Glossaries and word lists are key aids for understanding terms

Linguistic Resources III:
Glossaries, Specialist Dictionaries & Bilingual Word Lists

On this page you'll find various glossaries and specialist dictionaries in English and German connected with ATS's main subject areas:

Terminology sources in English:

Glossaries in German or Ger-Eng:


Glossaries in English

Automotive

DieselNet - fuels and the automotive industry

This is a specialist website that focuses on diesel engines, fuels and emissions.

If you click on the logo above, it will take you to their detailed glossary of English terms, which also includes acronyms commonly used in this field.

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Codicology

The Auchinleck Manuscript glossary

The National Library of Scotland has produced a glossary of technical terms used in essays describing the Auchinleck Manuscript, which is a national treasure produced in London in the 1330s. The glossary covers "the manuscript's physical make-up, production, texts and historical context".

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Communications

The Global Mobile Suppliers Association, UK

The Global Mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) is an association of international telecommunications companies. Its website includes a telecoms glossary, which also contains lots of acronyms used in this field.

Click on the GSA's logo to go to the search page.

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Energy

Electro Industries' glossary

US firm Electro Industries, Inc. manufactures products for the energy sector and has written a very comprehensive glossary explaining terms from this field.

Click on the image above to go to the contents page (A-Z).

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Management

12Manage's glossary of management terms

This website includes a wealth of information on management topics, part of which has also been translated into German (and other languages).

The site includes a large glossary of management terms in English (click on the logo above).

Apart from providing explanations of terms, it's also useful for translators because it features a large number of background articles on all sorts of management topics - supply chain management, change management, human resources, coaching, brands, quality and ethics, just to name a few.

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Quality management

The American Society for Quality

A glossary of quality management terms produced by the American Society for Quality is available here.

It's based on "a variety of sources, including books, periodicals, Web sites and quality experts" and is intended for people who work in the QM industry, ASQ says.

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Management and HR

Human Resources Institute of New Zealand

The Human Resources Institute of New Zealand (HRINZ) has created two related glossaries of interest: one on management in general and one specifically on human-resource management.

These resources are part of a much larger searchable knowledge base that includes articles on business and management issues.

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Marketing

Monash University's coat of arms

Monash University's marketing dictionary

The Department of Marketing at Monash University, Australia maintains a detailed marketing glossary that's free for its students and anyone else to use.

As well as explaining marketing terms and concepts, it includes various acronyms used in the field (some of which are specific to Australian bodies).

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Customer Value's glossary of competitive strategy terms

Customer Value, Inc. in Boston has made a glossary of terms used to talk about competitive marketing strategies such as branding.

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Materials

AZOM's materials dictionary

AZOM stands for "the A to Z of materials". The aim of AZoM.com is "to become the primary materials information source for the engineering and design community worldwide".

The online dictionary is very useful if you need to find out the chemical formula of a material or want to learn more about its composition. Click on the graphic to go there.

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Patents

Various national patent offices have produced glossaries explaining patent terminology.

of English terms is a good start. 

Click here to go to the Patent Resources page on our website where a few more of these resources are listed (see item 3).

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The NMRA's glossary of English railway terms

Railways

The NMRA (National Model Railroad Association) might seem a bit of an unusual choice at first glance, but they have actually created a detailed glossary of (American) English terms used in railway engineering as well as model-making. It's worth a visit if you need to find out what technical terms in this field mean exactly.

There is another useful glossary of English terms on Wikipedia. This one is interesting because it includes terms from several varieties of English, not just British or American English.

Finally, John Oxlade has put a bilingual German-English glossary of railway terms on the www.worldrailfans.org website. See Section 4 of the Patents page - "Railway engineering" - for further details.

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German-English/German glossaries

Banking

UBS hasn't just produced an English glossary of banking terms, but made it into a multilingual dictionary as well by including the terms in their German, English, French and Italian forms:

UBS Dictionary of Banking

The dictionary was updated in 2005 and now contains over 2,400 terms. It's also regularly expanded.

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Government and international politics

VALTER government termbase

The Finnish Government has created a pool of freely accessible terminology resources called VALTER concerned with Finnish and international government policy.

All of these are bi- or multilingual and have been created by the Government and its agencies. Besides Finnish and English, which they all contain, German, English, French, Russian, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, Saami and Estonian are also partly available.

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Management

BEA's management glossary

BEA, a firm of German management consultants, has made a fairly big glossary of German and English terms (120+) used in the field, which you can access from here.

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Amper Translation Service's own management glossary (abridged)

ATS management glossary

This is our own list of selected German management terms along with equivalent expressions used in British English.

You're welcome to refer to this and even download the glossary free of charge. It's not exhaustive, of course, but contains quite a number of common expressions.

Click here for the PDF version or here for one written in HTML.

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Further resources for you

» Check out which English reference works I can personally recommend.

» Go to the resources in German and other languages.

» See what links I've collected for translators of patents (one of ATS's main areas).

» Various blogs and articles for translators.

» Proz.com, the translation platform, has useful sections on its site for translators who want help in understanding a source term and/or finding a suitable translation of it; you can search users' glossaries or ask other users for suggestions via the KudoZ forum.

» Feel free to send me some feedback or make suggestions about other glossaries I might want to include here. I'd love to hear from you!

Carl





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