Start with the concept, not the word
A term names a concept. Before looking for its equivalent, pin down what the concept is in the source text: what the object does, what it is part of, what it is distinguished from. A fire damper and a smoke damper are different products; a search that starts from “damper” alone will give you both and tell you nothing. Write a one-line definition first. Every source you consult afterwards is checked against it.
Where to look
In roughly this order, for English and Canadian French:
- Your own term base and past translations. A term your firm already approved wins over any dictionary.
- The official text you are working from. For construction, the official French of the National Master Specification is the reference; standards from CSA and the codes published in both languages are next.
- Government terminology banks. TERMIUM Plus, from the Government of Canada’s Translation Bureau, and the OQLF’s Vitrine linguistique, which includes the Grand dictionnaire terminologique. Both give the subject field, and often a definition or a context.
- Manufacturers’ bilingual documentation. A Canadian manufacturer’s French catalogue shows the term actually used on site for its product.
- Specialized dictionaries and glossaries in the field, preferably recent and Canadian.
Where to be careful
- Bilingual concordancers such as Linguee show how other people translated a phrase, not whether they were right. Useful for ideas, never as proof.
- Machine translation and AI chat will give a fluent answer with no source. Treat it as a hypothesis to verify.
- France-only sources can be right for France and wrong for Quebec. On a Quebec construction project, the devis is the specification; in France, the specification is the CCTP, and a devis is usually a price quote.
- Forums can point to a lead; they do not settle anything.
How to search well
- Search the term in context: the term with a word from its field (anchor bolt concrete, not just anchor bolt).
- Use exact phrases in quotes, and restrict to Canadian sites (site:gc.ca, site:gouv.qc.ca) when the market is Canada.
- Search the French candidate too, and read how it is used in a real French document. If the context does not match your concept, it is not your term.
Check, then record
A term is ready when two independent, reliable sources agree with your definition. Then record it, so that one search becomes a term base entry.
What a term record holds
Keep it short enough that you’ll fill it in every time: the term in each language, a one-line definition, the source and its date, and any term to avoid. A catch basin record, for instance, gives bouche d’égout, cites NMS section 33 05 16, and warns that puisard means sump.
Why it pays to do it once
Only about 4 to 6% of the words in a text need terminology research (Guy Champagne, The Economic Value of Terminology, 2004), yet wrong terms caused 47% of the translation errors in General Motors’ study of its own translations (SAE J1930, Woyde 2005). A term also costs more to fix late, because by then it appears in more places and deliverables (Kara Warburton, Developing a business case for managing terminology, 2024).
When it is worth outsourcing
On one document, research is part of translating. Across a firm’s projects, it becomes a terminology project. When different people redo the same searches on different projects, the same corrections land back on your engineers’ desks. That is what a term base is for. Technitrad’s terminologists do that research once, from your past translations, and your engineers approve the result. A free terminology check on a recent translated deliverable shows how much of that work is already waiting in your documents.
Are your translations consistent? Get a free terminology check.
This method comes from David Fay, Managing Director of Technitrad, who holds a Master in Terminology from Universitat Pompeu Fabra (IULA, Barcelona, 2013) and is an ECQA Certified Terminology Manager (Basic).