Glossary Updates6 new terms added to the glossaries · October 11, 2026, 13:38 CEST
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Glossary · 6 · Translation and terminology

Terminology management

Also known as: Terminology work, Termbase management

German: Terminologiemanagement

Terminology management is the identification, definition, recording and maintenance of the concepts and terms of a subject field, together with their equivalents in other languages, their usage status (preferred, admitted, deprecated) and related data, usually in a termbase that authors, translators and software can use.

  • Translation and terminology
  • Standards
  • Technical documentation

In one sentence

Terminology management defines, records and maintains a field's terms and their translations in a termbase for authors, translators and tools.

Example

The termbase entry for the concept “emergency stop” lists “emergency stop” as preferred, “E-stop” as admitted in software texts, “emergency off” as deprecated, and “Not-Halt” as the German equivalent.

How it applies

  • Concept-oriented entries: ISO 704 describes the relations between objects, concepts, definitions and designations and gives principles for forming terms and writing definitions. A termbase entry describes one concept, with all its designations in all languages.
  • Exchange: ISO 30042 (TBX, TermBase eXchange) defines an XML format for exchanging terminological data between tools without loss.
  • Authors and translators: Approved terms are used in authoring, checked by style and terminology checkers and offered to translators in their tools, so that one concept has one name per language across manuals, software and service documents.
  • AI functions: A termbase can be given to AI functions that draft, translate or answer from documentation, for example as glossary input for machine translation or as synonyms for retrieval. Their output is checked against it like any other text.
  • Safety: Consistent terms for hazards, controls and operating modes support the comprehensibility of safety-related information; a termbase does not by itself make the information correct or complete.

Terminology management vs. translation memory

A termbase holds concepts and their designations. A translation memory holds whole translated segments. The termbase decides which word is right; the translation memory shows how a sentence was translated before.

External references