Gengo Glossaries
Simple and usable for anyone.
Gengo Glossaries are downloadable lists of industry-specific terms and their definitions, in multiple languages. They enable customers to maintain consistency across all of their translations and help translators deliver higher quality work in less time.
“Less, but better”
Gengo Glossaries simplify the translation process. Instead of an unwieldy exhaustive list, we use a handpicked selection of the top 100 terms.
How to use them
Gengo Glossaries are multi-purpose. Here are a couple of ways to use them:
Google Docs Spreadsheet
Upload a Gengo Glossary into Google Docs (spreadsheet), enable sharing, and link to it in the job comments section. Explain that translators can use the glossary to understand unfamiliar terms and save time searching for translations.
Gengo’s Term Glossary
Condense a Glossary into a highly specialized list of source and target language terms. Then, use Gengo’s Term Glossary tool to automatically insert these terms into translation jobs. For more information, read about our Term Glossary here.
glos•sa•ry
ˈgläsərē,ˈglô-/
“A glossary… is an alphabetical list of terms in a particular domain of knowledge with the definitions for those terms.”
“A bilingual glossary is a list of terms in one language defined in a second language or glossed by synonyms (or at least near-synonyms) in another language.”
Source: “Glossary.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 25 June 2013. Web. September 25 2013.
Glossary creation tips and traps
A glossary is an important and useful resource, if created correctly.
If you decide to create your own, here are some tips and common traps to avoid:
Homonyms
Gengo’s Term Glossary is one-to-one (one source language term to one target language term). If you choose to use this tool, make sure your list only includes source language terms with one meaning. Otherwise, you risk confusing your translator or causing mistranslations to occur.
Frequency vs importance
Many people incorrectly assume that ideal glossary terms are those that appear most often. In fact, the most useful glossaries are typically those that seek to clarify the meaning of ambiguous or specialized terms, or achieve consistent and accurate translation of specific brand language. Choose your words carefully.
Parts of speech
For the same reason it’s important to be careful with homonyms, it’s worth thinking about parts of speech. For example, there are many instances where the noun and the verb are the same in the source language (e.g., ‘access’ in English), but treated differently in the target language (e.g., ‘アクセス’ (noun) and ‘アクセスする’ (verb) in Japanese). Terms that can be written in both singular and plural form also deserve special consideration. If your text contains both, we recommend including both forms in your glossary.
Capitalization
As a general rule, we recommend using lowercase unless the term is a proper noun.
Homonyms
When you’re developing your glossary, keep the end user in mind. Highly technical definitions, for example, won’t be helpful if your translators don’t have specialized knowledge in that area.