A few days ago, my friends and I ended up talking about the terms and acronyms specific to our respective areas of work. Indeed, each field has its own jargon, which people outside of it (usually) don’t know. It is true that at first glance, these expressions can seem obscure. So, I decided to help, at my level, by providing this little glossary of the translation world. I hope it will help to “demystify” all those terms that apprentice translators and people who are not familiar with our work do not know (yet!).
CAT
Let’s start from the beginning: CAT. Computer-Assisted Translation is the basis for many translators nowadays (except perhaps in literary translation). The point of the various CAT software and tools available on the market is to optimise the work of translators. It allows them to translate contents faster, while remaining consistent and maintaining a high level of quality. Thanks to these software tools, translators don’t need to translate the same sentence several times, they can find previously translated sentences and reuse them, or know which terms a client prefers (for example, if they want the word “entreprise” translated by “business” rather than “company”). Consequently, the translator can dedicate more of their attention and energy to terminology research and produce better quality work. So, as you can see, it is very different from machine translation (like Google Translate, for example).
Source/Target
These two terms are often associated with the words “language” or “document”. The source language is the language FROM which the translator will work, therefore, the source document is the original text. On the contrary, the target language is the language INTO which the translator will write, therefore, the target document is the translated text. Conventionally, the target language is always the mother tongue of the translator, since a professional translator should not translate into their second or third language (with rare exceptions).
TEP
This acronym refers to the entire translation process: Translation, Edition, and Proofreading. These are the three phases a text normally goes through before it is sent to the client. Translation is first: the translator looks the terminology up and translates the text into the target language. Then comes revision: the translator themselves (or another linguist) goes through the translation and compares it, sentence by sentence, to the original to check for omissions or mistakes, and runs the spell check. And finally, proofreading: one very last read-through of the text, in the target language only, to check that the readability is good, and the sentences sound natural.
TM
Yet another unavoidable term in the translation industry. TM stands for Translation Memory, and it is a vital tool in a CAT environment. Indeed, a translation memory allows you to store all the sentences translated during a project so you can reuse them later. This way, when you are working on a text and come across a sentence identical or very similar to one you have already translated before, your TM detects it and you can insert the translation directly into the text. This also means that you can search for a specific term or expression in your TM and browse through all the different translations you have used before. TMs can be a valuable reference corpus!
TB
TB stands for Term Base. As its name suggests, this type of file can be integrated into a project in a CAT tool environment to provide a glossary of terms. Some TBs are glossaries produced by the translator themself (for example, compiling all the technical terms they have encountered before), while others are provided by the client and contain translations for the terms that are specific to their company or industry.
MT
Another term that is increasingly present in the translation world, as technology develops, is Machine Translation (MT). As its name suggests, this term refers to translation automatically performed by a machine translation tool, such as Google Translate or DeepL. MT is increasingly used by translation agencies and requested by end clients as a way to reduce translation costs. Indeed, once the text has been translated by the MT tool, all that is left to do for the translator is to check that everything is in order. Therefore, the rate per word is lower and the deadline is also shorter. However, you should keep in mind that MT is not always the best solution. While it can be very useful in some fields, such as technical and IT, it will generally be quite bad in others, such as tourism or fashion, forcing the translator to retranslate everything. This is why there are now “hybrid” MTs, using a combination of “classic” MT output and translation memories provided by the agency or client. This type of MT allows for a better result. Nevertheless, whatever the type of MT and whatever the quality of the MT output, a translator will always have to go through the text to correct any mistakes. Indeed, even if technology advances, it will never be able to produce a perfect translation. You should also remember that with MT, the style will inevitably be poorer. Human translators are the only way to guarantee optimal quality!
MTPE
The term MTPE is derived from MT and stands for Machine Translation Post Editing, also referred to simply as post-editing (PE). This is the act of correcting a MT output to turn it into a deliverable text. This is a new type of service that not all translators like (for obvious reasons), but which is increasingly being requested. Personally, I have chosen to offer this service, and not a month goes by without at least one or two projects of this type, which is proof of the growing demand in this branch of the market.
LSP
This term is the acronym for Language Service Provider, and it has been increasingly used in recent years to refer to translation agencies. Since translation agencies almost always offer other services in addition to translation, the term LSP is used to better describe them, since it includes the TPE process as well as localization, subtitling and content writing.
So, here are a few terms from my world. I hope this wee glossary will be helpful! Do you have terms or acronyms specific to your activity? What are they? Do share them in the comments!
Camille Gondral 