If not encountered with the translation industry, you will be really confused about the meaning of translation memory and glossary. On the contrary, those initiated in the industry understand how these functions drastically help increase efficiency, reduce time and increase clients’ satisfaction if these tools are utilized. Therefore, it would be beneficial to explain what makes a translation memorydifferent from a translation glossary.

What is Translation Memory?

A translation memory (TM) is a database storing "segments", which can be sentences, paragraphs or sentence-like units (headings, titles or elements in a list) that have previously been translated. This is of help for human translators. The translation memory stores the source text and its corresponding translation in language pairs called “translation units”. Software programs using translation memories are sometimes known as translation memory managers (TMM) or translation memory systems. Research demonstrates that most translation companies are using translation memory systems.

What is Translation Glossary?

While a translation memory remembers segments of text, a glossary is an index of the specific terminology in a translated document. In such highly technical fields as the medical device or legal industry, a glossary helps to improve content uniformity and consistency.

The source and target language translations and definitions will be offered in a glossary together with the context where these terms should be used. A glossary is created in cooperation between an LSP and the client with words that may have more than one meaning but which need expressing consistently throughout a project. Apart from technical terms, a glossary can also include names, trademark terms or acronyms.

The key takeaway here: A translation memory stores segments of text to do away with repetition, while a glossary stores individual terms.

How does it work?

Being a complicated feature, TM can be explained as such: you open the source file and apply the translation memory so that any "100% matches" (identical matches) or "fuzzy matches" (similar, but not identical matches) within the text are instantly extracted and placed within the target file.

As you work through the source file, the "matches" suggested by the translation memory can be accepted or overridden with new alternatives. Manually updated, a translation unit will stored within the translation memory for future use as well as for repetition in the current text. In a similar way, all segments in the target file without a "match" would be translated manually and then automatically added to the translation memory.

Main benefits

Translation memory managers are most suitable for translating technical documentation and documents with specialized vocabularies contained in them.

Their benefits include:

Ensuring that the document is entirely translated (translation memories do not accept empty target segments)

Ensuring that the translated documents are consistent, including common definitions, phrasings and terminology. This is crucial when different translators are working on a single project.

Allowing translators to translate documents in various formats with no need to own the software typically required to process these formats.

Accelerating the overall translation process; since translation memories "remember" previously translated material, translators only need to translate it once.

Reducing the costs of long-term translation projects; for example, the text of manuals, warning messages or series of documents only needs translating once and can be utilized several times.

For large documentation projects, savings (in time or money) thanks to using a TM package may already be obvious even for the first translation of a new project, but normally such savings are only apparent when translating subsequent versions of a project translated before using translation memory.Without using a translation memory to capture this repeated content for future reuse, you will be localizing the same phrases repeatedly. This can slow the project down as well as reduce the quality of your work, thereby potentially causing customer dissatisfaction.

Yifa uses both of these as value added for the client. You can learn more about Yifa’s services and capabilities here.