Terminology, Style Guide and Translation Memory Consulting
As part of their activities, companies produce a wide variety of texts, ranging from general internal communication with employees to all kinds of marketing material and social media content to specifications, data sheets and technical documentation, apps, software and online help.
If texts are to be re-used, corporate communication has to follow rules to achieve terminological and formal consistency. I help companies collect and streamline their corporate terminology and define a style guide, which is a set of feasible rules intended to seamlessly integrate texts by different authors.
A translation memory system is essentially a database in which sentences translated by (human expert) translators are collected for reuse. This is particularly useful for updates of marketing brochures or technical manuals, when products – and thus large portions of the text – largely remain unchanged and only a few features are added.
Translation memory systems are very useful, saving time and money and improving the consistency and quality of translations. However, they follow the GIGO principle (garbage in, garbage out), meaning that their true benefits can only be exploited if they are maintained by experienced specialists. I help companies to figure out the right settings, workflows and preconditions to ensure they make the most of the valuable data that they generate every day.
