A translation glossary is the approved list of how your key terms get translated: brand names, product names, industry vocabulary, and the phrases you never want rendered loosely. We build one before translating anything, then translate against it, so the same term comes out the same way across hundreds of products and every article. It is the difference between a catalog that reads as one consistent voice and one that reads like it was translated by ten different people.
What goes in it
- Brand and product names, with the decision on what stays in the original language and what gets translated.
- Technical and industry terms, each with one approved translation, so a spec means the same thing on every page.
- Terms to leave untranslated on purpose (model numbers, trademarks, certain industry standards).
- Tone and formality notes for the language, which matter a lot in markets where the wrong register reads as rude or amateur.
We lean on this for real. For a B2B distributor we work with, the glossary was what made a Chinese translation of a full catalog and article library hold together: hundreds of products, a lot of repeated technical terminology, and a need for every instance to match. Without it, that job produces a thousand small inconsistencies you only notice when a customer does.
A glossary is worth building any time you are translating more than a handful of pages, especially in technical or regulated categories. It is a small amount of work up front that saves a large amount of cleanup later.