Amid the new-energy boom, lithium, cobalt and nickel have become the fastest-growing segments for translation and advisory. Yet unlike coal, iron and copper, critical minerals have a fundamentally different terminology system that cannot be forced into old mining-translation habits.
Take lithium: resources split into brine lithium (salt-lake extraction) and hard-rock lithium (spodumene, lepidolite), while products span lithium carbonate, lithium hydroxide, NCM and LFP. Without a dedicated termbase, terms like “lithium concentrate” and “lithium salt” are easily mangled.
Cobalt is largely a by-product of copper-nickel ores; nickel divides into Class I (refined) and Class II (ferro-nickel, NPI), each with distinct smelting routes and trade definitions. Confused terminology can create ambiguity in technical documents and commercial contracts.
Suntrans’ Cheng Bo team has built a dedicated critical-minerals termbase, systematically organising exploration, beneficiation, materials and trade terms for lithium, cobalt and nickel with multilingual mappings, ensuring precise, unambiguous communication.
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