588 Terminology, Term Banks and Termbases for Translation

Terminology, Term Banks and Te

rmbases for Translation M Rogers, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, UK

� 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Preliminaries

The relationship of human beings with their environ-ment, as well as with each other, is mediated throughlanguage. Where that environment involves specialistknowledge, a special vocabulary – or ‘terminology’ –develops to allow specialist concepts to be commu-nicated, both in speech and in writing. Through theages since classical times, translators have played akey role in the transfer of specialist knowledge fromone culture to another (Delisle and Woodsworth,1995: 101–127), not only in the codification ofthe terms that, to use a popular metaphor, comprisethe building blocks of specialist knowledge, butalso in their formation in order to fill lexical gapsin the target language through, for example, cir-cumlocution, neology and borrowing (cf. Rener,1989: 99).

Much of the stock of specialist knowledge isrecorded and developed in texts of various kinds fora range of purposes and different audiences. Thetranslators of specialist texts need support in identify-ing and using the terminology of the relevant subjectin both the source and target languages, as the termsand concepts of specialist knowledge are usually ac-quired as part of formal training. Such information iscontained in what are sometimes collectively called‘terminology resources’ (TRs) or ‘terminology collec-tions’ (Wright and Budin, 1997: 325–326); these maybe produced by large commercial publishers, compa-nies, international organizations, or by individuals asprofessionals (including specialist translators) or hob-byists. Typical examples of TRs include alphabeticalor thesaurus-type specialist dictionaries, glossaries,nomenclatures, term banks, and termbases. Theneed for these resources is of growing importance inthe age of the ‘knowledge society,’ characterized byincreasing specialization and globalization. Conse-quently, dictionaries and other codified terminologyresources are unable to keep pace, and translatorsneed to be skilled researchers of diverse resources,including documentation, and even compilers of orcontributors to terminology collections themselves.

Terminology of Terminology

The term ‘terminology’ itself requires comment, as ithas several senses. It can refer to a set of principles forcompiling terminologies according to concept-basedmethods (compared to the word-based methods of

lexicography; see Wright and Budin, 1997: 328), theapplication of terminological methods, sometimesalso called, by analogy with lexicography, ‘termino-graphy’ (Rey, 1995: 129), a collection of terms withina particular subject field, and lastly, a publishedcollection of the same (mono-, bi-, or multilingual).In this latter sense, a terminology can be paper orelectronic, as also ‘glossary,’ for example.

Two resource types that are, however, exclusivelyassociated with electronic storage and retrieval areterm banks (previously ‘terminological data bank’or ‘terminology data bank’) and termbases (some-times also equated with ‘terminological database’ or‘terminology database’). Although distinctions haveoften been blurred in practice, ‘term bank’ is usuallyused to refer to a computerized collection of termino-logical data (e.g., terms, definitions, usage informa-tion, etc.) held and compiled by large organizations.‘Termbase’ has achieved more recent currency, lead-ing to what might be called a democratization ofterminology resources.

Term Banks

Comparing term banks with termbases, Wright andBudin (2001: 878) suggest that term banks, as a cus-tomized type of data bank, ‘‘frequently involve morecomplex features [. . .] than databases,’’ including‘‘multiple applications, interactive file structures andgreater system complexity or size.’’ Term banks maybe further distinguished by their broad range ofintended users and by being accessible to externalusers on CD-ROM, online by subscription or withfree access, although the latter may lead to problemsof overload. One well-known example with free ac-cess is the European Commission’s EURODICAU-TOM, a multilingual bank of 5.5 million entriescovering subject fields relevant to European Union(EU) policy. A project to amalgamate EU terminologyin an even larger interinstitutional term bank com-prising the term banks of a number of EU institutionsand bodies was begun in 1999 (IATE: Inter-AgencyTerminology Exchange). The issue of quality controlwhen dealing with very large amounts of terminolog-ical data has long been recognized as problematic inall large term banks (cf. Picht and Draskau, 1985:144), although more recent practice is designed toimprove overall quality through the structuring ofdata into defined categories and category sets (e.g.,ISO 12620, 1999; Wright, 2001a), as well as throughvalidation procedures within organizations.

Although term banks are usually associatedwith non-commercial organizations, one pioneering

Terminology, Term Banks and Termbases for Translation 589

example in the 1970s of a translation-oriented termbank covering many subject fields was coordinatedby the German company Siemens: TEAM (Termino-logie-Erfassungs- und Auswertungs-Methode/Termi-nology Evaluation and Acquisition Method).National standards committees such as AFNOR (As-sociation Francaise de Normalisation) compile termbanks for regulatory purposes within particular sub-ject fields for a wide range of user groups includingnot only translators and terminologists but alsodocumentalists, engineers, students and trainees. Typ-ically, terminology standards such as AFNOR’s andBSI’s NORMATERM containing French and En-glish standardized terms are only available againstpayment.

Term banks are also a tool of bilingual languageplanning. In the Canadian province of Quebec, forexample, following the establishment of French as theofficial language in 1974, an interventionist policywas pursued through the Office de la langue fran-caise, particularly with respect to terminology,which was deemed essential to the reintroduction ofFrench in the workplace according to Humbley(1997). The three million terms from 200 subjectfields in the French/English/French term bank,Banque de terminologie du Quebec (BTQ, now LeGrand dictionnaire terminologique), can be interro-gated freely online, as sensibly befits its purpose ofdissemination. The mainly bilingual term bank of theTerminology and Standardization Directorate ofthe Canadian Government Translation Bureau, TER-MIUM�, containing over one million entries is, how-ever, only commercially available to external users.

In some cases, term banks are the result of interin-stitutional and international cooperation. The NordicTermbank, for instance, is the result of cooperationbetween the Nordic countries, which are particularlyactive in terminology, through Nordterm, an associa-tion engaged in terminology work, training, and re-search. Global cooperation within and between thepublic and private sectors, as well as nongovern-mental agencies, has resulted in a number of multilin-gual term banks (not always called that). Examplesinclude the multilingual ‘terminology databases’(TERMITE and others) of the International Tele-communication Union within the UN system, andFAOTERM of the UN’s Food and Agricultural Orga-nization. Many, however, still turn out to be multilin-gual term lists, sometimes assigned to a subject field,but without the contextualizing information thatunderpins translation decisions.

Some term bank projects date from the times ofmainframe computers in the 1960s; expansion wasnotable in the 1970s (Picht and Draskau, 1985: 138,141; cf. Felber, 1984: 378–389 for an early inventory

of operational and planned term banks). TERMIUM,for instance, arose from a collaboration betweenthe University of Montreal and the Canadian govern-ment in the mid–1970s (Hutcheson, 2001). EURO-DICAUTOM also was launched around the sametime based on legacy data from two institutions.Since the 1970s, term bank organizers have beenfaced with restructuring exercises necessitated by anumber of factors including the migration of datafor technological reasons, the problem of manag-ing large amounts of interrelated data, and movestoward greater data interchange (Melby, Schmitz,and Wright, 2001).

Termbases

Termbases are more recent than term banks. To adegree, the claim that they are different is a posthocrationalization, which turns out to have some foun-dation. Termbases have emerged with the increasingcommercial availability of software tools – custo-mized databases, commonly known as ‘terminologymanagement systems’ or ‘TMSs’ – to store and re-trieve terms and their associated data on stand-alonepersonal computers, as well as in networks. The com-mercial market is expanding, and translators andtheir employers are often bewildered by the array ofproducts. Evaluation of such systems accordingto purpose and technical specification, as well asfunctionality, is therefore of growing importance(Schmitz, 2001).

TMSs are becoming standard tools for the man-agement of terms and their associated data fortranslation purposes. Once populated with data, theresulting termbases vary considerably in content,structure and format, depending on software func-tionality, purpose, resources, and the expertise of thecompiler(s). Some may be little more than lists ofterms and, if bilingual, their equivalents. Others, asalso some term banks, may contain a rich mixture ofinformation, i.e., ‘metadata,’ supporting the user inthe linguistic and conceptual use of the term and oftenreferred to as ‘elaboration.’ Metadata may includelinguistic information (e.g., contextual examples;word class; morphological patterns; collocates), con-ceptual data (e.g., domain or subdomain; definitionor explanation), pragmatic data (e.g., preferred anddeprecated use, data on synonyms, variants, abbre-viations), and, finally, administrative data used forquality control (e.g., dates and sources of dataentry and update). However, without further machineprocessing of conceptual relations, e.g., throughstructured definitions, termbases cannot yet becomeknowledge bases that can, say, relate hyponyms totheir co-hyponyms and hyperonym.

590 Terminology, Term Banks and Termbases for Translation

It is clear that such complex data need carefulmodeling and management, as the relations betweenthe different data types are of various kinds. A defini-tion may be related to several terms in a relationshipof synonymy or equivalence, whereas a contextualexample and linguistic information are related to aspecific term in a specific language. Synonyms, abbre-viations, and variants (e.g. orthographic or geograph-ical: ‘converter’ – U.K. English, or ‘convertor’ – U.S.English) are, of course, terms in their own right and insome database designs, we may speak of ‘term auton-omy’ if each synonym, etc. can in turn become theentry term – or a kind of headword in the language oflexicography – accompanied by its associated linguis-tic and pragmatic data, allowing translators to makeimportant decisions about which term is appropriatein the context of the translation task.

Freelance translators are, in practice, however,often reluctant to invest in a TMS – now often ex-pensively packaged together with other tools asworkbenches – to record their own terminologicalresearch, because they fear a steep learning curve.In-house translators also show a reluctance to engagein detailed terminology work, although it is oftenpart of their job to record new terms and theirusage. Many freelancers store terms in an ad hocway using record cards, word-processing or spread-sheet packages, or even annotations in the margins oftheir paper dictionaries. However, such solutionshave limits with respect to volume and consistencyof data in particular (cf. Wright, 2001b). Many uni-versity programs for specialist translation now in-clude training with TMSs in their curriculum,including not only technical skills but also principlesof good practice for populating the termbase(cf. Wright, 1997).

Organization of Data

Increasingly, each entry – or database ‘record’ – inboth term banks and termbases is organized aroundthe concept or meaning rather than the term, in ac-cordance with the onomasiological principles of ter-minology. Consequently, all synonyms, variants, andabbreviations as well as equivalents are grouped to-gether in the same entry (thereby avoiding problem-atic cross-references), working from the content ormeaning/concept to the form or term. Polysemesand homonyms therefore require separate entries.Working from the word to the meaning is the tradi-tional method employed by lexicographers: the sema-siological approach (Landau, 2001). The thematicorganization of terminologies is often contrastedwith the alphabetical ordering of dictionaries,but there is clear historical evidence that many early

codified collections were thematically organized(cf. Jackson, 2002: 147–148).

A great deal of hard-won terminology data is un-derexploited because the data cannot easily be reused,i.e., exported and imported to another system com-piled for a different purpose and using differentsubsets of data categories organized in different struc-tures. For example, translators may compile theirown termbases in the process of solving ad hoc termi-nology problems and wish to share with colleagues.Large companies may employ a terminology manag-er to coordinate and validate the work of in-housetranslators and large numbers of ‘suppliers’ (i.e., free-lancers). Companies or other organizations using dif-ferent terminology systems may undergo a companymerger. And so on. Consequently, much work hasbeen carried out over the last decade or so on devel-oping so-called interchange formats, which aim tofacilitate the reuse or ‘leveraging’ of data (ISO12200). The extent to which these standards are ap-plied is unclear; research is needed to clarify theirutility and practicability.

Terms and Translation: What Counts as a‘Term’?

Terms, as opposed to words, are difficult to define fora number of reasons, including the level of expertiseconsidered, e.g., the expert’s ‘automated teller ma-chine’ compared to the layperson’s ‘cash machine’,and the degree of specialization, e.g., a dictionary of‘science and technology’ or a ‘terminology of flexog-raphy.’ Terms are not simply specialist words, as theyexhibit many different morphological and syntacticpatterns according to language-typological differ-ences, sometimes leading to demarcation problemswith multiword terms. Single-word terms can beroots such as ‘disease’ or compounds such as theGerman ‘Autoimmunkrankheit.’ In English, termsformed by compounding are usually multiword,e.g., ‘immune system disorder,’ whereas in the Ro-mance languages, terms may take on the form oflengthy phrases such as the French automotive term‘electrovanne de commande de demarrage a froid.’

One of the difficulties that specialist translatorsand terminologists share is knowing when a particu-lar expression is being used in a general or a specialistsense, as many words do ‘double duty’ as terms andthe equivalent may vary accordingly. The word ‘ma-ture,’ for example, in the collocation ‘mature stu-dent,’ is a term from the U.K. higher educationsystem that denotes a student who has not comedirectly from school; it not a euphemistic way ofreferring to a student’s advanced age. Whereas at asystem level we may say that there is no equivalent for

Terminology, Term Banks and Termbases for Translation 591

such culturally bound terms, in the translation of atext a solution must be found. Because the solution islikely to be text-specific, it is questionable whether itbelongs in a codified collection of terms.

Other tensions that arise from the different nature ofterminologies as system and translations as texts in-clude the treatment of lengthy compounds, whichtend to get ‘clipped’ in the creation of texts. So the‘gas valve outlet flange’ becomes the ‘flange’ at thenext mention, and the ‘water circulating system’becomes the ‘system.’ Whereas ‘flange’ can be enteredin a terminology as the hyperonym, it makes little senseto enter ‘system.’ Translators rely instead on theirknowledge of how texts are constructed cohesivelyand use their judgment on the use of clipping in orderto avoid overspecification (cf. also Schmitt, 1999: 306).

Specialist translators can in fact be viewed asexperts in moving between system and use, betweenterm banks or termbases, on the one hand, and texts,on the other, as well as drawing on running text forcontextualized solutions. Future electronic terminol-ogy collections are likely to incorporate selected linksto provide digital textual support to translators intheir task, thereby further distinguishing the needsof translators from those of other users such asdomain specialists and trainees.

See also: Dictionaries; Language Planning and Policy:

Models; Machine Readable Corpora; Technical Transla-

tion; Translation Memories; Translation: Profession.

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