This is a helpful list of translation related terminology

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Native speaker competence
Oral and written command of a language equivalent to that of a person who not only learned the language as a child and has continued to use it as his/her language of habitual use, but who also has had some language training.

Natural languages
Natural languages correspond to spoken languages, and are designated as such as to differentiate them from programming languages. The automatic processing of natural languages is one of the major areas in which research into information technology is taking place.

Navigation
Moving around within one or several documents by the successive opening of the pages concerned, and with the help of hypertext links, icons and other software commands. In general use for consulting online help facilities, navigation systems are also used within all documentation in digital form. Adapting navigation systems is also part of the translator's work.

Non breaking space
Used to keep words together that would otherwise appear on separate lines due to word wrap.

Offset Printing
The process of printing where an image from a metal, plastic or paper plate attached to a cylinder, is offset to a blanket cylinder, which in turn is offset to a piece of paper. Offset printers can either be sheet fed where individual pieces of paper are fed into the press, or web, where the paper is fed into the press on a continuous roll, as in newspaper printing.

OLIF
Open Lexicon Interchange Format. It is a vehicle for exchanging terminological and lexical data.

Online dictionary
A dictionary that can be viewed on the screen, from resources available on the Internet.

Outbound text
Text intended for publication, i.e. for a readership outside the originating organisation. Essentially designed to sell products and services. Includes PR articles, brochures, catalogues, advertising copy, etc.

PageMaker (Adobe)
A page layout program that allows precise placement of graphics and text on a page. Each page is constructed as a separate item. PageMaker excels at doing small complex documents.

Paragraph Style
A description of how a paragraph of text is presented. For example, a level 1 heading might be 18pt bold Arial with a 10pt space above and a 20pt space below. A paragraph style affects a whole paragraph. Parts of a paragraph can be reformatted using a character style.

Parallel text
Text in the source or target language that is comparable to the text to be translated in terms of subject matter or text type. Includes previous translations of the same type of text.

PDF
Stands for Portable Document Format. Developed by Adobe to address the need for a universal format to share documents across different platforms that will look exactly the same without loss of any formatting information.

A compressed postscript file with additional features such as a table of contents, navigation pane and hyperlinks. PDF files can be edited in a very limited way.

Perl
Stands for Practical Extraction and Report Language. Invented by Larry Hall, a Unix programmer who had got bored of the text handling limitations of the programming languages available at the time. Perhaps, the best thing about Perl is that you do not have to worry about low-level programming tasks like data types or memory allocation. It also gives strong support to regular expressions vital for any serious text processing task. Although certainly powerful and easy-to-learn, Perl can be cryptic at times.
Photoshop (Adobe)
The industry standard for professional bitmap graphics editing.

PHP
A simple programming language with similarities to Perl. PHP code embedded in a web page is executed on the server. This is a similar concept to Active Server Pages (ASP) and Java Server Pages (JSP).

Phraseological dictionary
A data bank for storing standard phrases describing concepts or actions likely to be repeated within the framework of a series of documentation. For example, if the phrase "Press Enter to open file" recurs frequently in the instructions for using a piece of equipment, the writer can select this as such from his or her dictionary of phrases. Beyond saving time, this tool makes it possible to guarantee the phraseological consistency of a text.

PMS Pantone Matching System
A standard for printing colours in which each colour has an assigned number and formula for mixing.

PNG
Stands for Portable Network Graphics. PNG has some major advantages over the old GIF format such as 24-bit image support, an alpha-channel for true transparency and custom gamma values for different platforms. Unlike the GIF format, PNG does not have any patent problems, and it is totally free.

See also: GIF, JPEG

Postscript
A page description language created by Adobe and based on the Forth programming language. A Postscript file has no concept of tables or paragraphs. Each word or collection of words has a set of xy coordinates describing its location on the page. A table is simply a collection of words on a page which happens to have lines in close proximity. A Postscript file is essentially non-editable.

Pre-translation
Translation projects of some considerable size, and especially if they include the use of computer assisted translation software (CAT), require preparatory work on the texts to be translated. This particularly concerns a spelling check on the source text (in case of error, the terminology software does not recognise the terms), the conversion of files into a format accepted by the CAT software, a statistical and qualitative analysis of the source text, the preparation of the special dictionary, etc.

Procedural markup
Markup that describes what a piece of text should look like on the printed page or screen. For example this text is marked as bold. The procedure is, "make this text bold". See descriptive markup. The use of procedural markup is discouraged when authoring documents using SGML.

Process colour
Printing using ink is generally based on a four colour process. These colours are cyan, magenta, yellow and black. Also known as CMYK. These four inks can represent a very large range of colours and is what is used on colour magazines.

Professional Human Translation
Is the translation of text by accredited native language professional translators. Translation by professional translators is more accurate than machine translation, however, it is usually more expensive and requires more resources than machine translation.

Proofreading
Proofreading means the critical revision of a text. In translation, this task mainly consists of checking aspects of spelling, grammar and syntax plus the general coherency and integrity of the target text. Proofreading constitutes the translator's quality assurance; a factor that is always necessary within a purely human procedure. Proofreading should always be carried out by an experienced translator.

Python
A cross platform object orientated programming language, in some ways silimar to Java. Python is quick to write, easy to read, but slow to debug due to it's lack of type safety and compile time checking.

Quality Manual
Quality assurance has nothing to do with quality. The correst name should be "consistancy assurance". A quality manual contains procedures that must be followed. The company is responsible for creating its own procedures. Deviating from the published procedure will result in the loss of QA accrediation.

QuarkXPress
A page layout program similar to Adobe PageMaker and Adobe InDesign.

Raster image
An image composed of pixels. See bitmap.

Registration Marks
Cross marks or circles printed to assist the printer in aligning multiple colours.

Release note
A document distributed with a software program to indicate changes or problems. Empirical studies show that the vast majority of people do not read release notes. If the information is important, it should available using a "Help - What's new" menu option.

Repetition rate
Percentage indicating the amount of terms or segments that are repeated within a text. The repetition rate is an important notion within CAT since it determines, in advance, the percentage of a text that will only need translating once. Greater phraseological and terminological consistency increases the repetition rate and thus the efficiency of the translation process.

Requirements Document
A written document describing what the customer wants. In theory the customer should be the main author of a requirements document. In practice, engineers frequently end up writing requirements documents because the customer is incapable of expressing their thoughts in a clear and concise manner. A requirements document should be signed off by the customer and the engineering team before work begins. Beginning a project without a requirements document is a recipe for disaster.

Resolution
Describes the output precision of computer peripherals such as screens, printers and scanners. For computer screens resolution is defined as the number of pixels that can be displayed such as 800 x 600 (the first value is the number of pixels on a line, and the second value is the number of lines). For other devices, DPI is commonly used to define resolution. For both measures of resolution, it is always the higher the better.

Revising
Reading a text to identify errors, inconsistencies, incorrect grammar and punctuation, poor or inappropriate style, and, in the case of a translation, conformance with the source text, and making appropriate changes and corrections to the text. In general, the number of revision stages is proportional to the demands on the text quality: a translation intended for publication may, for example, be revised by the translator and by one or two third parties (e.g. the author, a subject expert, a second translator, an editor), whereas an internal memo may not require any revision after translation. (What exactly revising and editing entail and how they differ is the subject of much debate. What is important is that the person commissioning the work communicates clearly what is expected of the editor.)

RGB Red, Green, Blue
An additive colour model used for screen display. RGB images need to be converted to CMYK for conventional subtractive colour printing.

Robohelp
A help authoring tool for Windows.

Rollover
Used to define the change occurring in certain elements of a web page when a visitor moves the mouse cursor over and out of those elements (e.g. on and off states of a button). Requires JavaScript.

RTF
Stands for Rich Text Format. A standard established by Microsoft for cross-platform text and graphics interchange. Although RTF is not a very sophisticated format, it does a good job in storing font, color and formatting information, but page layout may not be always reproduced correctly.

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