Followup...

[alexpgp]

One of the inevitable consequences of dumping umpteen megabytes of unvetted, unreviewed, and generally unreliable references on a translator can be illustrated by the following:

• If I had to translate the Russian term "специальные технические условия" without looking it up, I'd go for "special specifications." Indeed, the collocation "special specifications" shows up about 167,000 times if you search for the phrase on Google.
• The glossaries supplied to me for the assignment provide two additional alternatives: "project specific standard," and "project specific technical specifications."
• Looking at the documents also provided for my edification shows the term translated as "special technical specifications."

Now, if both the glossary and the documents showed that the end client for this assignment preferred the term "project specific standard," well, that's what a smart translator would use. But the result of the glossary lookup and document reference reveals that, pretty much, my first impression would've done the trick.

I only had to spend an extra couple of minutes to confirm that.

Multiply those couple of minutes times a few thousand instances, and you start to see what a enormous time sink such references can become.

The solution? Over the short term, confine lookups to terms that smell strongly of being unique. (How to tell? Use the feeling derived from the seat of the pants.)

In general, though, the only proper response is to realize that, in providing such a variegated collection of verbal vomitus, the client doesn't really use any kind of "standard terminology" at all.

Enough dawdling. Back to work!

Cheers...