CASE STUDY:
Epoke A/S manufactures spreaders for the treatment of icy roads and its machines are sold all over the world. Epoke spreaders are manufactured in Denmark and this has been the case since the company was founded in the 1930s. Today Epoke has a wide product portfolio with a strong dealer network in 28 countries.
SPECIFIC NEED FOR UNIFORM TERMINOLOGY
The Epoke development department is responsible for all of the company’s product
development. Epoke operates in a highly specialised market and develops most parts from scratch by itself. This means that the company has to conceive and define the terminology
that it uses. This often happens during the development phase.
Epoke’s specific terminology is used by the company’s sales and documentation departments. Over time, Epoke realised that there was a need for the use of uniform terminology within the company in order to ensure the consistent preparation of technical documentation, drawings and sales material in Danish and in other languages.
World Translation has provided translations for Epoke for a number of years and made use
of a file-based termbase.
“When we started the terminology project together with World Translation, we thought it was
going to be a huge mountain to climb. But once the work was underway and we were able to plan the different steps and see the structure, it wasn’t so bad after all. We have invested a huge amount of time in the work – sitting down and building the company’s terminology once and for all, requires a fair amount of in-house resources. However, it only needed to do be done once. And it definitely pays off! We really benefit in our work from online MultiTerm and its many
functions.”
- Lene Arp Jensen, Epoke A/S
THE SOLUTION – AN ONLINE DEFINITION-BASED TERMBASE
In close collaboration with primary project managers at World Translation, Epoke developed an online termbase – a concept-oriented online terminology database that is based on definitions. In connection with this, Epoke invested a lot of time in re-organising internal word lists, choosing relevant specialist terms in the termbase and writing definitions in Danish, which is the source language. Subsequently, specialist translators via the World Translation project managers and in close collaboration with Epoke, translated the specialist terms into both English and German.
An online terminology database can also be expanded to include more information. For
example, Epoke uses the option of being able to add comments alongside a specialist term and to add concept information.
The termbase is used across departments at Epoke and the database is often used as a lookup tool. Users of the terminology database can easily look up a term and find relevant information about a specific specialist term.
THE ONLINE TERMBASE PROVIDES EPOKE WITH THE FOLLOWING BENEFITS:
- Users can look up a term from any location.
- Fast overview of definitions, comments and contexts.
- Helps new employees to quickly understand products, terms and definitions.
