Proposal to be considered at the OneGeology Workshop

Linguistic base

of the OneGeology project

• Oleg Petrov• Grigory Brekhov• Evgeny Kiselev• Viktor Snezhko

Linguistic compatibility of geologic-map databases was set as one of the major problems in the providing of efficient harmonization and international exchange of geodata within the frame of the OneGeology Project.

In this respect, the right choice of appropriate terminological base for the Project comes to be of significant value.

What are, in our opinion, the basic requirements to linguistic core of the Project ?

Multilinguality. Linguistic base should be a tool for the exchange of geologic data, described in different languages of member countries of the Project. Of great importance is a possibility to apply the national language terms while describing data in the database.

Wide scope of geological lexicon. Standardized terminology. Linguistic standardization has to assign a system of uniform terms applicable to the description of geologic-map data.

Approach to the problem

Linguistic base of the OneGeology project

Our Proposal

To use the Multilingual Thesaurus of Geosciences (MTG; J.Gravesteijn, C.Cortman a.o., 2nd edition, 1995) as a terminological base of the OneGeology project

Reasons

We believe, that an efficient interchange of information between member countries of the Project is to be ensured by uniform terms, which are adopted by national schools of geosciences and are related to each other as an equivalent concepts

Lexicon of the Multilingual Thesaurus enables to apply it as the terminological core for the description of documentary, geologic-map and factographic information, and also for the international data exchange

Some chronicle of the MTG …

The Multilingual Thesaurus of Geosciences has been developed under the patronage of IUGS (UNESCO) and the Commission on Geological Documentation (COGEODOC) as the language for indexing, retrieval and international exchange of bibliographic information in the field of geosciences

The work on MTG began in 1970, with participants from various international and national geoscience documentation centers

As a terminological base, the american Glossary of Geology was assigned

Since the Geological Congress in Montreal of 1972 , the full multilingual version of Thesaurus of geosciences has been developed

The MTG was compiled in 8 languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Czech and Finnish

Twice published: in 1988 and 1995

Based on MTG, the Asian Multilingual Thesaurus was published in 2006. It includes entries in 9 languages of East and Southeast Asian region, related to the English key words, held by the “European" MTG.

Multilingual Thesaurus – now in Asia too

SpanishSpanish

GermanGerman

FrenchFrenchEnglishEnglish

ItalianItalian

RussianRussian

CzechCzech FinnishFinnish

ChineseChinese

JapaneseJapanese

KhmerKhmer

IndonesianIndonesian

KoreanKorean

LaoLao

MalaysianMalaysian

ThaiThaiVietnameseVietnamese

MTG for the OneGeology Project

Why use MTG ?..

wide coverage of languages: 8 European languages + 9 languages of East and Southeast Asia

lack of language barriers: ability to index and to describe

geodata in the national languages of the member countries of

the Project

a unique linguistic resource: about 6 000 standardized terms adopted by national geological surveys

meets the requirements of international standards

for the development of monolingual and multilingual thesauri

(ISO 2788, 5964)

MTG for the OneGeology Project

Why use MTG ?..

Wide experience of application to the international geoscientific information projects:

AGI http://www.agiweb.org

American Geological Institute, GeoRef data exchange system (to the end of 1998, over 500 000 bibliographic references have been exchanged using the MTG)

GEIXS http://geixs.brgm.fr

European metadata portal for Eurogeosurveys members

SANGIS and PANGIS networks http://www.ccop.or.th

geoscientific data networks for African and Southeast Asian countries

others

Experience of adjustment of the Russian version of MTG to factographic and geologic-map information systems (VSEGEI, Russia)

National Russian version of the MTG was successfully applied by VSEGEI (Russia) to develop the geologic-map information systems, which are used, since 1994, by russian producers of geologic maps for the description of primary field observations, analysys, map legends, etc.

To adjust the Russian version of the MTG to the requirements of factographic and geologic-map information systems, lexicon of the Thesaurus was divided into single groups of terms (i.e. vocabularies).

Developing a new macrostructure of the Thesaurus

Russian version of the MTG

Proposal to be considered at the OneGeology Workshop

Linguistic base

of the OneGeology project