Glossary of Web Site Translation Terminology

See also our glossaries on Globalization , Localization , Machine Translation , Translation , and Translation Memory .

ASP Application Service Provider. An Internet Service Provider (ISP) who also sells application software that runs behind the web servers at he hosting service. ISPs provide minimal applications like email and some file storage. Also Active Server Pages, Microsoft's name for a leading server-side applications development platform.

CAT Computer Aided (or Assisted) Translation. CAT usually refers to machine translation but also includes the use of translation memory tools. Modern computer aids also include analysis software, glossary and index generators, and text mining. These programs can examine a document and return an "inverted file" with listings and counts of words and segments for pre-processing of a document and assessing its suitability for translation, by machines or human translators.

CJKV Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese. In general, the DBCS Asian languages.

CSS Cascading Style Sheets

DBCS Double Byte Character Set. Multi-byte encodings for Asian languages. Multi-byte encoding does not use 8-bit bytes that conflict with existing 8-bit ASCII characters (thus severely limiting the number of characters they support). See Unicode.

Dictionary . An alphabetical listing of words with their meanings, spellings, variant forms, pronunciation, etymology, synonyms, antonyms, usage examples, etc., usually in a single language. In the translation/localization industry, it often refers simply to a bilingual or multilingual list of terms and their translated counterparts.

DNT Do Not Translate. A special term list of words and phrases such as company trademarks that remain the same in all languages.

DTD Document Type Definition. In SGML and XML, a document that gives the rules for tags and their attributes.

DTP Desktop Publishing. Formatting a document on a computer screen with an accurate representation of the printed version. See WYSIWYG.

FIGS French, Italian, German, and Spanish. In general, the European languages.

GIF Graphical Interface Format. The most widely used standard for web graphics, developed by Unisys and owned by Compuserve. Best suited for artificial images such as computer-generated art. Alternatives are JPEG and the open-source PNG.

Glossary . An alphabetical list of words and their meanings or interpretations (glosses) in a various contexts. In the translation/localization industry, it may refer simply to a bilingual or multilingual terminology list and is often confounded with dictionary. Especially valuable are term lists that are suited to machine searches with glossary tools like Lingo Translator's Assistant or Avalon Glossary Assistant (deadlink) . Glossaries on the web vary from long static HTML web pages to database-backed dynamic sites that present the results of a term search.

HTML Hypertext Markup Language. The language of the world wide web. Surprisingly easy to learn the basic features, HTML is an essential study for translators hoping to move their work to the web. You must know it well in order to avoid accidentally mistranslating HTML tags. Advanced translators (those who learned desktop publishing, for example) will edit HTML occasionally to suit the needs of the localization problem (to better accomodate text expansion, for example). Advanced globalization tools will allow freelance translators to edit web pages directly over the web.

Input Method or Input Method Editor. A language-specific computer keyboard or a software tool that allows any standard keyboard to input the characters of a language. When the symbols exceed the number of keys and simple key combinations as do Asian languages with their large numbers of ideographs, the software presents a selection of possibilities for clicking with a mouse.

JPEG Joint Photographic Experts Group. The second most popular standard for compression of web graphics. Best suited for natural images. See GIF.

Markup . The printer's marks that indicate how a document is to appear when published. Sometimes also the editor's markings, or a graphical designer's marks to indicate positioning, fonts, styles, etc. in a "comp."

Markup language . Surrounding text with beginning and ending tags, typically set off in angle brackets. This is bold . Translators must take care to leave the words in the tags alone. Machine translation systems that are markup aware do not change tags, except for certain quoted material inside a tag's attrributes. For example See markup languages like HTML, SGML, and XML.

PDF Portable Document Format. An Adobe PostScript standard file format that is very popular on the web because it preserves the graphical look of a document, unlike HTML, which adapts itself to different browsers and has limited support for fonts.

SGML Structured Generalized Markup Language.

Stop list . "Noise" words like a, an, and the which are excluded from inclusion in automatic index and glossary compilations.

TBX An XML standard for terminology database exchange.

Termbase . A terminology database, usually multilingual. The contents of Terminology Managers. Includes fields in the database record for each term to define the concept, provide glosses appropriate to a subject field, source information, etc.

Terminology Manager . A software tool like Atril TermWatch, STAR TermStar, or Trados MultiTerm.

Term list . A terminology list, usually bilingual, with pairs of words in the target and source languages. It may also contain definitions, grammatical information, and other attributes. The input/output text files or TBX files of Terminology Managers. Usually in a format like comma-delimited or tab-delimited files suitable for use with a spreadsheet.

Text expansion . Recognizing that some languages are more verbose and have greater average word lengths, web page designers must leave room for the extra text space need in German, for example.

Translation agency . An organization that takes on the responsibility for providing translators (usually a mixture of employees and freelancers) for companies that do not want to manage the workflow involved with translation. Today these companies are positioning themselves as Localization firms, either SLVs or MLVs.

TMX An XML standard for translation memory (sentence pairs) exchange.

X-HTML . The future standard for markup of web documents. HTML 4.0 is the last of the pure HTML specification.

XML Extensible Markup Language A subset of SGML designed for the semantic web. HTML markup tags include style information, like and , that should be separated from the pure content. XML tags can indicate the meaning of the content, e.g., or .

XSL Extensible Stylesheet Language A superset of stylesheet rules, like DSSSL in SGML and CSS in HTML.

XSLT A Transformation Language to convert XML/XSL documents into HTML suitable for a browser to display.

Unicode . The 16-bit standard capable of encoding the characters of the world's major language scripts. It is designed to be a universal character set. Version 3.0 contains 49,194 characters and 8,515 code points for private uses and future expansions. Special 32-bit combinations can reach a million characters. Unicode is supported on all the major computer operating systems, as well as by HTML 4.0, XML, and X-HTML.

WYSIWYG What You See Is What You Get. The capability of a computer screen to represent the printed document accurately. A term introduced with the development of Desktop Publishing.

Zip A compressed form of a file or archive of multiple files. A convenient method of packaging files for Internet delivery to translators. The zipped file is posted on an FTP (file transfer protocol) server for download by freelance translators, who must have tools like WinZip or PKZip if the file is not a self-expanding archive (SEA), which is most convenient.

Zip drive . An Iomega removable storage system often used to distribute large documents.

Do you want us to add a translation term to this page? Send us an email or add a comment directly to this page below. Back to top of CMS Global site .

Edit | workFlow
Language: en  | fr | it | de | es | pt | ar | he | da | zh | nl | ko | ja | none

Search: Site | Web | Groups