I’m currently investigating the translation process at work, which for some reason reminds me of the Underpants Gnomes (see video below - it has cursing, so beware). I’m still at a high level view, where I’ve learned helpful tidbits, such as that in order to have docs translated, you need money and a plan. Well, duh. But, what’s coming up, and I find this extremely promising, is the terminology process.

The terminology process is all about sorting out the words. You know, putting the dark words with the darks and the light words with the lights? Well, not really.

As far as I can tell, the process goes like this: I find words specific to the product. I fence off those product words to protect them from the translators, who would no doubt ruin them. Next, I find words that aren’t specific to the product, but are used a lot. I investigate whether these non-product-but-still-used-a-lot words have company-wide synonyms that are better. I report my findings to . . . someone. Finally, I find all the words that are “bad” and replace them with shiny, new, morally upright words that we can all be proud of.

At least that’s how I imagine the terminology process to work after marking up four documents with pink highlighter. Or, I could just be high from highlighter fumes.