The Confusing Language of the Language Industry

In the GILT industry, we make money off the fact that certain people do not understand the languages we speak. So why should it be any different that no one understands the language spoken within the industry. There are so many TLAs (three letter acronyms) and other abbreviations that it takes a dictionary for an English speaker to understand some otherwise English conversations. If you are one of those who would like to brush up on your GILT-ese, here are a few good resources for industry lingo:

• LISA's Globalization Glossary
• The back of any issue of Multilingual
• The back of The Globalization Industry Primer
• The back of The Guide to Translation and Localization
• "GILT: Globalization, Internationalization, Localization, Translation" by Pierre Cadieux and Bert Esselink in LISA's Globalization Insider.

This was required reading for the graduate courses I taught on computer-assisted translation (CAT) at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. After reading these short helps, you should know what someone is talking about the next time you're asked if you have a comprehensive GMS with a TM or TMS that supports XLIFF, TMX, and TBX, integrated with MT, a CMS, and a PM system, or if you're asked what the difference is between g11n, l10n, and i18n... a great conversation starter at parties...

Discussions on the excessive number of GILT-related acronyms have inspired enough chuckles that I think the GILT industry deserves a new mascot, the L10n CAT: