6 Steps to a Multilingual Termbase for Dummies

Table of contents

Creating a multilingual termbase can be one of the trickiest SEO-related tasks you’ll need to accomplish when you want to go international with your business. Many people struggle when it comes to finding the right words in their target languages. In the end, they’re left with a poorly translated list of useless phrases.

We want to show you that it can be much easier than you might think! In fact, it only takes six steps to come up with a termbase in any language that will ease your way abroad. Want to bet?

Note: This tutorial is focused on beginners and small business owners.

Step 1

In your mother tongue, identify your seed keywords — these are the words typically used in your business. You might, for example, have a company producing furniture.

Identifying seed keywords

Note: Take your time to make sure you have a detailed termbase - it'll be worth the effort!

Step 2

Create an assignment for your translator, who should be a native speaker of the target language. Their task will be to come up with as many translation options as possible. How to steer them in the right direction?

Creating table for translator

The categories to use are:

Regular translation.
Negative keywords.
Regional dialects.
Word modifications.
Misspellings.
Slang and colloquialisms.

This will enable you to cover all aspects of the target language in order to include every possible version of the word.

Note: Don't use machine translations! Always consult with an experienced translator. Good translator should be familiar with terms specific for your business field.

Step 3

Send this assignment to your translator. Make sure they know you’re looking for as many options as they can possibly create. Again, you’ll get the best results when your translator is a native speaker of the target language.

Translated term table

Note: You want to always have at least three equivalents for each of your seed keywords!

Step 4

So far so good, right? Once you’ve received your translation options, use Marketing Miner to discover the CPC and Search Volume of your words. The process is rather simple:

Create new report in Marketing Miner

You just need to choose the input...

Choose keyword miners

...write down all the translation options you have...

Input keyword data

...then choose the right miner...

Select Search volume miner

...almost there...

Dowload Excel file

...that was quick, wasn't it?

Step 5

Now, you have the CPC and Search Volume of all your seed keywords. You might also want to ask your translator for the relevancy of each of these words. How closely does each translation match the original seed keyword?

Use Keyword Difficulty Score for evaluation Step 6

You're almost done! Now, choose one official translation for each of your keywords. The newly-created termbase can be used for your future keyword research when transcreating your website in a new language. What might the result look like?

Example of finalized termbase in Excel

Note: The words you pick in the end are entirely up to you. Competition score, CPC and SV are just for guidance.

And that's it. Now it's your turn to create a report and come up with a multilingual termbase of your own. Have you done it already? Share your best practise in the comments!

Petr Klement

Marketing enthusiast with passion for SEO and branding, working as an online specialist at Gfluence and studying law. Loves international environment and thinking outside the box. When not working, he’s probably somewhere doing music or travelling.