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Consistent terminology is crucial for a user experience (UX)

The User eXperience (UX) describes the interaction of a user with a website. It refers to the communication between the visual and textual data represented on the screen of the computer and the user. One could say that the UX is ‘the smell of a website’.

 How quickly a user can make decisions and how efficient he/she can ‘navigate’ a website depends on various factors which are studied by the developers of the website. The developers’ aim is to create a friendly and easy environment for their consumers by paying attention not only to the images, colours, templates or other attracting visual features of their website but also to the textual representation. That means that UX is about the interface between graphic and content. A user is firstly attracted by the colours, the visual representations and the general sense of the website but to the next and most important level he/she needs to take some information, complete a task and interact with the website. If we imagine a website consisted only of images and colourful boxes it is beyond shadow of doubt that no effective interaction can take place.

How do you interact with this pop-up?


Text, thus, is crucial as it provides the most significant information for the user (e.g. login, payment, donate, cancel, etc.). The user needs the textual data. Nevertheless, the user does not want to think. He/she does not want to spend hours looking for his information or completing a registration or doing an electronic payment. He/she needs efficiency in time and that relies on the accuracy and the consistency of the terms which are used. As Bill Gates had mentioned ‘Content is King’, however as I often highlight ‘Terminology is Queen’.

 The text which is represented should be clear, simple, understandable, up to date and based on the perspective of the user. It should not cause any misunderstanding or confusion.



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Differenza tra football e soccer

Perché il calcio viene chiamato in modo diverso da inglesi (football) e americani (soccer)?

 I due termini, football e soccer, si usano per indicare lo stesso sport sebbene football sia presente in un maggior numero di lingue con un più alto numero di occorrenze.

Footballrisale a un decreto del 1424 in cui re Giacomo I di Scozia bandiva il gioco con la frase: "That na man play at the Fute-ball".

Nel 1863 viene fondata a Londra la Football Association (FA), la prima federazione calcistica nazionale che unificò definitivamente il regolamento. Queste regole furono adottate da tutti eccetto che dalla Scuola di Rugby, che preferiva un gioco più fisico in cui si potesse toccare il pallone anche con le mani. Si venne a creare cosi il termine soccer, entrato a far parte dello slang universitario comeabbreviazione colloquiale di Assoc., da  Association football+ la formazione agentiva "-er" per distinguerlo dal Rugby Football.

Fonti:


Terminologia etcEnglishfor.it





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Current Terminology Management Systems: designed to make you think hard

Current TMSs have been developed according to the requirements defined by ISO standards for terminology management systems. Nevertheless, the process of creating a new entry is still very time-consuming. A couple of weeks ago, I have been contacted because of a post I wrote years ago on this blog (I guess they read this: How would a collaborative platform improve terminology work?).  The sender message reads as follows: ‘Dear Maria, I read your blog article and just wanted to let you know we are building the collaborative terminology system you envisioned at the very moment. It would be a pleasure to get in touch to see if you want to test and send some feedback on our current status!’ Well, we scheduled a video call in the following days, during which they showed me the platform in progress and some mockups about a few future features they expected to implement. What I was shown looked very promising indeed - since that old post influenced somebody, I also felt encouraged to write …
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Football or soccer, which came first?

With the World Cup underway in Brazil, a lot of people are questioning if we should refer to the "global round-ball game" as "soccer" or "football"? This is visible from the queries of the readers that access my blog. The most visited post ever is indeed “Differenza tra football e soccer” and since we are in the World Cup craze I think this topic is worth a post.

According to a paper published in May by the University of Michigan and written by the sport economist Stefan Szymanski, "soccer" is a not a semantically bizarre American invention but a British import.

Soccer comes from "association football" and the term was used in the UK to distinguish it from rugby football. In countries with other forms of football (USA, Australia) soccer became more generic, basically a synonym for 'football' in the international sense, to distinguish it from their domestic game.

If the word "soccer" originated in England, why did it f…
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