Heidi Cazes

So many options, so little time… Picking the best term by assesing your sources

Translators and interpreters rely on different tools when doing research to solve terminology problems. Nowadays, we can use different tools that give us access to innumerable types of documents and sources, and sometimes we get many options. While in the past finding enough information could be a problem, today it might seem that we have too much of a good thing.

When deciding which is the term you should use in your translation, you have to go beyond a list of options, and consider -among other things- where your proposed term came from. And no matter the type of source you are using, the term you finally decide to use will only be as good as the quality of the sources you are relying on.

This presentation will address the different types of source materials that can be useful in terminology research. It will also provide different criteria for assessing those sources and their results, in order to help us decide if they are correct or which would be the best option for the specific translation we are working on.

BIOGRAPHY

Heidi Cazes is a translator, interpreter and terminologist. She has a Graduate Diploma in Translation from El Colegio de Mexico and a Master’s in Terminology from Universitat Pompeu Fabra. She works as a freelance interpreter and translator, and as a contract conference level interpreter with the US Department of State. She is an ATA certified translator and a Federal Court Certified Interpreter. She has worked doing terminology research, developing specialized dictionaries, and as a lecturer in terminology. She is a member of IAPTI, ATA and NAJIT. She is also a producer and voting member of ASTM working on committee F43 on the updating of the standards for translation and interpreting.