Creating and Managing Glossaries and Style Guides

English Translation and Multilingual Translation

Since 1998, we have been assisting with document translation for Japanese manufacturing and IT companies. Our consultants solve translation challenges unique to agile development, such as specification changes and terminology standardization.

From diagnosis and improvement measures for Japanese and English documents that form the basis of multilingual expansion,
to CMS for managing versions and differences, and internal support seminars for implementing improvement measures.
We have been handling post-editing of machine translations since 2000.

Glossary and Style Guide for Achieving High Quality

Translating manuals alone makes it difficult to unify terminology and style.
At Human Science, we thoroughly review the original document before translation to identify and create a glossary and style guide for unified terminology and style.
Even when multiple translators are working on a large document, we ensure unified terminology and style throughout the project to provide high-quality translations.

Glossary and Style Guide Creation and Management Process

Process

Glossary

This is a list of translation terms to be used for translation. Before translating, create a glossary that defines terms that should be unified, such as product names and technical terms, so that translation can be done using consistent terms throughout the document.

A rule is needed for which translation to use!

Translation Rules

When translating a large number of pages of manuals with multiple translators, if there is no glossary, the translated terms may vary among translators, resulting in inconsistent terminology.
At Human Science, we identify and create a glossary of terms to be unified before translation, preventing inconsistent or erroneous translations.
If you have specified terms, please provide them before translation so that they can be included in the glossary.

Target to be included in the glossary (example)

● Glossary of Terms (Terms with specified translations such as parts, company names, product names, function names, etc.)
●Terms not included in the provided glossary
・Terms related to newly installed functions and technologies
・Unnecessary translation phrases (file extensions, program codes, etc.)
●Verb
●Unit Symbol
●Other Frequently Used Terms
etc.

What is a style guide?

This is a list of rules for the style (expression, notation, grammar, etc.) used in translation.
Similar to a glossary, by establishing rules for style before translation, it is possible to unify the style throughout the document and improve translation quality.

A rule is needed for which style to use!

Style Rules

At Human Science Co., Ltd., we create style guides for each client and project before translation, providing our customers with high-quality, consistent translations throughout the entire document. As the notation of symbols and numbers varies by language, we create style guides based on the rules of each language.

Contents to include in the style guide (example)

●Customer-specified rules
●Rules for each language

・Capitalization and lowercase usage

・Number format (digit grouping, decimal point)
[In the case of French]
In French, it is common to use spaces (1 000) for digit grouping and commas (3.5) for decimal points. However, depending on the project, there may be cases where commas (1,000) are used for digit grouping, so it is important to establish clear rules beforehand.

・Representation of symbols and signs (quotation marks, apostrophes, parentheses, etc.)
[For French]
In French, the guillemets «» are commonly used instead of English double quotation marks “　”. However, depending on the project, there may be cases where the same double quotation marks as English are used, so it is important to establish clear usage rules beforehand.

・Style of the text

・Style of warning and caution messages

・Reference Document Style

[Sample] French Style Guide

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