Getting to the core of terminological project

by Claudia Dobre

Summary

The article Getting to the core of terminological project by Claudia Dobre appeared in a
collection entitled Handbook of terminology published by the John Benjamins Publishing
Company in 2015. The article focuses on the classification of terminological projects taking into
account several factors such as the terminological requirement these projects are intended to
fulfil, their objectives, target users and the features of the terminology resource. In the article
seven project types are distinguished, two of them is subjected to a more detailed analysis and is
illustrated with two authentic terminological projects which were completed by the Swedish
Centre for Terminology (TNC). These projects had the following aims: the ‘creation of a
monolingual domain resource and maintenance of a terminological query service’ (2015:180).

In the introductory part the author states that any terminological work is motivated by a
particular communicative need, such as the creation of new terms to name different devices, the
identification of translation equivalents or the explanation of a new concept. Terminological
services and resources are meant to contribute to the efficiency of professional communication in
different fields. Terminological projects, carried out with a view to the creation of such services
and resources, bear more resemblance to projects in the domains of language processing,
knowledge structuring and information retrieval and they present a variety of features.

The second section takes a closer look at the characteristics of terminological projects which
stand at the basis of their classification. According to Dobre the majority of translation projects
share a vast array of mainly content-related features, for example they aim at supporting
terminology in various domains, they are constructed to serve the needs of well-defined user
groups and to improve the quality of already existing terminological data, their establishment is
based on terminological principles and methods, three phases can be delineated in their
implementation: the gathering of relevant material (preparatory phase); the analysis of the
terminological concept (main phase) and the presentation of the terminological information in
the form of a terminology resource (presentation phase).

Apart from the above mentioned similarities terminological projects also present a considerable
number of differences, which may be related to the fields covered, the languages included, or the
stages of their implementation. On the basis of the identified differences and the functions that
they serve Picht and Draskau (1985, 175ff.) distinguished four types of terminological projects:
‘the first time elaboration of a subject field’, ‘one or more languages are added to an existing
terminology without altering either its structure or its volume’; ‘new portions are added to an
existing terminology’; ‘revision of existing terminology’ (2015:182).

Dobre specifies four key features which are the most important for the classification of
terminology projects: terminological needs that they serve, their objectives and target users, their
properties including scope, directionality, prescription level (whether they are
normative/standardized, prescriptive, or descriptive) and the type of information that they
provide. Having in mind these characteristics the author distinguishes seven types of
terminological projects: ‘creating a monolingual resource’, ‘creating a multilingual domain
resource’, ‘localising a monolingual monodomain resource’, ‘adding new languages to an
existing translation-oriented terminology resource’, ‘enhancing the terminological quality of a
resource, merging existing resources into a multidomain and/or multilingual resource’,
‘producing terminology on demand (maintaining a terminological query service)’(2015:183-
185).

Dobre provides examples for the different types of terminological projects (for instance,
Eurodicautom aimed at adding the languages of new European Community members to an
existing terminology resource; the EuroTermBank or the Swedish National Term Bank were
created through the merging of existing resources into a multidomain and/or multilingual
resource) and she describes them briefly from the point of view of their key properties. For
example, the creation of multilingual domain resources is often motivated by the lack of reliable
terminology resources in a new or a fast developing domain where existing resources no longer
meet the current needs; they serve the communication in several languages and they enable the
establishment of a consistent and clear-cut terminology in order to facilitate the cooperation
between different companies and organizations. The target users are domain experts or domain
stakeholders. The main objective of multilingual domain resources is the creation of a new or the
updating of an already existing multilingual resource in one or various related fields. As far as
the properties of multilingual domain resources are concerned, domain terminology or the
terminology used within a project or an organization fall within their scope, they are prescriptive.
With regard to their directionality, it can be observed that the language of entry terms is usually
the native language of the project team and the language of target users usually defines the
included target languages. What distinguishes multilingual domain resources from monolingual
domain resources is the fact that apart from term and concept information (definitions,
explanations, references to related concepts) they also offer information about equivalent terms
in different languages.

The author remarks that classification she provided is not exhaustive since it focuses only on
those projects which are exclusively terminological, that is to say they are concerned with the
collection, the processing and the presentation of terminological data. The article emphasizes that
terminological work is often correlated with other types of projects concerning various fields
such as ‘knowledge structuring’, ‘the development of ontologies and taxonomies’, ‘concept and
information modeling and business architecture’.(2015:185). It is impossible to establish clear-
cut boundaries between the different types of terminological projects as they often present the
features of several types.

In the third section two types of terminology projects are described in more detail namely the
creation of a monolingual terminological vocabulary and the production of terminology on
demand. These terminology projects are examined primarily in terms of the stages which
constitute their three implementation phases. In section 3.1 Dobre describes the compilation of
monolingual terminological vocabularies illustrating the basic terms project and the phases of the
terminological project.

Professional communication includes a wide variety of terms which may be domain-specific,

they can occur in several domains naming similar or different concepts , some of the terms may
be encountered not only in a large number of different domains but also in general language. The
author exemplifies these kinds of terms (for instance while the term ‘water’ may occur in
physics and in chemistry as well it conveys different conceptual content in these domains; while
the terms ‘phenomenon’, ‘object’, ‘process’ have a high frequency in various fields they may be
encountered in general language as well) and announces that the proper description of basic
terms, that is to say of words and constructions occurring both in specialized and in general
language is particularly challenging.

The Swedish Centre for Terminology, acknowledging the need for the proper definition of some
basic concepts, in 1940 attempted to define such concepts as ‘material’, ‘equipment’ and
‘activity’. In 1955 the Swedish Centre for Terminology published a terminological vocabulary
including widely used terms from various domains such as natural sciences, technology and
engineering. Because of a growing interest for basic terminology on the part of specialists in
engineering, law, economics, management, etc. in 2006 the Swedish Centre for Terminology
began a new terminology project with the view of compiling a comprehensive vocabulary
including the majority of domains covered by the Swedish languages for specific purposes
(LSP), which is aligned with the needs of a broader user community. This project was carried out
by the terminologists of the Swedish Center for Terminology and the resulting vocabulary was
published in 2012 both in physical and in electronic format.

In subsection 3.1.2 the three phases of the Basic Terminology Project are examined: the
preparatory phase, the main phase and last phase constituting of the presentation of the term and
concept information in a terminology resource. The preparatory phase of the terminology project
includes several stages such as the ‘delimitation of the domain’; ‘the identification of the target
group’; ‘the collection of documentation and the extraction of term and concept information’
(2015:187). The concepts covered were selected on the basis of two criteria: basicness (they had
to belong to top ontology levels, to several domains or to larger domains) and being in demand
(they were subject of frequent terminological queries). The target group of the terminological
project is represented by domain experts, technical writers and domain stakeholders. For the
terminological project documentation was extracted from the preceding version of the
vocabulary, from encyclopedias, from special and general language dictionaries, from reference
literature, etc. In the basic terminology project the concepts were extracted manually since their
number was relatively small and they had to be subjected to a careful examination. The
information types extracted can be classified as follows: ‘terms with their contexts originating
from full texts and from terminology resources’; ‘grammatical, phonetic and etymological
information’; ‘concept descriptions (definitions, explanations and supplementary information,
such as encyclopaedic information)’(2015:189).

Similarly to the preparatory phase the main phase, that is to say the terminological concept
analysis included several stages: ‘selection of concepts to be included’; ‘establishing the
intension and extension of the concepts’; ‘identification of concept relations and elaboration of
concept systems’; ‘elaboration of definitions and selection and evaluation of terms’.(2015:187).
The first step in the analysis of the terminological concept is the identification of groups of
concepts to be examined together followed by their grouping into concept field or concept
clusters. In this project the selected concepts were ordered into 14 fields such as ‘processes’;
‘substances’; ‘properties’, etc. From a terminological point of view a concept’s intension refers
to ‘a set of essential and delimiting characteristics’ (2015:189) which constitute the concept.
These delimiting characteristics permit the distinction of a concept from its related concepts, in
this way they contribute to the determination of a concept’s extension. For the elaboration of
concept systems three types of relations were taken into consideration: generic, partitive and
associative in the basic terminology project. Due to the existence of multiple dimensions the
concept relations are particularly complex. Dobre offers two concept diagrams to illustrate a
multidimensional generic concept system and a mixed concept system.

In the elaboration of terminological definitions the appropriate essential and delineating

characteristics need to be taken into consideration so as to ensure that they are correct and
consistent. The author claims that for the formulation of terminologically correct definitions
apart from strict logic creativity is also of paramount importance. The terminological definitions
need to fulfil various formal and content-related requirements which were specified in the
International standards on terminology work. One of these requirements is that a definition
should be neither too broad nor to narrow. ‘The definitions of basic concepts have to be general
enough to fit in more than one domain and at the same time sufficiently specific not to miss some
of the essential and delimiting characteristics’ (2015:192). The satisfaction of these requirements
may pose major challenges. Dobre remarks that a particularly challenging aspect of terminology
project is to define whether a term occurring in several fields referred to the same concept or
very similar concepts or whether it was this term described different concepts in different fields.
The author illustrates her point by means of the terms ‘inspektion’ (inspection) and ‘ankare’
(armature). The former term describes a single concept, which may function in various domains
therefore a single definition is formulated. On the other hand, the latter one may express two
different meanings in different fields as a result two definitions are required. The terminological
definition includes only the essential and delineating characteristics of a concept, any other detail
considered to be essential for the delineation of the concept may appear in a comment. The
agreement between the concept’s description in the definition and its visualization in the concept
system is of paramount importance. The last stage of the main phase constitutes of the selection
and evaluation of terms. At this step terminologist by means of term acceptability rating decide
which one of the terms in circulation for the same concept can be considered to be preferred, in
other words are the most established, which can be labelled as admitted terms or less established
and which one are deprecated and therefore their use is preferably avoided.

‘The presentation phase included various issues related to the presentation of the term and
concept information in a terminology resource’ (2015:187). The definition of a term includes
apart from its essential and delimiting characteristics also the comments which may include
various types of information for example measurement units for physical quantities; notes on the
specific uses of a basic concept in different domains; notes on term usage, term forms, etc. The
web and the paper version of the terminological vocabulary present particular features.

Section 3.2 discusses the production of terminology on demand which is often related to a
terminological query service. Terminology service is usually maintained by national terminology
centers, regional terminology institutions or by large international companies. The terminological
query service started soon after the foundation of the Swedish Center for Terminology. Its users
are specialists in science and engineering, humanities, social sciences, economics or
management. Depending on the type of the required information three types of queries can be
distinguished: concept-related queries (may refer to the identification of differences between
related concepts) term-related queries (are used for example to find an appropriate term to name
a new concept, to differentiate between synonyms or to find term equivalents in other languages)
language/style queries (may concerns grammatical forms or terms, abbreviations, punctuation,
etc.). Query processing includes the following five phases from the terminologist’s point of
view: checking the query, searching for information to meet an enquirer’s need; carrying out the
analysis of the collected information and preparing the response report; delivering the response
and storing the response report in a query data base. (2015:195). Checking the query is essential
in order to ensure that the data processing can be carried out. When processing the query the
resources of the Swiss Terminology Center are searched first. There are two essential criteria on
the basis of which the terminologist can decide whether a particular resource is reliable or not:
the terminological data it contains must be coherent and precise, apart from that it must be up-to-
date. In processing the collected information the enquirer’s needs and level of expertise need to
be taken into consideration. A response report usually includes various information in the form
of a text or a terminology entry, arguments in support of a terminologist’s suggestion and
examples of usage, recommendations. Query records have been stored since 1970, the
information acquired in query processing can serve various terminological tasks.

In conclusion, the article of Claudia Dobre illustrated various facets of terminology projects and
established their classification on the basis of their most important features. Apart from that a
detailed investigation of two types terminology projects (the creation of monolingual
terminological vocabulary and the product of terminology on demand) was carried out focusing
primarily on the stages which constitute the process of their implementation. With her article,
Dobre aims at the illustration of factors staying at the core of a properly conducted
terminological research, Such factors are for example the ‘awareness of the terminological needs
to be met by a TP’, ‘a sound combination of domain, linguistic and terminological expertise’; ‘a
strong belief in terminology work as a way in which to achieve better professional
communication’(2015:197-198).