Terminology Management: The Key to Making Your Technical Documentation Consistent
Is it a “screwdriver” or a “turn screw”? Having different terms for the same thing is confusing for readers and could even result in liability risks. Using terminology management in technical documentation helps to make your writing clearer and more efficient. Our handy tips show you how this works in practice.
Every company will have multiple words for the same thing. For instance, a component may be called one thing in the production department, but the technical writing department may not know this term and so may call it something else. And then it may have yet another name in the marketing department. If texts are translated into other languages in all these departments, this can lead to huge confusion within the company and among users too. If there are misunderstandings, this may have negative consequences for product users and the legal departments of the company in question. This is where terminology management comes in. It creates clarity by defining standard terminology and explicit rules, ensuring the technical documentation is easy to understand.
What is terminology management?
Terminology work involves identifying relevant concepts, defining standard terms for them, and creating a dictionary with rules governing their use, which then applies throughout the company. This content-related work forms the basis of terminology management, which provides an organizational framework. In practice, two terms are often used synonymously.
The people involved in the process get together in terminology teams to decide what the official term for something will be, and also what terms will be forbidden. Over time, this develops into a comprehensive company reference tool that is available centrally and is updated regularly. Terminology work is an ongoing task rather than a one-off piece of work.
The benefits of terminology management for your company
Comprehensibility improves product safety and reduces support teams’ workloads
First and foremost, having well-defined terminology makes content more comprehensible. If you use consistent language in your documentation, users and service technicians will be able to use, maintain, and repair your products safely and correctly. This helps to avoid errors that could not only lead to potential damage but also result in liability risks. Taking steps to ensure understanding will also help to save you money. The more users can understand immediately, the less they will have to query via your hotline.
Efficient text creation and quality control in technical documentation
There are also benefits for you as a technical writer. Having clear terminology will save you time, both when creating technical documentation and when carrying out quality assurance. The standardized rules mean there is less need for discussions and consultations between your colleagues, and you don’t have to spend as much time making corrections.
Keeping translation costs down
If something is always referred to with the same term in the source text, then it doesn’t need to be retranslated every time. This can result in considerable savings, particularly where highly standardized or standardizable information is concerned. The more languages you translate your technical documentation into, the greater the cost savings will be for you.
Huge benefits for other departments too
As terminology work is an interdisciplinary task, handling terminology in a professional way will benefit numerous areas within a company. This is particularly obvious when it comes to marketing. Companies often have a wide variety of designations for the very same product. Risks arise when the designations are made public because, in the event of a dispute, any inaccuracy weakens the distinctiveness of your brand. Another advantage is that if you know what terms are used by customers or in the industry, you can then use these in your communication and ensure that your web content is search engine optimized, for example.
Improved communication within your company
Terminology is an important pillar of knowledge management. It is used as much for precise communication in projects and product development as it is for the efficient training of new employees. It provides an overview of the current (and outdated) product portfolio and helps to ensure the right information is shown in the online store. It facilitates sales and ensures clarity for orders in purchasing.
How you can implement terminology management in your company
Step 1: Find existing sources of terminology
Every company deals with terminology – just not always systematically. This means that there is bound to be some terminology somewhere in your organization already. It might be in the form of an Excel list, as designations in your instructions, or perhaps as entries in the spare parts catalog. These sources must be identified and assessed according to their quality.
- Are there any terms that are already binding and can (possibly with amendments) go directly into the terminology database?
- Do you have a source you use to collect various term candidates?
- Where can you find spellings that should no longer be used in the future?
Tip: When searching for terminology sources, the problem isn’t usually finding suitable ones, but narrowing down the most appropriate ones from the vast number of sources. If in doubt, start with fewer sources and add new ones over time.
Step 2: Get the right people together in a terminology team
Terminology affects many departments and process roles in a company. These stakeholders must be brought together so everyone’s interests are represented. Those involved typically come together in a terminology team. However, in the worst-case scenario, this can result in this group becoming too large and thus no longer being fit for purpose. A good solution can be to define a small team of two to three people, who propose term candidates and have them voted on in a larger term team that meets less frequently.
Step 3: Define the process and set out the rules in your terminology guidelines
How are term candidates reported? Who decides on a term and how? What are the naming conventions? How do colleagues find out about terminology (and undesired terms)? Where can the terms be looked up? These and many other questions need to be answered for terminology to really hit its stride. Develop a process – in other words your procedure for collecting and standardizing your terminology and making it available for use within your company. Then set this process out in your guidelines.
Step 4: Start selecting term candidates
If you search through your content for spellings and terms that are worth standardizing, you will soon find you have several hundred or even several thousand term candidates, as these are known. This is not a manageable quantity to be starting with.
A better approach is to start by selecting terms that are crucial for your content and that will create added value straightaway once they are standardized. This will deliver tangible results for you right from the start and will give you the opportunity to learn and try things out so that you can create a terminology process that works for you.
Step 5: Get things organized and define standard terms
Terminology work involves giving things names, from the range of infinite possibilities, and making clear and binding decisions on these names. To use one example from software documentation, would you guess that a “tab flap” referred to something we normally know as a tab? Synonyms like “screwdriver” and “turn screw” can also be confusing for readers if they are used interchangeably in the text and it is not immediately clear that they are referring to the same tool.
Terminology work is not just about calling things by the correct name. It also extends into the area of word formation, such as the question of when and how hyphens should be used. Another typical area where consistency is required is the use of action verbs. For example, do your instructions tell people to “select the ‘Cut’ option in the context menu” or simply “choose”?
Step 6: Evaluate your terminology management
Measure the success of your terminology work. The key performance indicators for this are closely related to your goals. Is it the number of error-free documents? The number of queries during translation? The number of times the term database is called up? Depending on the situation, you might use other indicators, but not measuring is not a solution. Without meaningful indicators, you will never know if and where you need to take countermeasures, nor will others find out how successful and useful your terminology work is.
The tools that help with terminology management
One of the most common questions from day-to-day practice is: “How do I keep terms consistent in my documentation?” There is a clear answer to this. It is virtually impossible to ensure this nowadays without a terminology management tool. Terminology management software enables you to store all your concepts together with their definitions and the preferred and forbidden terms.
If you want to reduce the amount of work involved, a well-structured Excel document is a good place to start. A company will also often have translation tools that offer terminology functionalities. Many content management systems such as SCHEMA ST4 also have these kinds of components built in. What matters is that the initial solution supports the goals of terminology management and does not obstruct the path to more powerful software later on.
You should also consider what is the best way to make the correct terminology accessible to technical writers in the text creation process. Our content management system SCHEMA ST4, for example, gives you powerful authoring assistance with terminology checking.
