Maja Bratanić, Ivana Brač Anna

Maja Bratanić, Ivana Brač
Institute of Croatian Language and Linguistics, Zagreb
Building a Croatian National Termbank: Can a single solution fulfill all our
responsibilities?
The Croatian Termbank Struna will be taken as a case study to illustrate the principle that the
responsibility of terminologists as well as public awareness of the importance of terminology
work depend very much on wider political and ideological circumstances and the context of
overall language policy or lack of it. Intended to serve as a tool for implementing national
term planning in the process of terminology (re)standardization, Struna faces, on the one
hand, a broad range of often conflicting expectations in terms of terminology corpus
planning, and a rather strong, albeit vastly overrated, perception in lay circles of a certain
instability of the language's orthographic and to some extent even morphological norm, on
the other.
This situation requires not only linguistic sensitiveness but a high degree of socio-cultural
awareness too. In other words, terminographic expertise alone does not guarantee that the
terminologist can successfully display the necessary degree of responsibility towards the
disciplines and practitioners that will use the terms. The context in which our language finds
itself twenty years after Croatia's political independence and on the eve of becoming one of
the official EU languages imposes upon terminological work an enhanced responsibility
towards the linguistic tradition(s) of Croatian and its often traumatic history as well as
towards its future in the conglomerate of European languages.
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Anna-Lena Bucher
Swedish Centre for Terminology
Down to earth, but up to whom? Terminology, awareness and responsibility
Terminological awareness can manifest itself at different levels. Awareness of the
importance of effective communication within a profession, i.e. between experts, can be seen
as the most general level. The awareness that effective professional communication can be
achieved through targeted terminology work done in close co-operation between
terminologists and technical experts constitutes the next level. The third level of awareness
could perhaps be described as the awareness of the principles and methods of terminology
work, inter alia the distinction between general language and LSP, and between term and
concept.
Terminological awareness is a requirement for taking a terminological responsibility. When
discussing a terminological responsibility, the following questions are important to consider:
 Who has/takes the terminological responsibility?
 What is included in that responsibility?
 Who is beneficiary (throughout the country, industry, private business, all customers,
other stakeholders)?
My presentation will show some down-to-earth examples of terminological responsibility – or
the lack of such responsibility – and also discuss whether a language act, a national
terminology policy, a standard document or a national terminological resource can contribute
to a greater terminological responsibility in society.
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Joseph Fjellgren
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The Sametinget (The Sami parliament)
Sami terminology work – developing Sami terminology across borders
The Sámi languages are today spoken in an area within four countries that form Sápmi, the
Sámi territory. This creates challenges since similar terminology is being developed for the
sámi languages in each country. At worst the same sámi language can develop in different
directions and this urges for a cross-border coordination of terminology development. A
Nordic sámi language center for the sámi languages was to be started but has now been
postponed. Coordination of the terminology work across the borders is of high importance.
The language situation for the different sámi languages is very varied. North sámi has a high
number of language workers in comparison with lule and southsámi. There are still a lot of
linguistic fields that need thoroughly research regarding lule- and southsami.
While North sámi has an established academic environment one of the main challenges is to
obtain a similar level for south- and lulesámi. The progress of the terminology work is
unfortunately limited to the available number of language workers, which is spare for south
and lulesámi.
The other sámi languages have not been mentioned since the Sámi parliament mainly work
with North-, Lule- and Southśami.
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Ágota Fóris
Károli Gáspár University, TERMIK, Hungary
Terminology and LSP in higher education in Hungary
In Hungarian tertiary education the teaching of specialized languages and terminology
traditionally belonged to professional training. The period of reforming higher education in
Hungary (starting from the mid-1990s) coincided with the international boom in the
application and theoretical revival of terminology. Terminology entered into higher education
as an independent discipline, and in certain countries even as an independent major.
Hungary joined this revival when we launched the MA in terminology.
The talk aims to show how and at what fields the teaching of terminology
and specialized languages appears in Hungarian university education, and what the most
important theoretical and methodological questions are.
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John Humbley
Université Paris-Diderot
Qui sont les terminologues? Quelles sont leurs responsabilités?
Avant d’envisager les responsabilités précises des terminologues, il convient tout d’abord de
délimiter le périmètre de leurs activités, car à chacune d’entre elles est associé un ensemble
de contraintes de différents ordres. Or, la profession de terminologue est récente et les
activités qui en découlent sont à la fois variées et peu répertoriées. Le but de cette
présentation est donc de proposer une grille d’analyse comme préalable à une définition
circonstanciée.
Une des différences les plus marquantes est le degré d’engagement du terminologue.
Exerce-t-il à titre principal ou plutôt en marge, en tant que langagier polyvalent, traducteur ou
rédacteur ? Après un survol des descriptifs de poste à temps complet et à temps partiel, il
paraît préférable pour les besoins de la présentation de sélectionner un profil prototypique de
terminologue à titre principal (dans un organisme d’aménagement linguistique) et un autre à
titre secondaire (dans une entreprise, associé à des activités de traduction et de rédaction).
Le second critère évoqué pour classer les responsabilités est celui de la terminologie ellemême. Si l’on se réfère à la théorie communicative de la terminologie, on peut isoler trois
dimensions : linguistique, cognitive et socio-communicative. Nous examinerons donc les
deux profils du terminologue sous ces trois aspects.
Il s’avère que les activités des terminologues dans les organismes d’aménagement
linguistique sont davantage prises en compte par la recherche que celles exercées en
entreprise. Nous passerons donc plus rapidement sur ce premier profil, mais non sans avoir
rappelé les responsabilités qui découlent de formation du traducteur en tant que linguiste : il
sait notamment que les termes sont des mots, et en tant que tels, sujets à la variation
(polysémie, synonymie) ; qu’ils entrent en relation avec d’autres mots (combinatoire). Il a
donc une vision globale du contexte linguistique comme préalable à toute activité de
planification terminologique. De même, du point de vue cognitif, il est clair que le
terminologue ne saurait proposer des termes pour des concepts qu’il n’a pas complètement
maîtrisés. Les responsabilités socio-communicatives enfin se traduisent entre autres par les
nécessités de l’implantation et de son évaluation.
Pour le terminologue en entreprise, en tant que salarié ou prestataire de service engagé
principalement dans des missions de traduction ou de rédaction, les responsabilités sont
moins balisées. Celles-ci comportent clairement une formation qui lui permette de maîtriser
les outils intellectuels et matériels de la terminologie (savoir créer une base de données,
choisir ou adapter un logiciel existant, etc.), mais aussi une connaissance des normes
explicites (industrielles ou linguistiques) et implicites. Les entreprises ne connaissent pas ou
sous-estiment leur propre terminologie : il est donc du devoir du terminologue de les
sensibiliser à l’intérêt de cette terminologie « maison », qui encapsule le savoir et le savoirfaire de l’entreprise qu’il convient de systématiser dans le cadre de différentes opérations de
communication interne et surtout externe.
Une dernière question se pose dans ce rapide tour d’horizon : la responsabilité pénale
éventuelle du terminologue. Dans quelle mesure le terminologue est-il responsable de sa
fiche, A partir de quel moment peut-on engager sa responsabilité ? Quelles sont les
possibilités d’apposer un droit de réserve ? Autant de questions purement juridiques
auxquelles il importe d’apporter une réponse.
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Antti Kanner
The Bank of Finnish Terms in Arts and Sciences (BFT), University of Helsinki
Institutions, Individuals and societies – The model of shared responsibility in the Bank
of Finnish Terms in Arts and Sciences
The Bank of Finnish Terms in Arts and Sciences (BFT) is a five-year project, aimed at
forming a permanent infrastructure for continuous terminological work within the academic
sector in Finland. The motivation behind the project stems from language political concerns
of Finnish losing ground as a language of higher education and research.
The BFT has so far taken a form of terminological database, accessible via the Internet
through a wiki-based interface. The interface and the practices and methods are being
developed through three pilot projects of botany, linguistics and jurisprudence.
Terminological work is being performed by users, who have been granted expert status. To
function as the basis of the work, lexicons and excerpts relating to specific terminological
entries from numerous volumes of each field have been imported to the database. As an
infrastructure, the main task of the BFT is to enable terminological work within the academic
sector and provide a channel for it to share its results not just within the research community,
but with wider audience as well. BFT can also function as a medium for raising awareness on
terminology and language politics.
The main institutions involved in the BFT are the Academy of Finland, University of Helsinki
and the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies (FFLS). There is also close co-operation
with Terminology Centre TSK and the Institute for the Languages of Finland (ILF). The
involvement of these institutions is in the form of financing, consultation and forming the
steering group of the project. Of the aforementioned institutions only TSK is involved in the
actual terminological work.
The core of the terminological work in the BFT framework is carried out by individual experts
on their respective fields. The experts are professional researchers, teachers and postgraduate students of their respective fields working in the academic institutions. However,
while acknowledging that maintaining the Finnish terminology is part of the responsibilities of
the research community, the academic institutions have yet failed to include terminological
work as one of the activities measured quantitatively in the evaluations of individual
researchers or departments. Shortcomings such as these may effectively prohibit individuals
from taking part in projects like the BFT, unless their institutions are directly allocated funds
for such a work.
Instead of turning to academic institutions for organizing the terminological effort, the BFT
seeks to make use of the existing social structure of learned societies through the
partnership with the FFLS. Many of the learned societies have long traditions in Finnish
terminology work and are already active. BFT tries to bring this activity under one umbrella
and infrastructure.
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Marita Kristiansen
Department of Professional and Intercultural Communication
NHH – Norwegian School of Economics
Towards a Norwegian infrastructure for terminology
Internationalisation has in recent years become a strategic goal for Norwegian higher
education institutions due to Norway’s adaptation to the Bologna declaration. This is one
reason why English is rapidly growing in importance and strengthening its impact in a
number of domains (Anderman and Rogers 2005). At the same time, Norway has seen an
increased focus on language policy as well as terminology planning for instance in national
reports such as Norsk i Hundre! prepared by the Norwegian Language Council, and in a
white paper on national language policies (Report no. 35 (2007-2008) to the Storting). Both
these two reports emphasise the importance of maintaining Norwegian special languages to
enable us to communicate within and across domains in our native tongue, as well as for
society at large.
The present paper presents an initiative to build a national infrastructure to harmonise
terminological language resources and technologies, called Terminor. The goal is to
establish a national knowledge base consisting of quality-assured terminological resources
which are freely available through one common internet-based portal. Terminor is a
subproject of the CLARINO project,1 which is funded by Research Council of Norway, and
which is the Norwegian associated project of the European CLARIN ERIC.2 The latter is
aimed at establishing a common language resources and technology infrastructure.
1
CLARINO = Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure Norway, http://clarin.b.uib.no/
CLARIN = Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure; ERIC = European Research
Infrastructure Consortium, http://www.clarin.eu/external/
2
In my presentation I will discuss the motivation for establishing such a terminological
infrastructure with particular focus on the challenges facing higher education institutions.
Furthermore, I will add a brief comment on possible financing solutions, and also on ways to
cooperate to achieve such a goal.
References
Anderman, Gunilla and Margaret Rogers. 2005. In and Out of English: For Better, For
Worse? Buffalo: Multilingual Matters.
Norsk i Hundre. URL: http://www.sprakrad.no/upload/9832/norsk_i_hundre> pdf
Report to the Storting no. 35 (2007-2008) Mål og meining. Ein heilskapleg norsk
språkpolitikk. URL: http://tinyurl.com/79ng68t
1
CLARINO = Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure Norway, http://clarin.b.uib.no/
2
CLARIN = Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure; ERIC = European Research Infrastructure Consortium, http://www.clarin.eu/external/
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Susanne Lervad
Centre de Recherche de Textile, Institut de SAXO, Université de Copenhague (CTR)
Présentation du travail de terminologie du CTR
Le projet TEMA 2010-15, fondé sur la coopération entre le CTR, des centres de recherche
internationaux, des universités et des musées, est un programme qui envisage d'analyser la
culture du textile dans les régions méditerranéennes, plus particulièrement la production et le
commerce des textiles.
Quelques domaines de recherche du programme TEMA
- l'économie de la laine (production des palais) ;
- le développement de la culture du lin (production de nourriture et de fibres) ;
- la terminologie des textiles en langue grecque et la classification du vocabulaire des
textiles.
L’intégration de la terminologie à ce projet assure la prise en compte de la délimitation des
concepts et des relations qui les unissent.
Le thème central de ce programme TEMA, en ce qui concerne la terminologie, a été défini
suite à un séminaire de terminologie textile organisé par l'ESF en 2009 sur les textiles au 3e
et au 2e millénaires avant J.-C.
L’ouvrage Textile Terminologies, publié à la suite de ce séminaire, sert de référence aux
projets du domaine concernant les textiles.
Un deuxième volume doit paraître en 2014, à la suite d’un deuxième séminaire sur les
textiles couvrant cette fois-ci le 1er siècle avant J.-C.
PROJET TEXTILNET
Le projet Textilnet est un autre projet organisé autour de la terminologie des textiles ; il se
fonde sur une collaboration entre les musées culturels et de design au Danemark et sur les
collections de textiles du 17e siècle à nos jours. L’objectif principal de ce projet est de
numériser les données déjà existantes dans les fichiers des musées.
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Donatella Pulitano
La terminologie au service de l'administration et de la population bernoises
Depuis bientôt vingt-cinq ans, l'administration du canton de Berne dispose d'un Service
central de terminologie, rattaché à l'Office des services linguistiques et juridiques de la
Chancellerie d'État, tout comme son homologue, le Service central de traduction.
Au cours des années, la mission du Service central de terminologie a considérablement
évolué: si, au départ, il travaillait essentiellement pour le corps des traducteurs et
traductrices de l'administration cantonale, petit à petit il a d'abord élargi ses activités au
service de la Chancellerie d'État, puis de toute l'administration cantonale, pour ensuite
mettre à disposition sa banque de terminologie à la population bernoise et – partant – à toute
personne qui s'intéresse aux réalités du canton de Berne et au langage juridique et
administratif bernois.
Cette contribution expose les différentes manières dont un service de terminologie peut
soutenir le travail d'une administration (ou d'une entreprise) et d'une façon plus large,
contribuer à l'information du public et au principe de publicité.
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Jan Roukens
European multilingualism, ideal and reality, at risk with reference to multilingual
scientific terminology
The evolving reality
In the 20th century physics studiesi in Eutopia were conducted in Natlingii. Mathematics,
natural sciences, economics, humanities, medicine, all in Natling. The few teachers in the
university with a foreign background spoke Natling with their students. In the 17th century
many languages in Europe had emerged as cultural and scientific languages, gradually
overtaking Latin in the classrooms and in scientific writings. In the 20th century the process of
standardisation and scientific enrichment of many national languages in Europe was largely
completed. It had become possible to express scientific and technical achievements in
several European languages and to use these languages in the classrooms and in the
working environments nationally. For international scientific communication, French and
German were frequently used, as well as Italian in the arts. In the second half of the last
century these interlinguae were increasingly replaced by English.
A language reaching maturity does imply that the language is up-to-date and usable, and has
reached the enrichment phase. Continuous adaptation to the evolution of science and the
arts is necessary to maintain its qualities as an instrument of knowledge expression,
scientific communication and education. This applies to the extremely dynamic area of
scientific terminology in particular.
In 2012, Natling as the language of instruction for mathematics and natural sciences in
Eutopia appears to have been largely replaced by English. Graduating in these disciplines
using the native language is not possible any more. Expressing new knowledge in Natling is
not encouraged. Writing science books or papers or doctoral theses or even didactic
materials in Natling, is not done. Publishers wouldn’t publish them and colleagues would not
consider them seriously.
Mathematics and the natural sciences have been eliminated from the language, graduates in
these disciplines are not trained to think and work ‘Natling’. Other scientific disciplines follow
or have already made the switch to English: economics, law, medicine, even the humanities
are not spared. Only a few faculties accept that scholars are able to write papers in Natling
that make a difference. But even writing scientific papers in Natling about the Natling
language has become exceptional.
According to a study by the Academic Cooperation Associationiii Eutopia leads all other
European countries in replacing the native language by English in the university classrooms.
Nordic countries follow Eutopia in a second echelon. Central Europe is the third echelon
whereas in Southern Europe the use of the native languages seems yet unchallenged in the
university classrooms.
The evolution of the use of the national or native languages in higher education is decisive
for the future of these languages in our societies. If the scholarly classes from which judges
are recruited, as well as many politicians and civil servants, businessmen, army officers and
medical doctors, teachers and engineers; if these and all other high level professionals ‘think’
English in their working life because they are trained in English only, there is no future for
their native languages. In language communities where parents experience that the ability to
use a dominant non-native language is advantageous for their children’s future, the rational
choice is made easily even if accompanied by an emotional struggle. It is very difficult to
escape from such a process of spiralling domain loss, from this Malstrøm once it has been
set in motion.
To conclude
Multilingualism makes sense only if a considerable number of flourishing languages strive for
a future together. The people using those languages every day enrich them in all domains of
social, economic and cultural life. Their governments ideally provide the means to establish
standards and structures that surpass the capacities of individuals. Enterprises complement
this by developing the infotechnical tools needed. The EU helps with strategies and
frameworks that are language-independent and develops the bridges between languages in
cooperation with the actors directly concerned. The EU might engage in the Charter for a
Multilingual Europe with the member states, laying down the principle objectives and
obligations of all parties towards their citizens, those of Eutopia and the other European
nations.
1
Personal experience of the author who studied towards in the 1950s
1
The reader might not need this explanation: Natling is a national language used in the EU
member state Eutopia
1
English-taught programmes in European higher education; ACA report, Lemmens Bonn,
2008
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Dieter Rummel
Translation Support Department, Translation Centre for the Bodies of the European Union
The ECHA-term project - Multilingual REACH and CLP Terminology
The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) is the driving force in implementing the EU’s
groundbreaking chemicals legislation for the benefit of human health and the environment.
Through the REACH Regulation, companies are responsible for providing information on the
hazards, the risks and the safe use of chemical substances that they manufacture or import.
The Classification, Labelling and Packaging Regulation (CLP) introduces into the EU the
globally harmonised system for classifying and labelling chemicals.
Besides its technical and logistic aspects the implementation of this new EU legislation also
constituted a major challenge for multilingual communication: how do you ensure that a
complex and vast EU regulation becomes understandable and “actionable” for all concerned
stakeholders? And how do you ensure that this feat is achieved in 23 official EU languages?
The ECHA considered coherent and clear terminology one of the key factors in this process
and launched the ECHA-term project together with the Translation Centre for the Bodies of
the EU. The purpose of the project was to provide REACH users with a reliable, coherent
and up-to-date source of terminology in the chemicals field to harmonise the use of
terminology in the REACH context, to enhance clear communication and ultimately to reduce
costs for the stakeholders.
The presentation will highlight the main achievements of the ECHA-term project. It will give
an overview of the terminology covered and the technical solutions chosen for the
dissemination of this terminology.
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Imanol Urbieta
Director of UZEI
La situation de la langue basque, l'euskera, est complexe, parce qu’il s’agit d’une langue en
cours de standardisation et de modernisation qui s’étend sur trois territoires politiques
différents, avec des caractéristiques linguistiques particulières qui rendent son
automatisation difficile.
UZEI est un organisme privé, voué à la standardisation et à la modernisation de la langue
basque. Il y a quelques ans le travail terminologie d’UZEI se limitait au maintien de la
Banque Terminologique Publique Basque, EUSKALTERM. Cette Banque publie toute la
terminologie basque normalisée et représente la principale référence terminologique pour la
diffusion de connaissance en langue basque.
Comme dans tous les processus de production, en 2005 UZEI s’est rendu compte de la
nécessité de contrôler l'utilisation de son produit final : la terminologie. C’est-à-dire, qu’on
avait besoin de savoir dans quelle mesure et comment la terminologie publiée était utilisée.
Pour le rendre possible, il fallait un système de détection de terminologie qui fournisse les
statistiques d'utilisation des termes.
À ce but-ci, UZEI a préparé une base de donnés terminologiques pour être utilisée dans le
traitement du langage naturel et, sur cette base, a développé plusieurs outils qui améliorent
les processus, assurent la qualité et réduisent les coûts.
La traduction est une activité à la hausse et, aujourd'hui, l'utilisation de mémoires de
traduction est généralisée. De même, la création de dictionnaires est une activité laborieuse
qu’à présent peu d'organismes sont prêts à financer. C’est pour cela que ces outils visant à
l’automatisation et l’optimisation de processus sont plus nécessaires. À titre d'exemple, je
présenterai comment créer un dictionnaire de traduction de façon semi-automatique à partir
d'une MT (Mémoire de Traduction) en utilisant les outils qu’UZEI a développés.
Bientôt ces outils permettront de créer des nouvelles synergies dans le cadre de la Banque
Publique de Mémoires de Traduction, qu’UZEI développe pour le Gouvernement Basque et
qui sera achevée à la fin de 2012.
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Kjersti Drøsdal Vikøren
Standards Norway
Responsibility for terminology through standardization
In October 2011 the Norwegian standardization organization Standards Norway launched
SNORRE – a new publicly accessible terminology database. SNORRE is the result of a
project that was carried out in cooperation with the Language Council of Norway. The project
received funding from the Norwegian Ministry of Culture.
The terminology database contains terms and definitions that have been extracted from
national, European or international standards in a wide variety of subject fields. The
terminology has been quality secured by subject specialists and linguists. The database
contains more than 50 000 term records and more than 200 000 terms. Available languages
are Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk and English. There are also some term records
containing terms in French and German.
The termbase can be accessed directly at www.termbasen.no or at Standards Norway's
website www.standard.no.
My contribution will focus on giving a presentation of SNORRE.