes.

TermWiki, the localization industry’s first completely online, wiki-based and collaborative terminology management system, enables you to define data categories and pick lists in a manner that best suits your content management needs. Because TermWiki is hosted online with a centralized database, any updates to data categories are automatically implemented throughout your entire glossary to ensure consistency between terms and across languages. So whether you’re managing a hundred terms or a million, TermWiki’s intuitive, standardized user interface will help ensure that no term ever goes astray.

• Click here for more detailed information on TermWiki.
• Test drive TermWiki yourself at TermWiki.com.
• Learn more about terminology management.

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Issue Four of Your Own Terms, the biweekly comic about Sir Terminus: Crusader of Logic, Manly Valor, and Multilingual Terminology Management.

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More information:

Your corporate glossary should ideally be available to all of the functional groups in your organization that simultaneously produce written content. This way, you can ensure that every department uses key terms consistently both within and across documents.

In order to make sure that your company’s glossary is compatible with each group’s content management systems (CMS), computer-aided translation (CAT) tools, knowledge bases and other language-related technology, it’s best to invest in a versatile terminology management system that can both import and export multilingual files in variety of different formats.

TermWiki, the localization industry’s first completely online, wiki-based and collaborative terminology management system, enables you to import and export glossaries in any number of formats, including XLIFF, TBX, XML, CSV and Multiterm. Not only does this maximize the compatibility of your translation glossary with other tools, it also ensures that you won’t ever be locked into using any one system.

• Click here for more detailed information on TermWiki.
• Test drive TermWiki yourself at TermWiki.com.
• Find the right terminology management system for your organization.

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Issue Three of Your Own Terms, the biweekly comic about Sir Terminus: Crusader of Logic, Manly Valor, and Multilingual Terminology Management.

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More information:

Open discussion channels between translators and reviewers are essential to the overall quality of your organization’s in-country and/or outsourced review cycle. Not only that, but a mechanism that promotes remote collaboration is essential to closing the gap between the different functional groups and employees around the world who are involved in the development of your glossary at the source.

TermWiki, the localization industry’s first completely online, wiki-based and collaborative terminology management system, comes with embedded, term-specific discussion panels to help keep terminology- and translation-related disputes organized and relevant to the topic at hand. All authorized users can freely discuss their opinions and address term-specific concerns in a structured, completely traceable platform.

• Click here for more detailed information on TermWiki.
• Test drive TermWiki yourself at TermWiki.com.
• Find the right terminology management system for your organization.

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Issue Two of Your Own Terms, the biweekly comic about Sir Terminus: Crusader of Logic, Manly Valor, and Multilingual Terminology Management.

To check out the last issue, click here. To check out the next issue… wait two weeks.

More information:

TermWiki is the localization industry’s first completely multilingual, wiki-based and collaborative terminology management system. TermWiki’s advanced host of features is complete with definable data categories, allowing you to take precise control over the way in which your terms are organized.

In combination with TermWiki’s powerful, wiki-based data structure, the definable nature of its attributes and drop-down menus enables you to organize your terms in a way that specifically applies to your workflow. You can organize terms by industry, language, domain, product, product line, etc. There’s no limit.

Because of this, the granularity of TermWiki’s search filters is unseen among other enterprise-level terminology management systems. If, for example, you wanted to find the source terms not yet translated into Ancient Egyptian for version 5.0 of product ABC—and only wanted software-related terms to appear—TermWiki could proffer relevant search results in seconds.

• Find the right terminology management system for your organization.
• Click here to read “10 Good Reasons to Manage Your Terminology.”
• Check out more detailed information on TermWiki.