Hi guys, like what has been discussed in “No more mistakes from substandard translations! 7 tips for getting quality translation services.”, to prevent term inconsistency and mistranslation and thereby improve translation quality, a translation glossary is an indispensable tool.
When it comes to creating a translation glossary, however, will the company’s translation responsible person find it hard to start with?
In this article, we have summarized some basic knowledge, methods, and rules about creating a translation glossary for you to understand the details in just five minutes!
A translation glossary facilitates translation effectively and improves translation quality. Translation responsible persons considering about creating a translation glossary must not miss this article!
What is a translation Glossary?

A translation glossary combines the relevant data of the source text, such as field-specific terms (jargons), abbreviations, and special terms designated by the customer. It also glosses such terms in the target language.
To technical documents or games that contain lots of technical terms, proper nouns, or jargons, to make the target text easier to read and correctly understood by readers, a translation glossary is the key.
Sometimes a term (morph) may contain more than one meaning. Take “apple” for example, besides a type of fruit, it also refers to the name of a large IT business.
While there are numerous mistranslation examples in the absence of a translation glossary, a translation glossary can effectively help prevent mistranslation and term inconsistency, and make the target text easier to read and improve translation quality as well.
3 benefits of creating a translation glossary
1. Improving translation quality
A translation glossary helps prevent the mistranslation of a term with multiple meanings, proper nouns, and technical terms and thereby improves translation quality.
In “Importance of game translation and 3 must-know points for project assignment: A TSP Reminder”, we have mentioned that poor translation quality also degrades the original work.
Hence, a translation glossary can help improve translation quality and thereby the corporate image.
2. Enhancing translation efficiency
In general, translators will translate with a dictionary and other lexical dictionaries.
In the absence of a translation glossary, translators will need to spend lots of time on looking up the background data of the source text, and more time will be needed for emerging industries and technology-related documents.
Hence, a translation glossary can help translators understand the source text faster and better and thereby enhance translation efficiency.
Additionally, larger translation projects are usually achieved by a group of translators. In this case, a translation glossary can help prevent term inconsistency, improve translation quality, and enhance translation efficiency.
3. Reducing costs
Besides shortening the time spending on the search, verification, and validation of data and saving time from term corrections to enhance translation efficiency, a translation glossary can significantly shorten the time for communication between the client and translation service provider (TSP) and thereby reduce costs. After all, time is money!
To the client, the 3 benefits of a translation glossary are: improving translation quality, enhancing translation efficiency, and reducing costs.
2 foci for creating a translation glossary
1. Selecting glossary terms
When creating a translation glossary, it is necessary to first refer to the translation glossaries already used or the translations in the industry so as to select the key glossary terms. Two things must be avoided term selection: avoid focusing on terms with a higher frequency of use and avoid verbs.
Although clients may find terms with a lower frequency of use or jargons used within the company a common knowledge, translators may still need to look them up from different sources. Hence, it is always important to select as many terms as possible in the translation glossary.
Additionally, avoid verbs in the translation glossary. If verbs are standardized, the target text may become unnatural to lower the translation quality. For example, the English verb “run” can mean moving quickly with legs or managing a business.
Despite the benefits, there are also considerations when creating a translation glossary so as not to limit the flexibility of translating.
2. Elaborating context
It is always important to define the usage and context for terms with multiple meanings.
For example, in fintech software manuals, the term “default” may refer to a “specified value”, the “initial settings”, or the “failure to repay a debt”.
The following examples show how a translation glossary looks like.
English | Traditional Chinese |
Definitions and Supplementations |
apple | 蘋果 | It is a type of fruit. When it comes smartphones, it usually refers to Apple Inc. |
orange | 橘子 | It is a type of fruit. When comes to colors, it is a color between yellow and red. |
A translation glossary containing context in the source text like this facilitates translators to proceed with translation. Particularly, this can help term standardization in team translation.
Additionally, after creating a translation glossary, it is necessary to avoid repetition of the same glossary term. MS Excel is recommended for checking and verifying if there is repetition in the completed translation glossary.
Monolingual glossary and multilingual glossary
A monolingual glossary is a list of technical terms explained in one language to facilitate the understanding of the source text.
When a multilingual translation service is required, we can expand an established monolingual glossary into a multilingual glossary to make it easier to maintain and make cross reference to different languages.
Microsoft Language Portal also provides a terminology search service. It uses the Term Base eXchange (TBX) format tailored for glossary data. TBX supports glossary import into computer-assisted translation (CAT).
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In this article, we have shared with you the basics of and methods to create a translation glossary. We hope that such information can help you create your own translation glossary.
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