Terminology work at the European Central Bank

Catherine LaneSenior Terminologist/Language Technologist

Terminology/Language Technology (TLT) unit

9 December 2011

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Overview

• Linguistic services at the ECB

• The Terminology/Language Technology (TLT) unit

• Terminology activities– (i) People involved in terminology work– (ii) Terminology project – (iii) Term extraction projects– (iv) Quality management– (v) Term source work– (vi) Irish terminology work– (vii) €uroTERM

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The European Central Bank (ECB)

• Set up in June 1998 and replaced the EMI (European Monetary Institute)

• Located in Frankfurt am Main

• Approx. 1 600 staff

• Headquarters of the Eurosystem, the central bank of the euro area and the hub of the European System of Central Banks

• External communication: 23 official EU languages

• Internal communication: English

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Linguistic services: staff

• 2 translators per language (translating out of English)

• 14 translators/‘editors‘ English native speakers

• 1 lawyer-linguist per language (belonging to the Legal Services)

• 4 Terminologists/Language Technologists (TLTs)

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Linguistic services: : organisational structure

English Translation and Editing Section

(ETE)

Germanic and Finno-Ugric

Languages Section(GFU)

Romance and Mediterranean

Languages Section(RML)

Slavonic and Baltic Languages Section

(SBL)

Terminology/Language

Technology unit (TLT unit)

Secretariat Division

Language Services Division

Lawyer-Linguist Division

Lawyer-Linguists(LEG)

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ECB’s relationship with the Centre de Traduction

• Before translators and lawyer-linguists were recruited: provision of translation services for

– Regular translation work

– Legal acts

• Today: jobs which have to be translated into languages for which we do not have the in-house resources

• Irish terminology extraction

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Overview

• Linguistic services at the ECB

• The Terminology/Language Technology (TLT) unit

• Terminology activities– (i) People involved in terminology work– (ii) Terminology project – (iii) Term extraction projects– (iv) Quality management– (v) Term source work– (vi) Irish terminology work– (vii) €uroTERM

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TLT unit: staff

• TLT = terminologist / language technologist

• Permanent team: – 4 TLTs & 1 assistant

• Additionally:– 1 ESCB/IO staff member– 1-2 interns

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TLT unit: tasks

Terminologists / Language Technologists (TLTs) provide support to the linguists at the ECB and to the translators at the NCBs in two fields:

• terminology services, including:

expansion and maintenance of a database of ESCB-specific terminology in all the official EU languages

• support for language technology tools, including:

assistance with the CAT tools used at the ECB

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TLT unit: Language Technology-related tasks

• Problem solving & TLT unit service desk

• Creating translation workflows

• Creating step-by-step guides

• Testing and evaluating translation software

• Preparing files for translators (TTX files)

• Checking files for SDL Trados compatibility

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TLT unit: terminology-related tasks

• Maintaining our multilingual terminology database

• Coordination of terminology work and term extraction

• Creating best practices document

• Checking the terminology in our database against our in-house conventions

• Term source management

• Maintaining the ECB’s website glossaryhttp://www.ecb.europa.eu/home/glossary/html/index.en.html

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CAT tools at the ECB

• SDL TRADOS tools:

– SDL MultiTerm 7.5 for terminology management

– SDL TRADOS 8.3 (incl. TagEditor and WinAlign)

• ABBYY PDF transformer 3.0

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Overview

• Linguistic services at the ECB

• The Terminology/Language Technology (TLT) unit

• Terminology activities– (i) People involved in terminology work– (ii) Terminology project – (iii) Term extraction projects– (iv) Quality management– (v) Term source work– (vi) Irish terminology work– (vii) €uroTERM

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(i) People involved in terminology work

• Terminologists (guidelines andtechnical aspects)• English native speaker translators• Translators for other languages• [Experts]

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(ii) Terminology project

• In 2003: identification of some 2,000 principal concepts in English

• In 2003/2004: terminology extraction in the remaining 19 languages

• In 2006: terminology extraction in BG und RO

• Currently extracting terminology in Irish

• Purpose: harmonisation of terminology within and outside of the ECB

  

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(iii) Term extraction projects

• Translators propose documents for term extraction

• Identification of terms in English – mandatory and optional terms

• Liaising with experts

• Adding of English terms

• Validation of English terms

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(iii) Term extraction projects

• TLT unit launches the term extraction in all official EU languages – At the same time notification of any changes to

existing entries

• Validation of terms in all official EU languages

• Purpose: equal growth of the terminology database in all languages

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(iv) Quality management

• Focuses on assuring quality from the initial stages of data entry in the database to data publishing

• Ensures data completeness, consistency, correctness and integrity

• Checks are carried out according to a checklist for– Term fields– Definition fields– Context fields– Source fields

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(vi) Work on sources

• Compliance check of sources in all new terminological entries

• Restrictions to add new sources: TLTs suggest and add new source codes

• All new source codes are simultaneously recorded in an ACCESS database and in MultiTerm

• 4 600 validated source index entries in ECB’s terminology database

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Term source management – example 1

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Term source management – example 2

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(vii) Irish terminology work

- Preparation of outsourcing job and background documents

- Terminology extraction by Irish translator at the Centre de Traduction

- Checking of the terms by external collaborator

- Creation and correction of sources

- Input of data into MultiTerm

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(viii) €uroTERM project

• Online access to the set of principal concepts in the ECB‘s terminology database

• Interim solution: circulation of terms lists to requesting third parties

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Sample entry

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Questions?