Recommendations for dictionary entries
Guidelines to create proper entries in a dictionary.
Recommendations and guidelines
The following guidelines help you create dictionary terms correctly and accurately.
- One-word entries should be avoided, as they may reduce the overall accuracy in the translation. It is recommended to include only terms consisting of two or more words. This will ensure more accurate rendering of their meaning.
- Terms should have a high frequency in the context where they are used.
- Terms should be unambiguous: they must have one clear meaning per context and they must not require additional interpretation.
- Terms that change for gender or number in the source language must be added as separate entries if fluent terminology is not used.
For example, Arzt and Ärztin are the German masculine and feminine words for doctor in English. In a German>English dictionary, they should both be entered if fluent terminology is not used.
- Words that can be spelled in different ways in the source language must be added as separate entries.
- Terms consisting of common nouns and verbs must be avoided.
- When a dictionary is applied to a translation, longer terms have priority over shorter terms that may be included in a longer one.
For example, if a dictionary includes the English terms no credit, no credit check, and no credit check auto loan, the term no credit check auto loan has priority over the other two. Likewise, the term no credit check has priority over no credit.
Reliability guidelines
- Start by translating the source content without using dictionaries
- Start by translating your content without using dictionaries. This will provide you with a clear view of the initial translation quality.
- Analyze the initial translation and identify recurrent issues
- After the initial translation, check the output to identify recurrent issues. Most of the times, the issues connected with terminology can be fixed with the use of dictionaries.
- Assess the impact of the dictionaries
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After translating your content using a dictionary, you should analyze the machine translation output again. Focus on the impact that the terms included in the dictionary have had on the translation. The following situations might occur.
- A previously wrongly translated term is now predominantly translated correctly. This is the intended effect.
- A previously wrongly translated term has not changed. Verify if there is a typo or if the term is inflected in the new source.
- A previously correctly translated term is now translated incorrectly. Probably one of your terms is applied where you did not expect it. Consider removing the term from the dictionary.