Robotic palletizing case study: Intelligent terminology work in robot software translation

Technical translations are part of our daily business. Our experienced project managers take care of our customers in the pallet industry. The company manufactures robots that are used for loading and unloading pallets, and these robots are controlled by special software. Our customer needed a translation of terms for the software's controls, and we were given a list of very specific terms for the pallet industry, but without any context. They needed to be translated from Dutch into English, Russian, Polish and French.

Other translation agencies fail to handle the technical language

Every technical sector relies on a specific language - its own specialised language. Like medicine or marketing, the pallet industry also has its own names and terms that a layman might not understand. This was also the problem for our customer, who after several attempts with other translation agencies finally came to us. This was because other agencies didn't fully master the technical language of the pallet industry.

How we set a new standard in the pallet industry with terminology work

One way to translate the terms was to put the translation into an Excel spreadsheet. Another option was to create what is called TM, translation memory - which the customer chose. Creating a term database of this type has many advantages. Not only does it save time when translating, but it also ensures consistent translations - not least when translating into multiple languages.

In Germany, we provide translations for the European Pallet Association e.V. (EPAL), the umbrella organisation for manufacturers and repair companies for the EUR pallet. With access to term databases in the German pallet industry, we have been able to make it easier for our customers to sell their machines on the German market.

Therefore, we have also set the standard for the pallet industry, which so far has hardly had any fully developed term databases for relatively small languages in an international context, e.g. Dutch.