translation process. During the translation process, these modules highlight
the terms occurring in the active
sentence.
Sure, there are differences of performance among these programs. On
the one hand, the success ratio for the
monolingual and multilingual terminology extraction varies (different degrees
of “noise” and “silence”). Especially with
regard to multilingual extraction, most
of the results are not so impressive. The
best results come from tools that combine linguistic analysis and statistical
methods, and they are rather expensive.
The ability of these programs to recognize different word forms is limited to
some common languages, though.
The LISA organization ( www.lisa.org)
recommends the XML-based TBX format
for the exchange of glossaries. This format is supported by the main providers
of TM technologies.
Many more or less well-known terminology programs are on the market.
Some of them are listed in Table 1.
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What are the costs
of terminology work?
Costs are incurred during several
phases of terminology work: extraction
of the source language terms; translation;
collection of additional data depending
on the glossary structure; and administration and maintenance.
Experienced users with good reference
material can seize approximately 25 to
35 pairs of terms (source language/target
language) per hour. These are average
values. A translator can also spend 20
minutes or more on an internet research
and would be in that case probably better off doing something else.
Thus, the time spent on average to enter
a pair of words in the dictionary is a first
basis for the cost calculation. If additional
information needs to be entered (source,
definition, example and so on), the costs
would increase accordingly.
While translation prices are relatively
well defined in the translation industry,
there are no generally accepted rules for
the pricing of terminology. Some have a
standard price per pair of terms, some pay
a mark-up on the standard word price,
and some invoice their terminology work
on an hourly basis or get paid nothing at
all for terminology work. It is sometimes
a question of negotiating power.
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Summary
One thing is certain. An efficient terminology management offers only advantages to all involved — translator, TSP and
customer. Thus, it would be a big step forward to have all involved sit together and
discuss ways to reduce their own efforts and
improve the overall terminology quality by
cooperating together towards a shared terminology database. It is, for example, not
necessary to extract the source language
terms for each target language anew. At
the same time the translator can give useful feedback to spot unwanted synonyms
or misleading denominations. Redundant
work can be avoided that way, and all participants will get faster and more economically where they want to be. M
