Best Practices for Terminology Management in Companies

Workshop by Barbara Inge Karsch, BIK Terminology, and Kara Warburton, Termologic

Today, more and more companies are actively managing their terminology in order to improve their communications. Delivered by the former lead terminologists of Microsoft and IBM, this workshop will describe some of the practices for managing terminology that the presenters found to be particularly effective to address the unique demands and requirements of commercial environments. The existing body of knowledge about terminology management focuses on non-commercial purposes, such as for language planning and standards development. The prescriptive and normative approaches of these contexts are sometimes ill-suited to commercial production environments which are more driven by factors such as commercialization, globalization, return-on-investment and profit margins. The aim of the workshop is to raise awareness among terminologists that they may need to critically re-evaluate some of the traditional terminology theories and tenets when working for a company.

Date: June 19, 2012

Location: Madrid, Spain

For registration and other information see the website of TKE

Target audience: Practicing or aspiring terminologists; communications professionals (writers, translators, content managers, etc.)

Format: Presentations, exercises, demos, and open discussions.

Presenters

Kara Warburton

Kara Warburton holds a BA in Translation, an MA in Terminology, a B.Ed., and is currently completing a PhD in commercial terminology management. For 15 years she was the chief terminologist for IBM, where she spearheaded a global terminology management program to support both the authoring and translation divisions. In this capacity she led the development and implementation of a multilingual terminology database and a term extraction process. She has also taught university courses in terminology management and, since 2006, she has offered consultancy services and delivered training workshops through her company, Termologic. She is the International Chair of ISO TC 37, which is responsible for terminology standards.

Barbara Inge Karsch

Barbara Inge Karsch holds a BA and an MA in Translation and Interpretation. For 14 years, she worked as terminologist for English and German at J.D. Edwards and Microsoft. During that time she designed and implemented two large-scale terminology management systems, and trained or mentored hundreds of translators, international project managers, content publishers and terminologists. In 2010, she started BIK Terminology, her terminology consulting and training business. She teaches at New York University and the Lessius University College and is a US delegate to ISO TC 37. You can find her blog on terminology issues at www.bikterminology.com.