Terminological consistency #1: Vendor claims

Below I have compiled a handful of claims by translation and language software vendors on the importance of terminological consistency.

SDL Trados Studio

SDL offers a downloadable brochure entitled The importance of corporate terminology. On page 8 it says:

By defining a concept and assigning one allowed term per language to it, a company can make sure that everybody involved in the communication process is clear and consistent, no matter which department, subject area or which text type is concerned.

 The SDL MultiTerm page says:

SDL MultiTerm is SDL's terminology management tool used worldwide by content owners, project managers, reviewers and translators to ensure consistency in terminology across all content types and languages. It can be used as a standalone desktop tool to create terminology databases and glossaries or with SDL Trados Studio to improve overall translation quality and efficiency.

Elsewhere we read:

A key finding from the TTI survey is that nearly half of translation rework is caused by terminology inconsistencies. 

memoQ

The page headed memoQ benefits for individual translators says:

The bigger the project, the harder it is to ensure consistency. Terminology and recurring phrases must be applied consistently. memoQ helps you achieve this ...

Acrolinx

Referring to an Acrolinx case history, we learn that:

Introducing the Acrolinx platform also helped raise in-house awareness of the importance of consistent terminology. This, in turn, simplified translations into other languages and allowed the company to speak with one voice.

With the exception of SDL's naive statement about "one allowed word per language" for a given concept, I would agree entirely with all of these claims if only they were made with a few reservations. These reservations will be discussed in my next two or three posts.