Key business and translation professionals recognize need for effective terminology management solutions for consistent terminology and branding

Maidenhead, U.K. – 22nd January 2009 – SDL, the leading provider of Global Information Management (GIM) solutions, today announced the results of its two surveys exploring trends in terminology and branding; the first completed by business professionals and the second by translators. The results clearly identified a strong link between terminology and brand, highlighting the growing awareness of and need for effective terminology management solutions to maintain a consistent global brand. 

Over 330 business and localization professionals in industries ranging from IT and Software to Manufacturing completed the survey.  Over 95% of respondents recognised the necessity to have the appropriate processes in place to manage their terminology and localisation, illustrating its importance in maintaining brand consistency.  Without these processes in place, businesses cannot communicate the consistent usage of terminology throughout their organisation and to their translators, which will inevitably create inconsistent global branding.

The respondents comprised of marketing, technical documentation and localisation as well as other professionals such as business analysts and product managers. Interestingly, 49% of the respondents say they already have processes in place.  However, they are still noticing inconsistencies in the application of terminology throughout their organisation, suggesting that the correct procedures have not been implemented and this will therefore impact their global brand presence.

According to 95% of the respondents that took part in the second survey, conducted to localisation professionals such as freelance or in-house translators, terminology management is a vital component in the translation process.  Yet they noticed that frequent inconsistencies in terminology are often found in the source content, suggesting that content creators on the business side are not managing terminology properly, if at all. Furthermore, the two most popular formats for storing terminology were in style guides and spreadsheets which, despite being very effective methods of defining and agreeing terminology, are not the best for ensuring the consistent application of terminology across the business and in multiple languages. Translators believe that terminology management solutions should be integrated into both authoring and translation tools in order to eliminate inconsistencies across all content, translated or not. Furthermore, having a terminology management process in place would boost their productivity by 25-50%.

“It is very encouraging to see that businesses are recognising the importance of managing their terminology in order to maintain brand consistency and strength of their brand,” said Sophie Hurst, Director of Product Marketing at SDL.  “Product names and corporate terminology were considered to be the most important terms to keep consistent when ensuring that a company’s brand message is articulated clearly and consistently, especially as more organisations move into the global market. This illustrates how incorrect terminology can impact external and customer perceptions of your brand. Interestingly, the businesses we spoke to were less concerned with the cost benefits that terminology management can bring and more concerned with the quality and consistency of the translation.”

You can read the full research paper on this survey at www.sdl.com/terminologysurvey