case study

With multiple end-users (customer, supplier, service and sales agent, internal, and  transportation), Wayfair was receiving reports of poor quality translations. Translations often had incorrect terminology. Root cause analysis showed that inconsistent source terminology was often to blame.

The language and word choice (terminology) used by a company is what gives it a unique voice.

Consistency in appearance and communication drives customer trust, builds credibility, increases confidence, and decreases cognitive load. Conversely, inconsistency confuses users and deteriorates the brand.

Just as visual assets, colors, and design are critical to building identity and confidence, so is word choice. With dozens of words that can correctly convey a message, content creators need to know which terms align best with the brand and communicate most clearly to our audiences in the company voice.

Inconsistency in source language terminology creates exponential problems (cost, quality, and time) as the number of languages increases.

I worked with leaders across five end-user domains to establish a cross-functional, cross-domain terminology management team that:

• Agreed upon and defined an end-to-end terminology management process and responsibilities.
• Defined an appropriate format and domains for terminology variants.
• Collected and validated terminology from existing sources into a single, shared termbase.
• Recommended appropriate terminology management tools to be used across the organization.
• Defined a terminology development and maintenance process for multilingual and multi-brand terminology assets.
• Owned the ongoing maintenance and enhancement of the termbase.

I also received approval to hire and helped recruit a full-time terminology lead.

The project resulted in an enterprise-wide multi-lingual termbase that defined which terms should and should not be used for each language. Synonyms approved for occasional or specific domain use and forbidden words increase the functionality of the termbase and checking software. The on-going terminology council holds weekly cross-functional meetings to keep the termbase relevant and accurate.

The localization team updated translation glossaries and terminology memories to improve translation quality, reduce cost, and decrease time.

After creating a vision and articulating the problem to my cross-functional peers and leadership, I established a terminology tiger team to tackle the problem quickly. As an interim owner, I led the tiger team through weekly workshops. After teaching and implementing best practices for managing enterprise terminology to meet the project goals, I eventually handed the project off to a newly-hired terminology manager.