Work-related terminology and company glossary – already under control?

Are you constantly looking for the correct word when you tell a new acquaintance about your job or about your company’s operations? Is it difficult for you to manage the terms and the jargon used in your own industry? Would it be necessary to make the vocabulary of your company consistent?

In addition to translation and revision services, Lingo Languages Oy also offers glossary creation for its clients. What does this mean?

Glossary creation means familiarising ourselves with the terms used by clients in their business operations and with the special terminology used in the industry. It also means creating and managing glossaries. During translations, we discuss suitable terms with the client, utilise translation memory software to make terms consistent and to manage them and create mono-, bi- or multilingual term banks in various file formats. Additionally, we create style guides for companies’ written communications.

It pays off to begin managed glossary work before the terminology used in the workplace becomes so complex that customers and even employees have difficulties understanding what everyone else is talking about. Usually, this is when a company will also start receiving questions and feedback from customers. Something is not understood.

Glossaries help to retain a company’s key terms in one central location where they remain consistent and available to every employee, if needed. It is also easy to update and change terms because language changes constantly and new terms are needed as products and services are developed and as business operations evolve.

The benefits of glossaries

Quality aspects

• The company’s vocabulary becomes consistent
• The same terms are used for the same things throughout the company
• The existing glossary can be utilised in product development
• Safety
• Staff turnover will not cause the terms to change into something else
• Translating and localising products and the company’s general communication becomes easier for foreign markets
• It is easier to seek new markets with the help of consistent terminology.

Cost benefits

• Glossaries make searching for and finding information easier.
• Consistent terms make it easier to manage glossaries and they make the use of words more uniform
• Glossaries make editing faster as texts are produced for various target groups and markets
• Consistent glossaries also contribute to a positive image of products and the company itself in all of the company’s communication efforts.
• The company’s employees will not waste their time looking for the same term.

First, an analysis (the extent and the contents of the glossary),
then the creation of a term bank!

We would love to tell you more about the benefits of glossary creation.