From Glossary to Guardrail

I have always kept client glossaries and style guides organized, rather than trying to remember them from one project to the next. Since SI drafts became part of the workflow, the termbase has taken on a second job: it keeps a draft honest. It is also the subject of a paper I am preparing, "From Glossary to Guardrail", on termbase governance as quality control in Indonesian–English legal translation.

A machine picks the common answer

An SI system chooses the rendering it has seen most often. For many terms that is fine. For legal terms it often is not, because the common rendering and the correct one for this document type are different.

Take "company". Indonesian has perusahaan, a general word for a business, and perseroan, the word company law uses for a limited liability company. "Board of directors" can be dewan direksi, which you hear in business, or direksi, which is what the statute and most articles of association say. "Domiciled" can be berdomisili or berkedudukan; the deeds say berkedudukan. A draft will not know which one this client, this deed, this court expects. A termbase can.

Three levels of trust

Not every entry in my termbase carries the same weight. I use three statuses:

• Locked. Used verbatim, every time. No synonyms.
• Approved. Used by default, and it beats anything the draft suggests.
• Proposed. Used as guidance. If I override it, I flag the override.

The point is to make the decision once, write it down, and make it checkable. Then the review stops being an argument with myself on every page.

Conflicts stay visible

Some pairs I have not settled yet. Wanprestasi, for example: default, or breach of contract? Both appear in good translations. Around thirty pairs like this are still open in my own termbase. I do not let them block a job. The stored value is used, the alternative is shown to the reviewer, and the conflict stays on the list until I rule on it.

A glossary that hides its doubts is worse than none, because it looks certain.

What this does to the review

With a termbase in place, the first pass over a draft is almost mechanical. Check every listed term. Mark every deviation. Only then read for meaning. It sounds dull. It is also the part that catches the errors clients notice first.

So when people ask whether SI makes terminology work obsolete, my answer is the opposite. The better the drafts get, the more the guardrail matters.