What is a Terminology Database (TD)?
A terminology database (TD) is a collection of terms with their corresponding translation in one or various other languages. The database can be mono-directional, meaning that its entries only work from one language to another, or multi-directional, which allow the translation of terms to occur between both languages interchangeably. Wordbee Translator's databases are both multilingual and multi-directional: this means that not only can terms be translated in both directions, but one single term can have multiple translations in whichever languages are entered. One does not, for example, need to create separate entries for the same term from English into French and English into Italian: the same English entry can have its French and Italian equivalents, and one can also use the exact same term from French and Italian into English.
Terminology databases, along with translation memories which store complete translated segments from previous texts, are used concurrently to speed up the translation process.
A terminology database is neither to be confused with a dictionary, which provides a definition and various use contexts for the term in question. Terminology databases only feature the term and its unique translation in other languages, which makes them ideal for storing highly specialized terminology related to a particular field, for which one single translation is often available in a particular language. In addition, just like TMs, they are highly customizable, allowing various types of information about any single term to be stored through the use of metadata (for example, field, description, hyperlinks, image, etc...)