Translation terminology - Part 2

Glossary

This is a helpful list of translation related terminology.

Shortcuts to letters

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.

Natural languages

Natural languages correspond to spoken languages, and are designated as such as to differentiate them from programming languages. The automatic processing of natural languages is one of the major areas in which research into information technology is taking place.

Navigation

Moving around within one or several documents by the successive opening of the pages concerned, and with the help of hypertext links, icons and other software commands. In general use for consulting online help facilities, navigation systems are also used within all documentation in digital form. Adapting navigation systems is also part of the translator's work.

Non breaking space

Used to keep words together that would otherwise appear on separate lines due to word wrap.

Offset Printing

The process of printing where an image from a metal, plastic or paper plate attached to a cylinder, is offset to a blanket cylinder, which in turn is offset to a piece of paper. Offset printers can either be sheet fed where individual pieces of paper are fed into the press, or web, where the paper is fed into the press on a continuous roll, as in newspaper printing.

OLIF

Open Lexicon Interchange Format. It is a vehicle for exchanging terminological and lexical data.

Online dictionary

A dictionary that can be viewed on the screen, from resources available on the Internet.

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.

PageMaker (Adobe)

A page layout program that allows precise placement of graphics and text on a page. Each page is constructed as a separate item. PageMaker excels at doing small complex documents.

Paragraph Style

A description of how a paragraph of text is presented. For example, a level 1 heading might be 18pt bold Arial with a 10pt space above and a 20pt space below. A paragraph style affects a whole paragraph. Parts of a paragraph can be reformatted using a character style.

Parallel text

Text in the source or target language that is comparable to the text to be translated in terms of subject matter or text type. Includes previous translations of the same type of text.

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.

A compressed postscript file with additional features such as a table of contents, navigation pane and hyperlinks. PDF files can be edited in a very limited way.

Perl

Stands for Practical Extraction and Report Language. Invented by Larry Hall, a Unix programmer who had got bored of the text handling limitations of the programming languages available at the time. Perhaps, the best thing about Perl is that you do not have to worry about low-level programming tasks like data types or memory allocation. It also gives strong support to regular expressions vital for any serious text processing task. Although certainly powerful and easy-to-learn, Perl can be cryptic at times.

Photoshop (Adobe)

The industry standard for professional bitmap graphics editing.

PHP

A simple programming language with similarities to Perl. PHP code embedded in a web page is executed on the server. This is a similar concept to Active Server Pages (ASP) and Java Server Pages (JSP).

Phraseological dictionary

A data bank for storing standard phrases describing concepts or actions likely to be repeated within the framework of a series of documentation. For example, if the phrase "Press Enter to open file" recurs frequently in the instructions for using a piece of equipment, the writer can select this as such from his or her dictionary of phrases. Beyond saving time, this tool makes it possible to guarantee the phraseological consistency of a text.

PMS Pantone Matching System

A standard for printing colours in which each colour has an assigned number and formula for mixing.

PNG

Stands for Portable Network Graphics. PNG has some major advantages over the old GIF format such as 24-bit image support, an alpha-channel for true transparency and custom gamma values for different platforms. Unlike the GIF format, PNG does not have any patent problems, and it is totally free.

See also: GIF, JPEG

Postscript

A page description language created by Adobe and based on the Forth programming language. A Postscript file has no concept of tables or paragraphs. Each word or collection of words has a set of xy coordinates describing its location on the page. A table is simply a collection of words on a page which happens to have lines in close proximity. A Postscript file is essentially non-editable.

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.

Procedural markup

Markup that describes what a piece of text should look like on the printed page or screen. For example this text is marked as bold. The procedure is, "make this text bold". See descriptive markup. The use of procedural markup is discouraged when authoring documents using SGML.

Process colour

Printing using ink is generally based on a four colour process. These colours are cyan, magenta, yellow and black. Also known as CMYK. These four inks can represent a very large range of colours and is what is used on colour magazines.

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.

Python

A cross platform object orientated programming language, in some ways silimar to Java. Python is quick to write, easy to read, but slow to debug due to it's lack of type safety and compile time checking.

Quality Manual

Quality assurance has nothing to do with quality. The correst name should be "consistancy assurance". A quality manual contains procedures that must be followed. The company is responsible for creating its own procedures. Deviating from the published procedure will result in the loss of QA accrediation.

QuarkXPress

A page layout program similar to Adobe PageMaker and Adobe InDesign.

Raster image

An image composed of pixels. See bitmap.

Registration Marks

Cross marks or circles printed to assist the printer in aligning multiple colours.

Release note

A document distributed with a software program to indicate changes or problems. Empirical studies show that the vast majority of people do not read release notes. If the information is important, it should available using a "Help - What's new" menu option.

Repetition rate

Percentage indicating the amount of terms or segments that are repeated within a text. The repetition rate is an important notion within CAT since it determines, in advance, the percentage of a text that will only need translating once. Greater phraseological and terminological consistency increases the repetition rate and thus the efficiency of the translation process.

Requirements Document

A written document describing what the customer wants. In theory the customer should be the main author of a requirements document. In practice, engineers frequently end up writing requirements documents because the customer is incapable of expressing their thoughts in a clear and concise manner. A requirements document should be signed off by the customer and the engineering team before work begins. Beginning a project without a requirements document is a recipe for disaster.

Resolution

Describes the output precision of computer peripherals such as screens, printers and scanners. For computer screens resolution is defined as the number of pixels that can be displayed such as 800 x 600 (the first value is the number of pixels on a line, and the second value is the number of lines). For other devices, DPI is commonly used to define resolution. For both measures of resolution, it is always the higher the better.

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.)

RGB Red, Green, Blue

An additive colour model used for screen display. RGB images need to be converted to CMYK for conventional subtractive colour printing.

Robohelp

A help authoring tool for Windows.

Rollover

Used to define the change occurring in certain elements of a web page when a visitor moves the mouse cursor over and out of those elements (e.g. on and off states of a button). Requires JavaScript.

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.

Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)

A W3C standard for vector graphics on the web. A viewer application can be downloaded from the Adobe web site.

SDK Software Development Kit

A collection of documentation and source code designed to aid the writing of programs that need to interface to an existing product.

Search Engine

A software application which queries an index file. In broader terms it refers to a collection of programs which are used to firstly "index" a web site and then present a user interface that allows queries to be constructed and searched.

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.

Server-Side

The server side of a client-server system. On the web, your browser is thought to be the client and a web server hosting a web site is thought to be the server (hence the name). When you request a document from a web server by entering an URL or clicking on a link, the server sends information to your client (in this case your browser) in the form of text, graphics or audio.

SGML

Standard Generalized Markup Language. It is called a metadata language and is used for defining markup languages.

Sim Ship

Simultaneous Shipment. Release of all localised versions and the original product at the same time.

Simultaneous interpreting

Oral translation of a speaker's words into another language while the speaker is speaking. The interpreter usually sits in a booth and uses audio equipment. (cf. consecutive interpreting)

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.

SME Subject Matter Expert

Someone who is considered an expert in their particular field.

Software localisation

see Localisation

Source

In translation, and as opposed to "target", the term "source" defines everything connected to the language of the text to be translated.

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.

Specialised terminology

The term used within the profession to define highly specific vocabulary within a given field. With today's increasing specialisation within professions and the rapid evolution of applied techniques, it is increasingly difficult to obtain dictionaries containing up to date, specialised terminology.

Spot colour

A colour produced by using an specially mixed ink rather than by printing CMYK colours. Spot colours are guaranteed to be consistent from one print job to another and are therefore used for important images such as company logos. The disadvantage of spot colours is the cost. Each spot colour requires a separate printing pass. A typical catalogue page is printed using CMYK with 2 spot colours.

SQL

Stands for Structured Query Language. Developed by IBM in 1970's, SQL is a simple yet extremely powerful database query language. A typical SQL statement looks something like this:

SELECT NAME, PHONE, POSITION FROM EMPLOYEES WHERE NAME='John' ORDER BY POSITION

Many database programs support SQL such as Microsoft SQL Server and MySQL.

SSH

Stands for Secure Shell. With SSH, you can log on to a remote server safely. Intended as a replacement for telnet which transmits data including user name and passwords unencrypted between local and remote hosts.

Standard line

A standard measure of the size of a text. The standard line length varies from country to country. In Germany , for example, it is usually 55 keystrokes, in Belgium 60. Translation projects are often priced on a per line basis.

Standard page

A standard measure of the size of a text, used esp. in the publishing industry and in literary translation. The standard page length may vary from country to country and depending on the sector, but is generally in the region of 1500 to 1800 keystrokes. Translation projects are sometimes priced on a per page basis, although - except in the case of literary translation - this practice is becoming less common, being replaced by the standard line.

Structured Document

A document with a structure that complies with a certain standard. A HTML document is an example of a structured document.

Style Sheet

A document that contains a list of formatting styles corresponding to paragraph styles or tag mark-up. In the context of web publishing, version 4 and later browsers support style sheets whereas version 3 browsers do not. FrameMaker+SGML produces version 4 HTML files and corresponding style sheets.

Syntax Highlighting

Syntax highlighting in action on a PHP program

A feature commonly found in many advanced text editors and integrated development environments (IDE) which makes it possible to automatically assign different colors to certain keywords, variables, or function names used in a computer program to make a programmer's life easier.

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 audience

The group of people that an interpreter addresses. Used mostly in connection with simultaneous interpreting. Sometimes used (incorrectly) in the sense of target readership

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.

Tariffs

Tariffs for translation vary widely, not only in terms of price but also as far as calculation methods are concerned. The English-speaking world calculates by word, whereas Switzerland usually applies a tariff per line. In some cases, the tariff is based on the source text and in others, invoicing is calculated on the target text. Quoting a tariff by line or by word alone is an advertising argument which should not inspire confidence, since this reveals nothing about either the services included or about the quality of the texts and the customer support, etc.

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.

Terminology analysis

Analysis of the vocabulary within a text or specific field, mainly carried out with a view to creating special dictionaries. An important process within pre-translation, it is also a means of providing a long term guarantee consistency and quality within texts (thanks to regular updates).

Terminology software

A data processing tool that makes it possible to create, edit and consult dictionaries or electronic dictionaries.

TermStar

Terminology program published by Star. A component of the Transit translation memory program, but also available as a separate product.

Text (TXT)

Data presented with alphanumeric characters, usually in the form of words, sentences, and paragraphs. Typically, the term text refers to pure text stored as ASCII codes (that is, without any formatting). Objects that are not text include graphics, numbers (if they're not stored as ASCII characters), and program code.

Text expansion

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

The problem of text expansion must be anticipated by the graphic artist wishing to use the same page format for both the source text and the translation.

This problem also arises when translating texts for software screen features, where the space reserved for a text is usually extremely limited (e.g. Print -> Imprimer).

Text function

The function served by a text, e.g. to sell a product, to provide instruction on the use of a product, to convey information about an event. It is important to specify the text function when commissioning a translation to so that the translator can choose an appropriate style and vocabulary.

Text type

Class of text (e.g. abstract, news report, light fiction, commentary) with specific characteristics of style, sentence formation, terminology, etc.

TIFF (TIF)

Tagged Image File Format. A loss-less graphics file format often used for archiving images. Web browsers cannot display TIF images.

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)

Topic file

In the context of WinHelp, a Word or RTF file containing topics in a format suitable for the WinHelp compiler.

Tracking

Positive or negative tracking values can be used to change spacing between characters

The space added to or subtracted from the normal space between characters in a block of text. Not to be confused with kerning, which is used to adjust space between pairs of specific characters.

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.

Transit

Translation memory program published by Star.

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.

K International plc.

K International plc.

Translation terminology - Part 2

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