In large organizations, there are multiple communicators operating in different departments and functional groups, who all co-operate on the development of a single product. In terms of linguistic contribution, the most uncomplicated scenario typically involves written input from members in no fewer than six departments, including engineering, technical publications, marketing, training, legal, and sales. Often times, however, depending on the industry, there are more stakeholders than this collaborating on the different forms of documentation that accompany a single product.
Even in the best case scenario, the communication process is laboriously complex and can easily engender miscommunications that, if left untreated, will have a profound effect on the end quality of a product, including its accompanying documentation and literature.
To reiterate: any discrepancy among terms will confuse your users. Therefore, labeled components must employ the same terms as GUI components, part identifications in technical drawings must employ the same terminology as user help manuals, and new features hawked about in marketing collateral must be referred to in the same manner by members of the organization’s sales team, otherwise consumers will experience a disconnect between the product itself and its usability, which has far-reaching repercussions on overall user experience.
Interestingly enough, terminological inconsistency that arises from a lack of effective communication is usually caught by an organization’s language service provider. That is, if your preferred localization partner is employing a proper terminology management strategy—and utilizing a comprehensive terminology management system—then they can usually prevent term-related disparities from getting passed downstream. Even if a product localized into multiple target languages is free from terminological inconsistency, however, any disagreement that exists between terms at the source-level of your documentation can often cause problems notably more serious than poor usability.
Take, for example, the Life Sciences industry. As one of the most heavily regulated industries in the world, the Life Sciences leave no room for terminological inconsistency in the production of medical devices, consumables, or the like. This is especially true of Class II/III medical devices and pharmaceuticals, where any inconsistency can potentially have life-altering effects.
This being the case, it’s imperative that all products and their accompanying material are consistent the first time around. Consistency, however, is difficult to attain, because the average development process of a medical device involves collaboration between a minimum of ten different functional groups:
Each of these groups contributes to the various forms of written communication behind a single medical device. With ten different departments in ten different locations all doling out written material based on the unique responsibilities of their respective positions, chaos naturally ensues. This is especially true of any organization involved in manufacturing, because the development process is seldom serial, but rather the effort of numerous operative teams working in parallel. Although this method is conducive to meeting delivery deadlines, it wreaks havoc on linguistic quality.