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Meeting Translators’ Terminological Needs

By

Maryam Mohammadi

1. Introduction

In the era of technology, when economy and politics can change conditions drastically in

a matter of seconds, translation, as a means of mediation that helps the development of

communication among nations, is influenced by the increasing expectations of end-users

including politicians, companies, and international bodies. As a result, speed and quality have

stood out as desirable features of a good translation (process and product respectively) in this age

of intense time-to-market pressures. Since the 1960s, numerous technology tools with various

goals have been introduced into translators’ workbenches, among which are terminology tools.

Various terminology tools came up as a response to the diverse needs of translators. It is

labor-intensive and time-consuming for translators to do research and compile data for each

translation project, while with the available tools they are able to increase their efficiency in the

storage, retrieval, and updating of term records (Bowker, 2003).

Consistency is an important feature that is focused on in specialized texts, and the

introduction of terminology databases (TDB) has contributed to the consistency of terms

throughout those texts, although some researchers believe that consistency is not always

desirable (Rogers, 2008). By the same token, it is often asserted that some companies avoid

using the terms applied by their competitors1. However, translators are able to use terms

consistently in a positive sense with a close attention to the textuality (to see whether they should

1 This has been said based on the author’s previous studies. She failed to find the exact reference of this idea.

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be consistent in using terms or not) rather than single segments in the process of translation

(Rogers, 2008), and they develop or receive an exclusive termbase for specific clients.

Another reason why terminology tools play an important role in translators’ jobs is that

effective terminology management can reduce the costs and turn-around times for translation

(Bowker, 2003).

Recently the advent of massive online collaboration in various stages of translation

process has helped translators to overcome some obstacles that they faced before by finding

solutions for translation problems in collaboration with other peers. This increases the speed and

quality of translation and decreases the amount of effort in compiling necessary data.

Throughout the study various terminology tools are introduced which can be classified

under two major groups: A term bank and termbase. Therefore, before embarking on the needs

of various users of TDBs, it will be useful to take a look at the differences between these two

terms which at times, might be confused. According to Allard (2012), a term bank is an

enormous termbase addressing a wide range of heterogeneous audience encompassing

companies, language learners, or even the general public. It is usually administered by major

companies and governmental agencies. Some examples of term banks are TERMIUM®, Le

Grand Dictionnaire Terminologique (GDT), InterActive Terminology for Europe (IATE), the

United Nations’ Multilingual Terminology Database (UNTerm).

She also defines a termbase as “an electronic collection of structured term entries in the

form of individual or client-server databases of a relatively smaller size and with a more limited

audience than a term bank” (Allard, 2012, p. 16). It can be said that a term bank is a large

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termbase, but to be more precise in our study, they are preferred to be distinguished based on the

Allard’s definitions.

In the present paper, various users of TDBs will be introduced in section 2. Then, in

section 3, the needs of the most important users whose jobs are tied to translation proper will be

touched upon from the viewpoints of different researchers. Also, section 4 will present some

general advantages of collaborative terminology (a fledgling mode of terminology management

which in many language specialists’ opinion can solve some challenges in terminology

management) for translators in meeting their needs, and finally, a conclusion will be made based

on the previous studies, and more questions will be raised for further research.

2. Various users of TDBs

According to Zauberga (2005, p.107), “Without terminology there is no professional

communication and without professional communication there is no transfer of knowledge”. The

goal of terminology is to meet social and academic needs of the specialists, professionals, and

the general public interested in specialized fields for various reasons. Sager (1990) points out

that there are diverse groups of end-users with their specific purposes and needs that must be

taken into account before developing any TDB. He focused on human beings as the users of

TDBs; however, the author of the present paper has added two other categories to the following

classification, including non-human users. This is because of the considerable development of

technology and introducing new tools to translators’ workstations since 1990 when Sager

presented his classification:

1. Subject specialists who are expected to have mastery over the terminology they apply and

even sometimes create new terms. They use TDBs to check the meaning and spelling of

an unknown term in their own or a foreign language and verify the existence of a term.

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2. Professional communication mediators, composed of technical writers, information

brokers, journalists as monolingual end-users, interpreters, and translators, post-editors

(added by the author) are the largest group of users, and their use of TDBs is contingent

upon the need to produce specialized texts rather than comprehension.

3. Lexicographers and terminologists who compile available data about terms.

4. Information and documentation specialists, including librarians, indexers, and the like,

who use term banks to identify and describe specialized documents based on a reliable

resource.

5. Language planners whose jobs, whether developing a national language or standardizing

terms in a special subject area, are dependent on terminology.

6. Publishers, language teachers, applied linguistic researchers whose requirements are not

the same but can be fulfilled with appropriate terminology tools.

7. General users including insurance agents, manufacturers, parliamentarians visiting a

foreign county, and customs officials who have diverse purposes and needs in using

terminology tools.

8. Machine translation systems (added by the author)

Since the objective of the present paper is to take a look at translators’ specific needs

regarding terminology, it is worthwhile to touch upon some mediators’ approaches to

terminology:

Translators and interpreters (professional communication mediators) don’t have linguistic

interests as much as terminologists, and their main goal is helping the flow of knowledge and

communication among people. They use different resources and terms based on the text type,

audience, and skopos to produce a text that is appropriate for a specific context (Zauberga, 2005).

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As Sager (1990, p. 197) states, “their use of reference tools is more conditioned by the need to

produce specialized texts and less by the need for comprehension”.

However, translators and interpreters are terminology creators as well, who have been

considerably influential in the development of terminology. At times, it happens to translators

that they don’t find an equivalent term in specialized dictionaries and data banks; consequently,

they create their own terminology mostly by an automatic transfer (e.g. transcription, semi-

calque, and calque) which is different from terminologists’ methods who believe in semantic

transformation and native original coinages, especially in small languages (Zauberga, 2005).

On the other hand, interpreters’ choice of terminology is based on the context and what

their clients require. If there is a discrepancy between the terminology provided by

terminologists and that of experts, interpreters opt for that of experts because experts are one of

the user groups of interpreting services. Therefore, it can be claimed interpreters’ choice is

dynamic and cannot be predicted, unless the context and the audience are pre-determined (ibid).

Different approaches adopted by translators, interpreters, and terminologists indicate an

inevitable dissimilarity between their goals, strategies, needs, skills, and the like in terminology.

Translators and interpreters are not only the creators of new terms in a language but also two

significant groups of end-users of the terminology products. Thus, studying their specific needs

during translation projects will contribute to the development of terminology tools that increase

their productivity as well as the quality of their output.

Here, it will be beneficial if the following questions are addressed in the following

sections: why are the needs of translators, interpreters, and other communication mediators

different from other user groups? What are the specific needs of communication mediators?

What factors influence those needs? How much have these needs been taken into account to

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develop terminology tools? Does collaborative terminology contribute to translation-oriented

terminology?

3. Users’ needs

In the present section, some types of communication mediators including translators,

interpreters, post-editors, and machine translation (MT) systems have been contextualized in

their actual work conditions and then their challenges and needs have been investigated, with a

more detailed description of translators’ needs which are the principal focus of the present paper.

3.1.Interpreters and terminology

Interpretation has often been equated with translation when it comes to terminology

management. Although first studies and contributions were made on the issue of interpretation

and terminology in the late 1980s by Daniel Gile (1985-1987), the subject almost sank into

oblivion until the early 21 century. In 1992, Moser-Mercer conducted a survey among the

interpreters of International Association of Conference Interpreters (AIIC) to obtain their ideas

about interpreters’ terminological needs. Based on the results, she compared the available

terminology databank2 software packages on the market at that time. She highlighted two

packages (Term-PC and Multiterm) as the most interpretation-oriented databanks. Some of their

main features were as follows:

The ability to work with at least three languages per glossary

The latitude to define the structure of entries

2 Due to the variety of references in this paper, diverse terms (such as terminology databank (TDB), terminology

database (TDB), personal terminology management system (PTMS), and termbase) are seen throughout the texts

referring to the concepts that may not be discriminated by readers. It will be beneficial if a precise distinction is

made between these concepts in the future research. In the present paper, TDB only refers to terminology databases.

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The quick retrieval of entries from any language via three options: full entry, short stroke,

or keyword

Convertibility of the terminology import or export

Rodríguez and Schnell (2009) touched upon two surveys conducted recently at Bologna

University and Sprachen and Dolmetscher Institute (SDI) in Munich. The results of the surveys

whose focus was on the use of computer and terminology management tools in the interpreters’

booth indicate that first, many interpreters still use traditional tools (such as hard-copy glossaries

with personal notes and standard reference works) in lieu of technological ones. There are three

reasons why interpreters were not inclined toward the use of technology in their work: 1. there

was no need for them, 2. the available tools on the market were deficient, and 3. they didn’t have

enough knowledge of those tools. Second, most interpreters were reluctant to know or use

innovations and terminology management programs available to them. Finally, despite the

existence of corpus analysis tools, they insisted on extracting terms manually.

3.1.1. Comparing interpreters’ and translators’ terminology needs and preferences

According to Rodríguez and Schnell (2009), in interpretation, the transmission of

meaning and clear and expressive speech take primacy over accuracy of terminology, which is a

priority in translation. The transitory character of interpreted discourse downgrades the usage of

standardized terminology. Conceptual content is what people pursue while attending an

information-intensive conference, and interpreters have more leeway to apply neologisms,

foreign words, borrowings, and occupational jargon.

Another paramount factor is the rapidity of information transfer at conferences, which

makes interpreters search unknown terms, difficult-to-recall terms, abbreviated forms, and

proper names (Rodríguez and Schnell, 2009).

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Some fields in interpreters’ terminological records are the same as those of translators

such as terms in a source language and their equivalents in a target language, definitions, and

illustrations. Nonetheless, some elements, arising out of the methods interpreters use to solve

their terminology problems, are different from those of translators. The elements in interpreters’

term records include hyperonyms, synonyms, abbreviated forms, proper names, names of

products, pronunciations, phraseology units, and verb-noun collocations. Furthermore, the visual

format of the record should be helpful to interpreters in locating information quickly. Also,

terminology records should be highly customizable in formats, colors, fonts, character sizes, and

box sizes (ibid).

Interpreters prefer to have multilingual mini-databases whose language direction can be

reversed instead of macro-databases. Additionally, the dominant onomasiological principle of

terminology (seen even in contemporary terminography) should be avoided because interpreters

incur much cognitive effort which hampers a fast interpretation process. Accordingly, the

semasiological principle is the preferred one in terminology for interpreters (ibid).

Generally, Rodríguez and Schnell (2009, p.21) accentuate five factors in developing

databases for interpreters that should be distinguished from databases for translators:

Speed of consultation

Intuitive navigation

Possibility of updating the terminology record in the interpretation booth

Considerable freedom to define the basic structure

Multiple ways of filtering data

3.1.2. Proposing guidelines for developing terminology tools

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According to Rodríguez and Schnell (2009), most terminological methodologies suit

translators’ requirements3, and there is an absolute need for more studies regarding interpreters’

particular needs in order to develop terminology tools altered specifically for interpreters.

Moser-Mercer (1992) assumes that to achieve this end, computer-literate interpreters should

program terminology management tools4.

Bilgen (2010) conducted a survey among conference interpreters at the University of

Ottawa based on which he proposed some guidelines for developing terminology tools for

interpreters: 1. The organization and structure of term records should be adjustable in any

situation when users need to change the language direction or select the languages they want to

work with. 2. It should be possible to specify and retrieve term types, such as acronyms and

official titles in a subject field. 3. The most important information types that are mostly consulted

by interpreters should be integrated as a sample template to the terminology tools to give

interpreters an idea of a basic term record structure, but it should be adjustable at the same time.

4. Diverse input, display, and output formats should be available in order to give some options

to interpreters for selecting the one that better suits their needs before, during, and after a

conference. 5. Due to the significance of time during an interpretation job, an efficient and fast

searching function in a terminological tool should be provided to interpreters. 6. Terminology

tools should be easy to learn and use and have a reasonable price in order not to be a financial

burden for interpreters.

3.2.MT systems and terminology

3 It is true if translation is juxtaposed with interpretation; otherwise, terminology for translation purposes (that suits

translators’ needs) has not been paid enough attention in terminology theoretical literature as well as terminography. 4 In my opinion, this statement had better be revised, since the number of interpreters with the knowledge of

computer programing is very limited (if any). It would be better to call for more cooperation between terminologists,

computer programmers, and interpreters in lieu.

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Bowker (2003) asserts that when term banks and termbases are studied, usually

human translators are considered as their end-users while MT systems are another type of

users requiring terminological information. Their needs are different from those of human

translators, and she briefly pointed out the important ones.

Creating term records, translators may opt for a few pieces of information that are

useful to them; for example, a foreign language equivalent, a definition, and a context. On

the other hand, additional information such as grammatical features may not be required, if a

translator is acquainted enough with the grammar of a particular language. On the contrary,

machines are not as intelligent as human beings and are not able to figure out definitions,

contextual uses, grammatical features, parts of speech, genders, and numbers if these data are

not explicitly recorded in machine-readable terminological resources. She also considers

other types of information crucial to produce translations with a higher quality:

morphological data particularly for irregular plural formations, verb conjugations, specialized

information such as sub-categorization features, semantic features, selectional restrictions,

valency information, and case frames.

3.3.Post-editors and terminology

Globalization and localization have brought about a new role for translators called

post-editing. The quantity of the text to be translated and the time pressure have made the use

of MT inevitable. Therefore, a new group (called post-editors), whose workflow and

terminological needs are different from translators, works on the output of MTs.

According to Allen (2003), the types and levels of MT post-editing depend on various

factors including:

The user/client, the volume of documentation expected to be processed, the

expectation with regard to the level of quality for reading the final draft of the translated

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product, the translation turn-around time, the use of document with regard to the life

expectancy and perishability of the information, and the use of the final text in the range from

information gisting to publishable information.

Allen (2003, p.301)

Not many studies have been done on post-editors’ needs and training, albeit post-editors

are gradually replacing translators5. There are two major approaches to post-editing: inbound and

outbound translation approaches. The former includes MT with no post-editing and rapid post-

editing, and the latter includes MT with no post-editing, minimal post-editing, and full post-

editing (Allen, 2003). Each type has its own distinctive characteristics; accordingly,

terminological resources used for each type should be customized to their goals and

requirements. To the best of my knowledge, no study has been made regarding the best

terminological approach and term record structure for post-editors6. This is something that is

undoubtedly worth studying due to the increasing number of post-editors in the world.

3.4. Translators and terminology

Lynne Bowker in her article entitled Off the record and on the fly: Examining the

impact of corpora on terminographic practice in the context of translation, published in

(2011), explains in detail the effect of electronic corpora on the approaches and the ways

translators obtain knowledge about terms. She takes a chronological look at the tools

available to translators and terminologist to provide a term record. Here, a condensed history

of the development of terminology with the advent of technology has been provided.

Term banks are one of the earliest terminological resources available to a wide range

of users compiled by terminologists, such as Eurodicautom (1963), Le Grand Dictionnaire

5 This is based on the authors’ personal viewpoint regarding the market demands and the development of

technology. 6 Perhaps some studies have been done in this respect, but based on my research which has been done in a limited

time frame for this paper, no study has been done yet or at least I couldn’t find any.

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Terminologique (1969), and TERMIUM® (1974). Despite providing invaluable information

to their users, they cannot meet translators’ needs successfully, and translators have to use

them as a supplementary terminological resource to other available tools7 (Bowker, 2011).

The available information about a term in a term record is usually abridged to the

following fields: domain, entry terms, grammatical information, synonyms, definition,

context, observations, usage information, and sources. However, the above fields are not the

only ones that a translator deals with during his/her translation (ibid).

Bowker (2011) continues to spell out the reasons why limited information was

provided in term records in the past. First, early computers had a limited size of storage

capacity; second, computers didn’t automatize the full terminography process. Data still was

collected and analyzed manually, although it was both time-consuming and labor-intensive;

finally, because terminologists’ aim was to reduce the amount of terminological research by

users, they tried to provide quick information about terms, even if those answers didn’t meet

their needs completely.

Since introducing corpora to different fields, including terminology and a huge

expansion of computer storage capacities, a noticeable development of the information

provided by term banks has been expected to be seen. However, there are limitations in

providing contextual and collocational usage that are crucial for translators. Bowker (2011)

believes that corpus-based approaches have had an incontrovertible positive impact on the

terminological research process in the field of terminology but not much on the product yet.

That being said, translators have to incur lots of arduous and time-consuming

research in terms of terminology which is not pleasant when they are already under the time

7 In my opinion, it is quite normal and shouldn’t be considered as a drawback of these term banks. Since a wide

range of users is envisaged for term banks, they aren’t able to satisfy everybody completely. They may be

considered as a help and not a solution to translators’ terminological challenges.

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pressure by their clients. Now that the phenomenon of simultaneous shipment or “simship” is

prevalent in the era of globalization, translators have the paramount responsibility of handing

over translated texts on time and don’t have much time to invest on terminology. Either the

productivity should be sacrificed at the cost of terminology work, or vice versa. Bowker

(2011) implicitly believes that translators have to do ad-hoc research and compile the

required data in personal terminology management systems (PTMS).

Early PTMS, which operated as standalone tools, had a rigid predefined template

structure for term records. Gradually, they became more flexible and gave more latitude to

translators to define term records’ structures in the way they prefer. Corpora make it possible

for translators to provide extra fields such as collocation information and the description of

paradigmatic and syntagmatic relationships between terms.

3.4.1. The effect of technology on translators’ terminological practice

According to Bowker (2011), as PTMSs are integrated to translation environment

tools (TEnTs), such as MultiTrans and SDL Trados, translators do terminological research in

a distinct way:

1. Terminologists record term entries in their canonical forms; however, words don’t

always appear in their canonical form and they become more confusing when

there are various verb conjugations, gender issues, and the like in different

languages. Therefore, translators may include non-canonical forms of terms in

their term records.

2. In spite of the huge potential of termbases to include diverse types of information,

bilingual glossaries, containing only the source term and the target term, are

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getting popular in localization industry because of the time pressure existing

there.

3. Unlike translators, terminologists emphasize using original language documents

for making multilingual termbases because translated text are not trustworthy

enough and contain terminological errors, non-idiomatic expressions, and

awkward syntactic structures.

4. Contrary to terminologists, translators may include non-terms on term records to

facilitate the retrieval of information about the frequently repeated chunks.

5. Like interpreters, translators also apply the semasiological approach in their

terminological work.

3.4.2. Translators’ terminology needs

Although Allard (2012, p. 218) believes that “there is rarely a one-size-fits-all solution

for anything”, it is possible to find some needs shared by most translators beforehand and then

create TDBs that suit as much as possible their requirements in order to reduce the amount of

workload from translators’ shoulders. Even those clients who provide TDBs to translators for

their personal projects can adjust them to translators’ needs in order to expedite their own work.

Sager (1990, p. 201) presents graduated information in term records for translators and

other communication mediators as follows:

Term + TL equivalent

+ definition

+ context or usage note (if available)

+ quality indicator

+ synonym

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+ source

+ subject specification/label or scope note (if available)

The above classification is not well-developed and no clear evidence has been presented

as the actual reason why information should be structured in this way. Durán-Muñoz (2010), in a

survey conducted among professional translators (which are called translators in this paper),

investigated their actual methods and needs regarding terminological challenges that they may

encounter during translation, and how they use ready-made resources (paper-based or

electronic). She bemoans that most surveys have been conducted among foreign language

students and translation students, while the purpose of her survey is to study the working

condition of professional translators. Her survey generally encompasses a range of

terminological resources available to translators. Since our focus is TDBs, the obtained results

will be contextualized in the case of TDBs and their structures. Translators’ preferences can be

divided into two groups:

1. Macrostructural preferences8

This is usually different in various terminological resources and their

mode of availability (e.g. dictionaries, term banks, glossaries, etc.). However, a

general idea of translators’ preferences can be presented as follows9:

a. Translators prefer online resources over electronic- and paper-based resources

(Durán-Muñoz, 2010).

b. Translators prefer bilingual resources to monolingual ones in a target language

and then monolingual ones in a source language and finally multilingual

8 Durán-Muñoz has not used the term “macrostructure” in her paper. However, the author used this term as a

complement to microstructure used by Durán-Muñoz in order to organize the ideas. 9 Although terminological resources are not the same regarding the types of information they provide and the way

they are accessed, some general preferences of translators have been mentioned here to act as a springboard for

further research regarding TDBs.

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resources, because they believe multilingual resources have a lower quality

(Durán-Muñoz, 2010).

c. Translators prefer using the following resources in order respectively: 1.

Bilingual specialized dictionaries/glossaries; 2. Search engines (such as

Google); 3. TDBs; 4. Monolingual specialized dictionaries (in the original

language); 5. Wikipedia; 6. Monolingual specialized dictionaries (in the target

language); and 6. Parallel corpora (Durán-Muñoz, 2010).

d. Translators prefer their terminological resources to have 1. The capability of

importing and exporting in different formats; 2. More information regarding

usage and tricky translations (such as old usage, false friends, specific usage

in domain or region, and the like); 3. Links to other resources that may expand

the amount of information provided; 4. Improved search options; 5. Examples

from real texts (Durán-Muñoz, 2010).

2. Microstructural preferences

Durán-Muñoz (2010) asked professional translators to classify the ISO fields (ISO

12620:1999) in three categories: essential, desirable, and irrelevant data. She classified

translators’ preferences in table 1.

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Table 1. Translators' preferences regarding microstructure (Durán-Muñoz, 2010)

She claims that available terminological resources not only don’t fulfill the requirements

of translators but also don’t have a good quality or enough reliability. They have been mostly

created to help the de-codification of the message (understanding the original message) rather

than message codification10

or rewriting which, according to Durán-Muñoz (2010) and Bowker

(2011), is the main concern of translators.

3.4.3. The efficient use of technology by translators

Allard (2012), in her Ph.D. dissertation entitled Managing terminology for translation

using translation environment tools: towards a definition of best practices, surpasses the

boundary of traditional terminological rules in the translation realm by taking into account the

actual workstation of translators who nowadays work mostly with TEnTs and integrated

10

According to different translation theories, this phase of translation is better to be called “re-codification”, since

the massage has been codified once by the original author and will be re-codified by the translator.

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termbases. She conducted some surveys among translators and proposed new guidelines for

translators to avail themselves of integrated termbases in the best way for translation purposes.

The proposed guidelines are as follows:

1. The purpose of creating a termbase should be determined at the outset in order to be

adjusted to the users’ needs.

2. The terminology management system (TMS) should be selected based on the purpose of

a termbase and the end-users in order to have an enough control over the termbase. The

purpose, design, and term record template should be determined before choosing a TMS.

3. The chosen TMS should be fully mastered. All functionalities (simple to advanced)

should be known by users in order to manage and maintain termbases in the best possible

way.

4. As long as the TMS provides the possibility of customized administrative fields,

terminology information should be centralized.

5. Before creating an integrated termbase, some basic term record structure, content

selections and recording guidelines should be established in order to systematize

information recording and retrieval.

6. The number of fields appearing in a term record should be selected precisely according to

particularities of a translation project. Translators don’t need to have a lot of fields in

their term records as terminologists do.

7. Adopting the TBX-basic structure is recommended when creating a term record structure,

unless a specific field needs to be added; because applying a TBX-compliant structure

facilitates the exchange of termbases among TEnTs.

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8. Domains, clients, and projects should be the criteria based on which termbases are

classified with TMSs.

9. Enough information should be stored in term records in order to be reused in future

projects without the need of doing further research.

10. Units other than terms11

that occur frequently in texts should be recorded as well in order

to facilitate and expedite the translation process.

11. The approach for recording synonyms is contingent upon the translation methods used in

TEnTs: a. in interactive translation, all synonyms should be recorded as terms on the

same record; and b. in pre-translation, all terms should be recorded as a single term in a

record.

12. This is recommended to record the most frequent form(s) of a unit in addition to its base

form12

. It helps the system to increase the number of exact matches.

13. Translated texts should be used for extracting and locating terms. Translation memories

(TM) are considered as invaluable resources in this respect.

14. Regular maintenance of termbases should not be ignored.

4. Collaborative terminology and its consequences for translators

According to Désilets (2007) “Wikipedia and other massive online collaboration sites

will shake the world of content creation to its very foundation”. It heralds a new powerful

paradigm for producing content in future. Normally, this applies to translation tools as well as

TDBs.

TDBs play a paramount role in translators’ work and TMs and MTs have failed to replace

them (Désilets et al. 2009). Désilets et al. (2009) believe that the introduction of collaboration to

11

These are the same as non-terms in Bowker (2011). 12

“Base form” is the same as “canonical form” which has been used by Bowker (2011) in section 3.4.1.

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the creation of TDBs has eliminated some of their drawbacks, at least for translators. They

developed new software called Tiki-CMT which is composed of the features of both traditional

TDBs and collaborative multilingual terminology (CMT). While describing various features of

their innovation, they enumerate some of the contributions and improvements made into TDBs

through collaboration:

1. It is costly to create and maintain TDBs, and this disadvantage can be removed by the

division of labor across a larger and diverse group of contributors.

2. The Wiki way of creating content can be applied inside corporations (Intranet Wikis) or

among corporations and their customers (Extranet Wikis). This is a good opportunity to

implement it in different community sizes, levels of openness and expert participation.

3. It facilitates the collaboration among terminologists and translators. This is a good way to

use the knowledge of terminologists for translation purposes.

4. Various terminological discussions can happen among contributors in CMTs in order to

boost the quality of content with a regular watch and maintenance.

5. Translators can ask their peers about terminological challenges when they cannot find

any answer to their questions in a TDB.

Like any other novel innovation, collaborative terminology is not void of disadvantages

for translators; however, a constant improvement can be made by further research. Some

instances of collaboratively generated terminological resources are Wiktionary, Urban

Dictionary, Tiki-CTM, Kudoz, and OmegaWiki. Désilets et al. (2009) have touched on the

drawbacks of Kudoz, and OmegaWiki, (some of them are general language resources and not

strictly terminological) and how they have tackled those challenges with the developing of Tiki-

CMT. This can continue by further research in future.

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5. Conclusion

In the present paper, a synopsis of the previous studies regarding terminological needs of

the different users of TDBs was presented (with a specific focus on translators’ needs). On the

whole, they indicate that the type of users and the context of their work have an indisputable

effect on their needs. Equally important, a single of type of users has different needs based on

their status in a project; for example, conference interpreters expect distinct qualities from their

TDBs before, during, and after a conference.

What has not been paid attention in previous studies is that with the passage of time,

technology brings about new qualities to translators’ jobs, and the word “translator” cannot refer

to a generalized term referring to a particular worker anymore. What appeals to me in this

respect, is the contribution of TEnTs to the increase of the variety of the needs of translators.

Based on the type of approach that a translator has in his/her work with TEnTs (i.e. interactive

and pre-translation), s/he has diverse needs because of the type of texts s/he deals with (a unified

monolingual or hybrid bilingual text respectively) and also the expectations of a client regarding

the deadline, quality, and cost. That is why I came up with the following questions:

What are the different types of translators working with TEnTs?

What are the terminological needs of each type?

22

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