Life science is one of the most arduous specializations in translation for its vital implications. Medical equipment is highly regulated and medical translation requires the utmost care during all phases of the workflow, especially for terminology management.
The three questions you should ask to approach the topic of terminology and ROI: 1) Is it really necessary to do terminology work before starting a translation project? 2) How much time and money should I allocate? 3) How can I reckon whether it is going to be profitable?
There is no need to start from scratch to harvest terminology: You can start with your translation memories. As a matter of fact, a translation memory (TM) is a trove of valuable terminology that can be mined either manually or semi-automatically. With small TMs, you can browse the segments and select the terms you need using the concordance function. With larger TMs, you may want to work in semi-automatic mode and take advantage of various open-source/free term mining programs.
We don’t give the internet enough credit for all that it does for us. From fake news, to unreliable shoddy sources, the World Wide Web has opened up a veritable labyrinth of sources, and it can be hard to know which to trust. The quest to find terminological sources can be equally fraught. How can you possibly know which are reliable and which aren’t? First, you must know what makes a source reliable and then develop a checklist to help you pick the right terminology sources.
Sign up for my monthly
#SmartReads on the Translation Industry
Your email is safe with me and I will never share it with anyone.
©2023 Isabella Massardo | Italian Translator, Trainer & Web-writer
