This is a helpful list of translation related terminology

A-C   D-G   H-M   N-R   S-T   U-X  

Accredited translator
Translator who has received accreditation from a professional institute such as the ITI or the ATA. Accreditation - a requirement for membership - is usually issued on the basis of examination and experience. German translators may hold the title staatlich geprufter Ubersetzer or Diplomubersetzer if they have graduated in translation studies at degree level.

Acrobat
A family of programs from Adobe used for creating and viewing PDF files.

Ad hoc interpreting
Spoken translation between two languages in informal conversations between two or more people. Used, for example in business meetings, for phone calls, during site visits and social events. The term is sometimes used loosely to include consecutive interpreting.

Adaptation
Unlike a transcription (or literal translation), an adaptation is aimed at bringing the target text in line with the spirit of the language, thus producing a text which is not obviously a translation.

Alignment
A process that consists of aligning, i.e. creating equivalents, segment by segment, between a source text and the corresponding target text. The resulting table of equivalents will then be used as a translation memory. Alignment thus makes it possible to use previous translations carried out without translation support software. Even with the help of special software programmes, alignment operations nevertheless still require a considerable amount of manual intervention.

Ambiguity
A frequent shortcoming of source texts. An ambiguous phrase to be translated presents at least two possibilities for the translator, who thus has at best a 50% chance of making a mistake if the context does not clarify the issue. The question can therefore only be resolved by contacting the author of the source text.

API Application Programming Interface
Used for creating programs that interface to other programs.

ASCII
American Standard Code Interchange Information. It is a 7-bit character set encoding that contains characters for unaccented letters a-z and A-Z, most English punctuation marks, numbers, and a few control characters.

ASP
Stands for Active Server Pages. ASP is a server-side scripting environment (not a scripting language) developed by Microsoft that allows embedding of scripting commands in HTML documents to create dynamic web pages. ASP is particularly useful for reading from and writing to databases in the background, and displaying the results on web pages. ASP comes with VBScript and JScript scripting engines, but third-party engines for Perl, REXX, and Python are also available.

Auslang
A standard for classifying products.

Automated Publishing
In the context of SGML, automated publishing usually refers to the automated generation of content and does not deal with presentation. In the context of FrameMaker MIF files, it usually refers to content and presentation.

Automatic recognition
This is a technique that permits the automatic recognition of terms in the text to be translated by an electronic dictionary associated with CAT software, and a proposed equivalent in the target language (as long as the dictionary contains these terms). Within the framework of technical translations, this function makes it possible to guarantee terminological consistency throughout the entire text.

Automatic translation
An information technology that uses the computer's calculating power to analyse the structure of each statement or phrase of the text to be translated (source text), to break down this structure into elements that are simple to translate, and to build up a phrase using the same structure in the target language. This also involves the use of extremely voluminous multi-language dictionaries and thousands of translated pages (both source and target).

Background information
Information relating to the subject matter of the source text or the topic of discussion. Facilitates the translator's or interpreter's task by providing context, terminology, definitions, etc.

Background text
Text in the source or target language providing background information about the subject matter of the text to be translated.

Bandwidth
Defines the number of bits that can be transferred between local and remote hosts on the Internet. For modem users, bandwidth is usually limited to 56 Kbit/sec, but depending on various factors such as network congestion, it may fluctuate well between 1Kbit/s and 50 Kbit/s. For higher speed connections such as cable modem or DSL, bandwidth may easily go beyond 1 Mbit (1024 Kbit/sec).

Bitmap Graphics
A bitmap is a grid of pixels having individual color values. The term bitmap graphics is used to define digital images such as scanned photos, or artwork created in image-editing applications. Since bitmap images are resolution dependent unlike vector images, you lose detail when you scale bitmaps. The loss of detail is especially noticeable when you scale up an image. The result has either jagged edges or is blurred. On the other hand, bitmap graphics offer precise, pixel-level control on images. You can change the color of individual pixels or in other words, freely paint on an bitmap image.

See also: Vector Graphics

Bleed
A printed image that runs off the page.

BMP
Stands for Bitmap. A simple graphics file format developed by Microsoft for its Windows operating system. BMP files can store graphics from 1-bit (2-color) up to 24-bit (16.7 millions of colors). But since the BMP format does not support any method of compression, images may consume quite a space on your hard drive.

Bug
An un-documented feature. Bugs usually have a negative effect on the performance or use of a program.

As a technical writer expect to spend 5-10% of your time finding ways of working around bugs in your authoring tools. If you are building web pages then this figure can climb to 20% or more.

Calculation of text volume
Determining the volume of a text is not only essential in the field of translation (submitting quotations, invoicing), but also plays an important part in various stages of processing natural languages (analyses, statistics, comparisons).

However, the unit of calculation applied differs from one region to another: in the Anglo-Saxon world, on the one hand, it is still common practice to calculate text volume by counting words - a method dating back to the days of the typewriter. Alternatively, in German-speaking countries, and to some extent in France , text volume is expressed in the number of characters (or standard lines).

Depending on the morphology of a language, the average word length varies considerably. In German, for example, compound words occur frequently, whereas French is more analytically structured. 1,000 words of one given language do not correspond to the same text volume as 1,000 words of another. In a multilingual environment, therefore, the only viable and truly accurate method of calculation is to determine the number of characters (or standard lines). (see Quant)

Callout
A label with an arrow or line pointing to something.

CBT Computer Based Training
Replacing a human teacher with an interactive software package.

CGI
Stands for Common Gateway Interface. Frequently used to describe programs run on a web server written in languages such as Perl and C++. These external programs must comply to the CGI standard, which is quite simple. Popular CGI applications include guest books, counters, and search engines.

CGI Common Gateway Interface
A communications standard that allows a web server to send data to an external program and then return the results to a web browser.

Character Style
A description of how a piece of text is presented. For example a piece of text marked with an emphasis tag could be displayed as bold or italics, or using a different font, or different size of font.

CJKV
Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese - sometimes treated as a group.

Client-Side
The server side of a client-server system. On the web, your browser is thought as the client and a web server hosting a web site is thought as the server (hence the name). When you request a document from a web server by entering an URL or clicking on a link, the server sends information to your client (in this case your browser) in the form of text, graphics or audio.

CMYK
See Process colour

CMYK Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, blacK
A subtractive colour model used for printing on paper. All colour images in a document need to be converted to CMYK before being delivered to a print shop.

ColdFusion
A programming language used for interfacing a web server to a database. The ColdFusion tags are embedded in the HTML page. The web server must be ColdFusion aware.

Collocation
A group of words that usually describe a concept, an object or an action. A collocation, for example "sliding wheel" or "law on banks" is considered - on a level of terminology - to be a self-contained term, and will appear as such in a glossary. Automatic searching for collocations in the source text makes it possible to create a glossary prior to translation. However, the relevant tools are as yet not sufficiently efficient to be marketed (and the clients are far from numerous!). FXM is working on this concept in collaboration with researchers.

Colophon
A note added at the end of a book.

Computer assisted translation (CAT)
This term indicates the use of a series of data processing tools aimed at assisting the translator on a level of coherency (consistency) of the text and in terms of working speed. The most extensive of these tools manage both the specific terminology linked to the field in question plus the translation memories.

Concatenation
Operation that consists of linking several files together in order to process them as a single document. The concatenation of text files is used to execute automatic processes such as extracting the list of terms, searching for collocations, establishing the repetition rate, plus search and replacement operations, etc.

Concordance
Relating a term to its context. In computer assisted translation (CAT), this more specifically applies to a function making it possible to obtain the list of contexts for the term, in order to define its sense more precisely and its equivalent in the target language.

Conditional Text
A FrameMaker term for a labeled section of text that can be hidden from view.

Conference interpreter
Interpreter with highly specialised skills who provides simultaneous interpretation of a speakers words in one direction only from one language into another.

Consecutive interpreting
Oral translation of a speaker's words into another language when the speaker has finished speaking or pauses for interpreting. More formal than ad hoc interpreting and used, for example in formal business meetings, for negotiations, training sessions or lectures. (cf. simultaneous interpreting)

Consistency
Quality of a text in which the same object or the same concept is always expressed by the same term (terminological consistency), or where the same action or idea is always expressed by exactly the same phrase or group of phrases (phraseological consistency).

In technical texts, a single item or operation is frequently mentioned on several occasions. Here, a phraseological dictionary can be added to the dictionary of terms, since both make it possible to apply various automatic processes that reduce production and translation costs.

Moreover, and generally speaking, a respect for consistency simplifies the comprehension of the text and makes it possible to avoid many cases of ambiguity.

Controlled language
Language with a restricted vocabulary and restricted rules of formulation. Used, for example, in technical documentation to make the text easier to understand for users or for non-native speakers and to facilitate machine translation.

Cookie
A small data file saved in your hard drive by a web page you are visiting. Cookies are used for storing different kinds of information such as user name and passwords so you would not have to login again and again, whatever messages you read on a message board so they would not be marked as new next time you visit the board, and finally pages you visited or banners you clicked to track your interests. This final use of cookies might be considered as invasion of privacy by some. If you think so, you may block all or just site-specific cookies by using your browser.

Copywriting
Writing of advertising or publicity copy. It cannot be stressed too strongly that advertising copy will not translate satisfactorily due to the different cultural contexts and advertising cultures of other countries and regions. Adverts for foreign countries should therefore always be produced in those countries. There are some advertising agencies who provide this service.

Court interpreter
Interpreter with special subject knowledge, providing interpretation during legal proceedings. Requirements regarding accreditation and certification for court interpreting vary from country to country.

CSS
Stands for Cascading Style Sheets. CSS gives web designers great control over the typography of HTML documents. Before CSS, there is no way to specify font sizes in points or pixels, specify line spacing, define different link colors, etc. But what makes CSS even more attractive is that you can define an external CSS file holding all the style definitions, and all files on your web site can use this file. When you need to make a change in say, level 1 headlines, you only modify that external CSS file, and your whole site adopts the change immediately.

A-C   D-G   H-M   N-R   S-T   U-X