Part 4. Terminology and memoriesΒΆ
A localized product speaks with one vocabulary or it speaks nonsense politely. This part is about the words that carry the concepts of a product: how to establish what a term means, how to record it so that every translator, reviewer and engine uses it, how to pick a translation from evidence rather than from a dictionary, and how to keep the decision from quietly coming undone at the next release. It introduces the fallback original term, a plain English rendering that a translator can translate when the term itself will not travel, and it shows how a house voice survives translation through humor, playful names and ordinary words. The FontLab localization into German, Spanish, French and Polish supplies the worked examples; the rules apply to any product with a vocabulary of its own.
- 401. What this part knows
- 402. Terminology work: concepts, terms, definitions and why one meaning gets one word
- 403. A glossary schema: term, definition, status, collision, translatable, sources
- 404. The fallback original term: a plain English rendering for when the term will not travel
- 405. Core and project memories: glossaries versus whole strings, and why a term lives in one place
- 406. Evidence and attestation: choosing a translation from professional usage, not by translating the word
- 407. House voice across languages: humor, Power names, Smart features, down-to-earth terms
- 408. Word formation and derivation: verbs and adjectives from a noun, native compounds, collective nouns
- 409. Do-not-translate with restraint: brands, trademarks, identifiers, and everything else that may inflect
- 410. Ledgers and decisions: recording every change with its reason so the next catalog cannot regress