BIK Terminology

Solving the terminology puzzle, one posting at a time

How do I identify a term—confusability

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Let’s continue in our series of designators (remember, these are terms, appellations and symbols) to include in a terminology database. Today, we will focus on the question: Can this designator be confused with another? More specifically, is there a homograph that stands for a different concept?

Homographs—words that have the same spelling, but differ from one another in meaning, origin, and sometimes pronunciation—are probably the most frequent source of confusion. While we try not to use one term for multiple things, it cannot always be avoided; language is alive, meaning evolves, and even with the best prescriptive terminology management system, you might encounter homographs.

A good example is the term port. Port has many meanings as a word in general language and as a term in special languages. In the IT world, it can refer to at least a physical piece of hardware and a logical piece of software.

Theoretically, when there is the risk of “confusability,” the technical writer should be very specific, for instance, by using physical port or hardware port or even more specifically keyboard port. But even if the writer is precise in the first occurrence of the concept in the text, s/he may use the more generic or abbreviated form port in subsequent parts of the text or on the user interface. Because we never know what shows up in the translation environment first, though, it is good to alert a localizer to the fact that there are multiple meanings behind the term and include it in the terminology database.

So, if the answer to the question “is there a risk of confusability?” is yes, add the term and its homograph to the terminology database. While users of the database still need to identify the meaning in their context, at least they are alerted to the fact that there are two or more possible meanings.

Tomorrow, we will discuss selecting terms based on their degree of specialization.

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How do I identify a term—terminologization

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In What is a term? our focus was on how to define the scope of a terminology database and guide a team on what should and what shouldn’t be entered into a terminology database. It is good to have rough guidelines, but there is obviously more to the story of what a term is and what should be included in a terminology database.

If we are asked to go through a list of term candidates extracted by a term extraction tool or if we are selecting terms manually, we may not always be sure whether a certain term candidate should be included. Especially if you are not a subject matter expert or if you only speak one language, this is a difficult job. It is a little easier for translators, as they are used to analyzing texts very thoroughly. As an aside, this quality makes the translator a content publisher’s best friend, for translators find the mistakes, the inconsistencies or just the minor hitches of a text. And yet in the term selection process, we have to make decisions in split seconds. How do we make them? This and the next eight postings—one short post over the next eight days—will provide more in-depth guidance on why a term should be included in a terminology database.


Let’s start with terms that have gone through what is called “terminologization”—the process by which a general-language word or expression is transformed into a term designating a concept in a language for special purposes (LSP)(ISO 704). This Microsoft Language Portal Blog posting gives a variety of examples for animal names, e.g. mouse or worm, that became technical terms in the IT industry. We are often able to distinguish terms that have undergone terminologization when we distinguish them from other terms in the conceptual vicinity (see Juan Sager’s A Practical Course in Terminology), e.g. dedicated line vs. public line.

So, if we ask ourselves: Is it a word that became a term and is now used with a very specific meaning in technical language, and the answer is yes, let’s include it in the terminology database. Then there is no confusion about what we mean with it, because it is clearly defined, and its usage can be standardized across languages.

More on term selection and the criterion “confusability” next time.

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Abanyawoihwarrgahmarneganjginjeng

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Does this look like a cat ran across a keyboard to you? This is how speakers of the indigenous Australian language Bininj Gun-wok say “I cooked the wrong meat for them again,” according to an article from The New Scientist.  While these linguistic units do not represent a concept that would come up in a localization environment and Bininj Gun-wok is not one of the languages into which products are localized frequently, if at all, this example shows perfectly well that languages have different ways to represent concepts. And we better not force the system of one language onto another.

The good thing is we don’t have to. Translators work through the concept. That means, they understand what a term, word or expression (e.g. “I cooked the wrong meat for them again”) means in the source language and then find the target-language equivalent (e.g. abanyawoihwarrgahmarneganjginjeng). Believe me–it takes a lot of analysis by a genius translator to turn a phrase into a perfect one-word equivalent!

While there are patterns on how languages represent concepts (e.g. noun-noun, adjective noun), there is no rule that says what is an adjective-noun combination in one language must be an adjective-noun combination in another.

Localizers often try to create target terms that stick close to the source language pattern, so that they can repeat it when more new terms are created in the source language. That is not a bad idea, as long as they don’t take a shortcut and fail to examine what the concept behind the term is.

A few years ago, the Japanese team working on the localization of a Windows product suggested that ‘compliance report’ be renamed in English. The content publishing team provided background information, but the localizers insisted that it be changed in the English material, because “it was hard to translate into Japanese.” The writers wanted to be good citizens and changed it to ‘status report,’ as the Japanese native speakers had suggested. Not only do ‘compliance’ and ‘status’ not represent the same idea, ‘compliance report’ came up again in another related product. When that product team was asked to change it to ‘status report’, they refused. After all it was correct and clear English.

While it is good practice to provide feedback on neoterms (newly created technical terms) that are culture-laden (e.g. breadcrumb bar) or product names that are to remain in the source language (e.g. Windows Vista), here are the consequences of the above scenario:

If writers, editors, PMs, source terminologists and others working in the source language give in to such pressures from the loc team, they are creating a synonym for a term that worked perfectly well and represented a concept uniquely. Another team that needs to communicate about the same concept will not even thing about looking at a good term, much less changing it. And what if the new term that now works for Japanese doesn’t work for Turkish, French, Danish, Ukrainian…. Instead:

  • Avoid synonyms when you can.
  • Solicit feedback from other product teams before you change a term.
  • Be clear in the source language; customers and translators will understand what you meant.
  • Document terms and concepts in a centralized terminology database.

For localizers or target terminologists it is important to remember that the product will be released in the target language, whether a source term sounds good or not; in other words “…doesn’t work for my language” doesn’t exist. That doesn’t mean that source terminology is always perfect. But product teams who get sidetracked on non-issues might not listen the next time there is a real globalization problem. Instead:

  • Focus on understanding concepts and finding clear target-language equivalents.
  • Spend time giving feedback on real errors or globalization issues.
  • And when researching terms, don’t take a shortcut–you would never come up with the perfect abanyawoihwarrgahmarneganjginjeng!
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