Thursday, February 19, 2015

Glossaries best practices

Hi folks! Today a blog post asking for your input: in order to improve Interpreters’ Help and to understand better how most interpreters work, I would like you to tell me what good practices are - in your opinion - when creating a glossary.
What is a ‘good' glossary, efficient to memorize, look up in the booth, or archive for later use?

  • How many lines should a glossary have? What’s the top limit?
  • How many words/characters should a cell have? What’s the top limit?
  • Should a glossary have a description? How long?
  • How do you efficiently name a glossary?
  • Should a glossary have tags?
  • If yes, what’s the best way to manage tags?
  • Is it better to have one big glossary or a lot of small ones?


Please comment on this post, let us know if there are online resources answering some of these questions. What is taught in interpreting schools on that topic?
On Interpreters’ Help, we see all sorts of glossaries: from 40 lines with 1 or 2 terms per cell to 10 000 lines with cells having paragraphs of text.
The latter type represents a big challenge in terms of performance, and to be able to accept these glossaries we have to make concessions to the users' experience because we have to design the search page a certain way.

Thanks in advance!

Benoît Werner
Interpreters' Help co-founder