According to the Oxford dictionary, terminology is ‘the body of terms used with a particular technical application in a subject of study, theory, profession, etc.
Why is terminology useful for translators?
Terminology is the fundamental building block for translators. It is the word, phrases and technical terms used to create sentences. Since translation began as a professional, technical translators have developed word lists for translation purposes. Most lists contain two columns, the first consisting of terms in the source language and in the second column the corresponding term in the target language.
Terminology looks like a dictionary to most people. Terminology is an actually a form of expanded dictionary as it can hold phases and key terms used by each company.
Often a company will have its own strong preferences for the terminology to be used. For example one company may prefer a term for an item such as a “Desk” and another might prefer for it to be called “Table” or "small office table". This is important as if a translation is talking about “Desks” and the company sells “Tables” then this could be confusing for a potential customer. The translation would be incorrect.
Another example might be “Common Rail Diesel Engine”: know how to translate this technical term correctly is important for automotive translators. So specialist terms and words need to be defined and managed.
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