No matter if you use human translators or automatic translation, setting up a glossary can help you greatly improve translation quality. Plus, it’s easy to do and comes at no additional cost.
Why You Really Should Use the Glossary
When translating content, both human and machine translators rely on regular language. However, even simple words like „apple“ and „orange“ can have different meanings depending on the context. For example, „Apple“ could refer to the company, while „orange“ might be a fruit or a color.
And this is where the glossary comes in. It allows you to tell your translators – whether they’re human or machine – how to translate specific words.
Here are the top benefits you’ll gain by using a glossary:
More Accurate Translations: By specifying how key terms should be translated, you reduce the risk of errors and misunderstandings. Using the glossary helped us to increase the quality of translations on WPML.org by 61%!
Improved SEO: Consistent and accurate translations help maintain the integrity of your SEO strategy across different languages. Search engines favor content that is precise and clear, which can lead to better rankings.
Protect Important Terms: The glossary lets you lock in translations for brand names, technical terms, or any other phrases you want to keep consistent. This ensures your brand identity and messaging remain intact, no matter the language.
Here are two variants for the heading and the corresponding condensed content for the blog posts:
Tips for Building an Effective Glossary
To make the most of WPML’s Glossary feature, focus on these best practices:
Prioritize important terms: Add terms that could be mistranslated.
Avoid clutter: Use clean, exact terms without extra details like parentheses.
Account for capitalization: Enter variations like „breaking news“ and „Breaking News“ to ensure accurate matching.
Stick to singular: Use singular forms unless the term is only used in plural.
These simple steps help ensure your glossary improves translation accuracy without unnecessary complications.
Using the Glossary is super simple. Go to WPML → Translation Management, click the Tools tab, and then click the Glossary tab.
Once you’re in the Glossary, click the Add glossary entry button and follow the popup wizard. You’ll be able to enter the term, describe it, and select its type.
Adding a term to the WPML Glossary
And that’s it! Once you’ve added your terms, human translators will see your preferred translations in the Advanced Translation Editor. If you use automatic translation, WPML will apply the same rules to them.
Retranslating Content After Updating Your Glossary
When you update your glossary, it’s important to ensure that the affected content reflects these changes. Currently, the only way to do this is by manually resending the content for translation.
However, with the upcoming WPML 4.7 version, we’re introducing a new Glossary Retranslation feature that automates this process. This feature will automatically identify and retranslate the affected segments using automatic translation, ensuring your content stays consistent with your updated glossary. Note that this will only apply to content that was originally translated automatically.
We’ll provide more details about this feature when WPML 4.7 is released. Stay tuned!
Explore the Glossary Feature – Tell Us How It Works for You
Ready to try out the WPML Glossary? Or maybe you’re already using it? We’d love to hear about your experience.
Leave a comment below and let us know how the Glossary has made a difference in your translations. If you have any tips or suggestions, feel free to share those as well!
