Key takeaways
- A glossary controls words; a style guide controls how the text reads, including tone, form of address, punctuation and number formats.
- Microsoft publishes localisation style guides for more than 100 languages and variants, which shows how far style rules differ between markets.
- The EU institutions have used their shared terminology database, IATE, to manage terminology since 2004.
- The most useful glossaries are short, approved by in-market reviewers and updated after every project.
- Glossaries and style guides should be supplied before translation starts, not after the first draft has been reviewed.
This guide is for marketing, product and documentation teams that publish in several languages and keep finding the same term translated three different ways. It explains what a translation glossary and a style guide are, what to put in each, how to build them with your translators and how to keep them useful.
Both are reference documents written for linguists. They are different from a translation memory, which stores whole sentences automatically, but the three work best together.
What is a translation glossary?
A translation glossary, also called a termbase when stored in translation software, is a list of key source-language terms with their approved translations in each target language, plus notes on usage. It tells every translator which word to use for your products, features, job titles, legal concepts and industry terms.
Large organisations treat terminology as shared infrastructure. The EU's database IATE is described as “the multilingual terminology database of the EU institutions and bodies”, and its about page states: “EU institutions and bodies have used it to collect, disseminate and manage terminology since 2004.”
What is a translation style guide?
A translation style guide is a set of rules for how translated text should read in a specific language and market. Microsoft, which maintains public localisation style guides for more than 100 languages and language variants, describes them as “collections of rules that define language and style conventions for specific languages.”
A glossary answers “which word?”; a style guide answers “how should it sound and look?”. A German style guide, for example, decides whether customers are addressed with the formal “Sie” or the informal “du”, which no glossary entry can settle.
Why do glossaries and style guides matter for translation quality?
Glossaries and style guides matter because most complaints about translations are about inconsistency and tone rather than outright errors. When several translators work on your content, each makes reasonable but different choices unless someone has decided in advance.
- Consistency: the same product feature has the same name in the manual, the app and the website.
- Fewer review rounds: in-country reviewers stop correcting the same preferences every time.
- Faster onboarding: a new translator or supplier can match the existing voice from day one.
- Legal and safety accuracy: defined contract terms and safety warnings are rendered the same way throughout.
- Better source text: the Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI) notes in its guide Translation: Getting it Right that an in-house glossary is “also an excellent way of making your original documents more consistent.”
What should a translation glossary include?
A translation glossary should include only terms that are important, recurring or easy to get wrong. A useful entry contains:
- the source term exactly as it appears in your content;
- the approved translation for each language and market variant;
- a short definition or context sentence;
- terms not to translate, such as brand and product names (a “do not translate” list);
- forbidden alternatives, for example a competitor's term for the same feature;
- the part of speech and any notes on gender, plural or capitalisation;
- who approved the term and when it was last reviewed.
Keep it focused. A glossary of a few hundred carefully chosen terms is used; one with ten thousand unreviewed entries is ignored.
What should a translation style guide include?
A translation style guide should record every decision a translator would otherwise have to guess. Typical sections are:
- Audience and tone: who reads the content and how formal it should be.
- Form of address: formal or informal “you”, and gender-inclusive language rules.
- Language variant: for example European or Brazilian Portuguese, Spain or Latin American Spanish.
- Formatting: dates, times, numbers, currencies, units and decimal separators.
- Punctuation and capitalisation: quotation marks, title case, bullet-list style.
- UI and product text: how to refer to buttons, menus and error messages.
- Marketing freedom: how far translators may adapt slogans and headlines; see transcreation vs translation.
How do you build a translation glossary and style guide?
Build both documents before the first large project, with your translators rather than for them. A practical sequence:
- Extract candidate terms from your key source documents, product names and previous translations.
- Remove generic words and keep terms that are specific, recurring or risky.
- Ask the translator or agency to propose translations with context notes.
- Have an in-market reviewer approve or amend each term once, with reasons.
- Draft the style guide from the same review, recording decisions on tone and format.
- Load the approved glossary into the translation tools so terms are checked automatically.
- Update both after each project, and record who approved each change.
Common mistakes with glossaries and style guides
The most common mistake is creating a glossary once and never updating it. Others that make glossaries and style guides ineffective:
- Sending them after translation has started. Every finished segment then needs rework.
- Letting reviewers override the glossary informally. Changes must go back into the glossary, or the conflict repeats.
- One style guide for all markets. Rules for French in France rarely suit French in Canada.
- Including every word. Overlong glossaries slow translators and hide the terms that matter.
- Keeping them in someone's inbox. Store them centrally and share the current version with every supplier.
Glossaries also make split projects faster, as explained in realistic translation turnaround times, and support the checks described in how translation quality assurance works. For the full buying process, see how to choose a translation agency.
How TranslationWorks can help
TranslationWorks is a UK-based translation agency that provides professional human translation by native-speaking linguists in 150+ languages, with main language pages for German, Italian, Spanish, French, Romanian, Portuguese, Polish and Russian. TranslationWorks is certified to ISO 17100, the international standard for translation services. If you have an existing glossary or style guide, send it with your files; if you need help creating terminology resources for a multilingual programme, describe what you need and we will confirm what we can provide in your free quote. See our custom language services and translation services, or request a free quote within 24 hours.
