Glossary

Glossary development

Glossary development is the process of identifying, defining and maintaining a standardized list of key terms and preferred translations used across projects, products or brands. It ensures consistency, accuracy and brand alignment in multilingual communication.

Description

In localization and translation, glossaries are essential tools for maintaining linguistic consistency – especially across large, distributed teams. They record product names, technical terms, brand-specific language and approved style conventions.

Glossary development begins with collecting core terminology from source content, consulting Subject-matter experts (SMEs) and validating each term with linguists and reviewers. The approved terms are then integrated into translation memory (TM) systems and CAT tools such as Trados, so they appear automatically during translation. At RWS, glossary development is built into every localization workflow. Our teams collaborate with clients to define and manage multilingual termbases, ensuring that brand voice, tone and meaning stay consistent across all markets and channels. Combined with intelligent automation and human linguistic review, this process ensures accuracy at scale.

Related terms

Brand consistency CAT tools (Computer-assisted translation) Linguistic quality Quality assurance Terminology management Trados Team Translation memory (TM)

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