4.3.2. Applications for the Terminologist's Workstation

The Translation Bureau developed the terminologist's workstation (called LATTER^©) to rationalize resources and streamline the workflow related to the creation of terminological products. The complete workstation combines a number of programs and allows for the collection, storage, sharing, analysis and synthesis of terminological data while simplifying and accelerating the input of TERMIUM^® records and the production of glossaries and vocabularies

The local database that is part of LATTER^© includes, among others, functions for data management and exchange, and allows the creation of worksets of records produced or imported, and the exclusion of selected records. Using LATTER^©'s data-recording program, the terminologist may:

• Input records resulting from term extraction.
• Draft records for later completion.
• Prepare monolingual, bilingual or multilingual records.
• Merge monolingual working records into multilingual records based on conceptual and textual matches.
• Create complete, final records.
• Copy complete records or parts of records and modify the copies.
• Establish conceptual links among various groups of records.
• Collect and record phraseological data.
• Automatically validate records before exporting them to TERMIUM^®.
• Exchange records between workstations.
• Export sets of records to electronic-publishing software.
• Import TERMIUM^® or YVANHOÉ^© records or outside-collaborator records for processing.
• Automatically query TERMIUM^® to detect terms missing from that database.

TERMICOM^©

The first version of this user-friendly application was created by a Translation Bureau translator for use by his colleagues. The most recent version allows individual translators to create and store relatively simple records, share them immediately with a group of authorized users through the local area network, and manage all records collectively.

Spell Checkers

Word-processing packages generally include spell-checking utilities which can be used to accelerate the proofreading stage of record creation. By comparing the recorded terms and textual supports with its reference dictionary, the spell checker can indicate typographical errors and other discrepancies.

However, the usefulness of spell checkers is limited in terminology work, since the most up-to-date contents of terminology databases have never been recorded in dictionaries, much less in the dictionaries included with commercial word processors. In fact, when spell checkers stop at unrecognized words, it is more likely to be because of the limitations of their reference dictionaries than because of typographical errors on the terminology records.