Checking terminology and phraseology is rather different from checking idioma- city. If the translator has used a term or phrasing which Google cannot find, that does not make it wrong. It may be a client-specific term. Also, bear in mind that engines do not search the Web directly; they search a database of selected pages. The Google database contains only a poron of all Web pages, though the actual percentage is no longer publicly available informaon. So the term you are checking may well exist but not be available through a Google search. On the other hand, if you find, again and again, that Google cannot locate the translator’s choice of term or phrase, or worse, that it is found mainly on sites in countries where the target language is not the most common nave language, then there is probably something wrong. Thus a Google query revealed that the word ‘halieuc’ does occur, but almost all the hits are bilingual diconary sites rather than texts, or else they are English texts on sites in French-speaking countries, and the texts at these sites were thus probably wrien in English by French speakers or by careless translators (the French adjecve ‘halieuque’ means ‘having to do with fishing’).
Somemes you may suspect that the term the translator has chosen is not the most frequent one. Is a certain poron of the backbone called the ‘dorso- lumbar spine’, as the translator has wrien, or is it ‘thoraco-lumbar spine’, the term you found in a termbank? You can try a ‘Google vote’ to compare frequen- cies of occurrence, but care must be taken in interpreng the results. Consider three cases:
• You get approximately equal numbers of hits for both terms. Leaving aside the possibility that one of the terms mainly appears at non-nave- writer sites, this result suggests leaving the translator’s term unchanged, all other things being equal. (An example of other things not being equal: have you considered the possibility that the two expressions are not real- ly synonyms? Since you are not a medical specialist, you cannot be sure. It may be that only one of the two items conveys the correct meaning.) • There is a striking difference in frequency, say 300 hits for the translator’s
term and 12,000 for the term you found in a termbank. This certainly seems to suggest making a change, but there is another possibility: the
100 Brian Mossop
translator’s term is not used much in most parts of the English-speaking world, but locally, it is in common use. If you were to use a ‘site:xx’ re- stricon when querying Google, you might get a very different answer about frequency.
• The translator’s term has 9,000 hits as opposed to 18,000 hits for the al- ternave in your termbank. Here the point made earlier in the discussion about ‘progressive introducon’ applies: 9,000 is plenty to jusfy use of that variant, all other things being equal. If you were translang yourself rather than revising, you might decide to ‘play it safe’ by choosing the term with 18,000 hits, but when revising someone else’s work, the situ- aon is different (see Chapter 14).
A further consideraon with ‘Google votes’ is that many hits are duplicates. There may be 5,000 hits, but if you go to the fourth page of hits, you may find a warning that ‘we have omied some entries very similar to the 34 already dis- played’. In other words, there were really only 34 different texts found; one or more of those 34 texts appears at a great many sites. Also bear in mind that even if you place an expression within quotaon marks, Google may try to be ‘helpful’ and find related expressions for you: it may include synonyms in the search, find results that match terms similar to those in your query, search for words with the same root and make spelling “correcons” (which, you may have noced, result in searches for completely different words). To avoid this, when you arrive at the hits page, select ‘Verbam’ (its locaon on your screen will vary) . This should restrict hits to sites containing the exact wording you entered.
Computer Aids to Checking 101
A general consideraon regarding term research is that you are a reviser, not a terminologist. You do not have the me to do all the research a terminologist would do before establishing a terminological equivalency as correct. Indeed, you cannot spend as much me on research as you do when you yourself are the translator, for revisers are expected to move through the text far more rapidly than the original translator. This need to move along quickly does unfortunately create a problem because overly rapid Google research can easily lead to error. For example, if you inquire about the term ‘shoreline development’, the hitlist will suggest to you that it refers to the outcome of human development acvies along a shoreline. You might then think that the translator has erred in using the term to mean the degree of irregularity of a lake’s shoreline. However more thorough research would have revealed that this is in fact another meaning of the term.
When considering a hitlist, you also need to be sure that the items you have found do indeed correspond to the term you are searching. For example, sup- pose the translator has referred to a tree that has a ‘true collar’. You wonder if such an expression exists. You get a lengthy hitlist, but on closer examinaon you discover that the hits mostly contain expressions like ‘true collar rot’, which may turn out to mean ‘collar rot that is genuine’ rather than ‘rot in the true col- lar’. Another possibility is that the term the translator has used is very common, but in a completely different field from that of the text; perhaps the translator failed to look at the field designaon in a term bank entry. So it’s important to examine the first page of hits fairly carefully to make sure you are looking at relevant material.
Finally, Google can be used to find on-line bilingual or mullingual gloss- aries. Enter the words ‘forestry’ and ‘glossary’ to get forestry glossaries. Enter a parcular forestry term plus ‘glossary’ or ‘definion’ to find a forestry glossary that contains your term. To find a bilingual glossary containing your term in both source and target languages, use Google’s Advanced Search page. Enter the source-language term, along with ‘glossary’, then go to the languages menu and select the target language. You will thus be looking for all the target-language pages that contain your source-language term. The resulng hitlist will oen include bilingual glossaries in your field.