How to Build a Technical Translation Glossary: A Guide for Engineering and Manufacturing Teams

Key Takeaways

• A technical translation glossary is a controlled list of approved term pairs — source language terms and their approved translations in each target language — covering product names, component names, processes, standards references, and any other terminology that must be consistent across all translated documentation.
• Without a glossary, different translators make independent decisions about how to render the same technical term — producing inconsistency across a documentation set that compounds over time and across language versions.
• Building a glossary requires input from subject-matter experts within the business — engineers, product managers, regulatory affairs teams — not just the translation agency. The agency cannot independently determine the correct translation of a proprietary product name or a client-specific process term.
• A glossary is a living document that must be updated whenever new products, components, standards, or processes are introduced — and whenever an existing term is deliberately changed.
• Translation memory and glossary management in MemoQ enforces approved terminology during translation, flagging any segment where a glossary term appears so the translator applies the approved translation rather than making an independent choice.

For engineering and manufacturing teams that produce large volumes of technical documentation in multiple languages, terminology inconsistency is one of the most common and most preventable quality problems in translated content. The same component described by three different names in three language versions of the same manual. A process called by different terms in the installation guide and the maintenance manual. A safety warning using a non-standard rendering of a hazard classification. These problems accumulate quietly and are only noticed when a distributor queries them, a regulator flags them, or an end user is confused by them.

A technical translation glossary prevents them. This guide covers how to build one, what it should contain, and how it integrates with your translation process.

What a technical translation glossary contains

A translation glossary is a structured database of term pairs. At its most basic, each entry contains:

• The source language term (typically English for UK manufacturing and engineering businesses)
• The approved translation in each target language
• A definition or usage note explaining what the term refers to
• The context in which the term applies (product line, document type, or subject area)
• Status (approved, pending review, deprecated)

For a manufacturer producing documentation in five languages, a glossary entry for a component name would contain the English name, five approved translations, a brief description of what the component is, and any usage notes about when this term applies versus similar terms that might be confused with it.

More developed glossaries also include:

• Part numbers or product codes associated with the term
• The source of the approved translation (standards body, internal decision, client requirement)
• Date of last review
• Notes on regional variants (e.g. US English vs UK English; Simplified Chinese vs Traditional Chinese)

Step 1: Identify the scope

Before building the glossary, define what it needs to cover. For most engineering and manufacturing businesses, the priority categories are:

Product and component names — proprietary names for your products, product lines, components, assemblies, and sub-assemblies. These are the terms most likely to be mistranslated or rendered inconsistently, because they are specific to your business and no general dictionary or translation memory from another client will contain them.

Process names — the names of manufacturing processes, quality procedures, testing methods, and operational steps specific to your products or production environment. Terms like "cold forming", "induction hardening", "takt time", or "first article inspection" have established translations in most engineering languages — but your specific process variant may have a client-specific name that needs to be controlled.

Standards and regulatory references — the names of standards (ISO 9001, IATF 16949, REACH, CE marking), regulations, and regulatory bodies used in your documentation. These must be referenced consistently and correctly in every language version.

Safety terminology — safety warnings, hazard classifications, GHS H and P statements, and safety procedure terminology. Safety terminology has specific regulatory requirements in some markets (REACH SDS language requirements, Machinery Directive instructions) and must match the officially approved translations.

Units and measurement conventions — some markets use different unit conventions. Metric vs imperial, comma vs decimal point as a decimal separator, date format conventions. These are not vocabulary terms but they are sources of documentation error that a glossary policy can address.

Step 2: Extract existing terminology

The fastest way to build an initial glossary is to extract terminology from existing documentation rather than starting from scratch.

If you have existing translated documentation that has been reviewed and approved — even informally — the approved translations in those documents represent a starting point for the glossary. Your translation agency can extract a candidate term list from your existing translation memory, which contains all previously translated segments alongside their approved translations.

If you have existing English-language documentation without translations, a technical reviewer can manually extract candidate terms — the nouns, noun phrases, and specialised expressions that appear repeatedly and carry specific meaning.

The result of this extraction is a candidate term list, not yet an approved glossary. Every candidate term needs to be reviewed by a subject-matter expert before it is added to the approved glossary.

Step 3: Subject-matter expert review

This is the step most often skipped — and the one that determines whether the glossary is actually useful.

Each candidate term in the target language must be reviewed by someone with the subject-matter expertise to confirm it is correct. For an automotive manufacturer, this means an engineer, a quality manager, or a product specialist reviewing the proposed translations of component names and process terms. For a medical device manufacturer, this means a clinical or regulatory affairs professional reviewing the translations of clinical and regulatory terminology.

The translation agency can propose translations based on their translators' expertise, but the final approval of terminology — particularly for proprietary product names and client-specific process terms — must come from within the client organisation. No translator can independently determine that a particular German term is the correct approved name for your specific product variant.

During the review process, subject-matter experts should also flag:

• Terms where the current translation is incorrect and needs to be replaced
• Terms where multiple translations are in current use and one needs to be standardised
• Terms that appear in the documentation but are not yet in the glossary
• Terms that have changed meaning due to product or process updates

Step 4: Format and maintain the glossary

Once reviewed and approved, the glossary is loaded into the translation memory tool — MemoQ in the case of Global LTS — as a client-specific term base. During translation, MemoQ highlights any segment containing a glossary term and displays the approved translation, prompting the translator to apply it.

The term base is maintained throughout the client relationship. New products, new processes, and regulatory updates generate new terms. Product revisions may require existing terms to be updated or deprecated. The glossary should be reviewed at least annually, and updated whenever a significant product change or regulatory update occurs.

A glossary that is not maintained becomes a liability rather than an asset — outdated approved terms applied inconsistently with current usage are worse than no glossary at all.

What a glossary costs and what it saves

Building an initial glossary requires time from both the translation agency and subject-matter experts within the client organisation. For a manufacturer with a complex product range, an initial glossary build may take several weeks of intermittent effort from internal reviewers.

The return on this investment compounds over time. Translation memory match rates increase as the term base grows, reducing per-word translation costs. Revision and correction rates fall as inconsistency errors are eliminated at source. Distributor and regulatory queries about terminology are reduced. New language versions are more consistent with existing ones because the same term base is applied across all language combinations.

For businesses with ongoing translation requirements across multiple languages and product lines, a well-maintained glossary is the single most impactful quality investment available.

Global LTS provides technical translation services with client-specific term base management in MemoQ for engineering, manufacturing, medical, and legal documentation. Contact us to discuss terminology management for your translation projects.

For related reading, see our guides on technical translation vs general translation and patent translation for UK businesses.