3. Why terminology?
“founder“ of terminology: Eugen Wüster, an engineer
Encyclopedic dictionary Esperanto-German
1931: „Die Internationale
Sprachnormung in der Technik,
besonders in der Elektrotechnik“
(International language standardization in technology, particularly in electronics)
Founder of TC37 (later ISO)
Teacher at University of Vienna
Interlinguistics/planned languages
5. Why terminology?
Controlled languages:
“Controlled language … can be defined as a subset of a language
with a restricted grammar and a domain specific vocabulary
designed to allow domain specialists to unambiguously
formulate texts pertaining to their subject fields“
(Wright, Sue E./Budin, Gerhard: Handbook of Terminology Management, vol. 2, p. 872)
Planned languages, e.g. Esperanto, Ido:
Avoidance of lexical ambiguity by means of the construction of
an ambiguity-free lexicon
Avoidance of grammatical ambiguities and preference for easyto-use strutures
6. Why terminology?
Means of expert communication
Text reception (what is the text about?)
Text production (production of comprehensible texts:
correctness, univocity, acceptability of specialised texts)
Means of knowledge transfer for education
Instructive texts (text books)
Expert-to-layman communication: introduction and
explicitation of terminology
Popularising texts
8. Why terminology?
Without knowing the meaning of the terms it is impossible
to understand specialised texts
Terms work as “handles“ to units of knowledge
(or “units of understanding“, Temmerman)
Terminology is a means of reducing complexity
Correct use of terminology is a prerequisite for
membership (credibility, social status,
comprehensibility) in a community of experts: need
for correct translation!
Means of social distinction?
9. Why terminology?
Example: popularising text (Wikipedia)
* Terms are linked to (canonical) definitions and/or explanations
* Humans typically acquire this kind of knowledge from specific types of
text (educational texts)
10. Why terminology?
Knowledge management (industry, big organisations)
* Strategic management of the knowledge stock of an
organisation
* Identification of relevant rules, processes and concepts
* Provision of information about these items (e.g. intranet,
knowledge base) – knowledge transfer
* Monitoring and management of knowledge evolution
* Research and comparison with other communities‘ knowledge
12. Why terminology?
Other applications
domain adaptation of statistical MT systems
ontology-based information retrieval
QA- and expert systems
…
13. Terms and concepts
The basics of structuralist semantics
Concept vs. term – the general language view
(graphic by Elke Teich)
14. Terms and concepts
Concept vs. term – the general language view
but in general language, ambiguities are ubiquitous:
the relation between linguistic symbols (words,
lexical units) and concepts is m:n
m:n
m:n
m:n
15. Terms and concepts
Concept vs. term – the general language view
(www. leo.org)
16. Terms and concepts
Concept vs. term – the terminological view
Why are m:n-mappings (read: inconsistent terminology)
problematic for specialised domains?
hamper comprehensibility of specialised texts
create semantic ambiguities (to be avoided at all costs in
safety-sensitive environments, e. g. medicine, engineering or
construction!)
reduce retrieval results
increase translation costs
lower translation quality (in the translation studies point of
view, not necessarily in terms of BLEU points)
17. Terms and concepts
Concept vs. term – the terminological view
Why are m:n-mappings (read: inconsistent terminology) problematic?
Examples: Ana Hoffmeister,
Volkswagen After Sales Language Service
http://fr46.unisaarland.de/fileadmin/user_upload/personen/wurm/Workshops/Hoffmeister_Termi
nology_Processes_and_Quality_Assurance.pdf
18. Terms and concepts
Concept vs. term – the terminological view
1:1
concept: „unit of
thought“ – abstract
mental representation
of typical features
(intension)
term:
• name, designation
• arbitrary linguistic
symbol
1:n
n:1
individual
objects:
• material
• immaterial
• extension
19. Terms and concepts
Wüster‘s answer to lexical ambiguities: active
language planning/standardization -> prescriptive
intervention into the lexicon of a specialised domain
(„bewußte Sprachgestaltung“, „Soll-Norm“)
descriptive branches of terminology: corpus-based
investigations, term extraction, use of (automatically
acquired) terms in other applications
20. Terms and concepts
What is the added value of the distinction between
concepts and terms?
allows us to work with culture- and languageindependent concepts rather than language-specific
terms: terminology is not really a linguistic enterprise
concepts are understood as universal (independent of
cultures and languages) representations of knowledge
21. Terms and concepts
What is the added value of the distinction between
concepts and terms?
concepts are understood as universal (independent of
cultures and languages) representations of knowledge
Abstract away from irrelevant differences
BREAD
22. Terms and concepts
What is the added value of the distinction between
concepts and terms?
thus, we can easily map multilingual terms onto one
single concept
rather than mapping incommensurable multilingual
terms onto each other (difficult: lexical gaps, slight
shifts in meaning)
Brot, bread, pain, pane, maize, хлеб, …∈ BREAD
23. Terms and concepts
What is the added value of the distinction between
concepts and terms?
we can distinguish between:
conceptual (semantic) relations – relations between concepts
(e. g. HUT is-a HOUSE)
lexical relations – relations between lexical units (lemmas) –
(e. g. house, n. vs. to house, v.)
grammatical relations – relations between word forms (e. g.
house vs. houses)
only conceptual relations are relevant to terminology
no interest in stylistic or connotational differences between
terms (designations)
24. Terms and concepts
Terms are also words, but what is the difference between general language words and
specialised terms?
general language word
term
has no specialised meaning
can be a homonym of a general
language word, but with a distinct
specialised meaning (-> mapping to
another concept)
can be an abbreviation, an acronym or
a unit of measurement, a proper name
or a symbol (e. g. mathematical
symbols)
meaning often highly dependent on
linguistic context (co-text)
meaning defined independently from
context
less likely to be a foreign word
more likely to be a foreign word
meaning transparent to competent
speakers of given language
meaning is part of expert knowledge,
non-experts have to look up the
concept definition
25. Terms and concepts
Terms are often (but not always!) complex noun phrases
(patterns developed within TTC project: www.ttc-project.eu)
26. Terms and concepts
* Terminological phraseology:
DIN 2342: a fixed group of words containing a verb serving as a
designation of a given concept within a specialised language
→ einen Wechsel ziehen, den Hochofen anstechen, in
Phase sein
→ to pass a bill, to file for divorce
less strict definition: fixed, reproducable, lexicalised and
recurrent group of words that is typical for a specialised
domain
(cf. Gläser (2007): Fachphraseologie, HSK 28:1, 482-505, my translations from German)
27. Terms and concepts
* Terminological phrases have similar properties as single word terms
*
*
*
*
no expressive or stylistic connotations
reference to a context- and culture-independent concept
not generally comprehensible (need for explanations!)
non-compositional
Boundary cases:
support verb constructions: Einwände erheben vs. einwenden, to make a
decision vs. to decide
collocations: to levy taxes/soldiers/troops
multi word terms (MWT)
(cf. Gläser (2007): Fachphraseologie, HSK 28:1, 482-505)
28. Conceptual relations
Conceptual relations
relations between concepts
define where a concept is located within the concept system
important for understanding the concept and for distinguishing it
from neighbouring concepts
“Semantic relations are at the core of any representational system,
and are keys to enable the next generation of information processing
systems with semantic and reasoning capabilities.“
(Auger/Barrière 2008:1)
29. Conceptual relations
Which kinds of relations are relevant to terminology (for
concept analysis)?
Wüster: logical relations (similarity between concepts –
hierarchical: is-a, siblings etc.) vs. ontological relations
(temporal, spatial or causal relations)
terminologies can be represented as graphs:
concepts are nodes
relations are edges
relation types are edge labels
additional information is in the node attributes
31. Conceptual relations
* To choose the right TL term candidate, information about
semantic relations is needed (esp. in the legal domain)
* e.g. retrieved from definitions
* but termbases/dictionaries often do NOT provide this information
32. Conceptual relations
Can we improve the representation of terminological
information by providing richer descriptions for
language workers? For example, by mining
explanations, definitions or semantic relations?
33. Concept systems and conceptoriented terminology work
* terminography is concept-oriented (onomasiological approach)
* structures descriptions around concepts, not around terms
* lexicography is normally designation-oriented (semasiological
approach) - > list of lemmas with corresponding enumeration of
“word senses“
(www.leo.org)
34. Concept systems and conceptoriented terminology work
* a typical “sense enumerative“ dictionary entry (Tildes Birojs 2013)
35. Concept systems and conceptoriented terminology work
What are shortcomings of “sense enumerative“
lexicography/terminography?
no method for handling multilinguality, since semantic
structures do not coincide across languages (language
industry projects may involve up to 20-30 languages or
even more including translation to/from pivot languages)
no method for dealing with term variation, since variants
are kept apart from preferred terms
no 1:1-mappings between multilingual designations –
backtranslation normally leads to a different result ->
inconsistent translation
37. Concept systems and conceptoriented terminology work
Separate entries for different concepts in MultiTerm
38. Concept systems and conceptoriented terminology work
Onomasiological approaches were not “invented“ by terminology,
but are ancient achievements of lexicography proper
Thesauri structure our knowledge of the world according to semantic
relations, building a hierarchically organised inventory of concepts
(similar to the old philosophical understanding of „ontology“)
Dornseiff: Der deutsche Wortschatz nach Sachgruppen
Roget‘s Thesaurus of the English language
О. С. Баранов: Идеографический словарь русского языка
39. Concept systems and conceptoriented terminology work
Onomasiological approaches were not “invented“ by
terminology, but are old achievements of lexicography
Thesauri structure the lexicon according to semantic relations
Concept with identifier as part of concept
hierarchy
Related Concepts
Designations for the concept “cosmos“ +
related terms
40. Concept systems and conceptoriented terminology work
Onomasiological approaches were not “invented“ by
terminology, but are old achievements of lexicography
Semantic field dictionaries structure the lexicon according to a
notion of „semantic proximity“
Schumacher: Verben in Feldern
Шведова: Русский семантический словарь
41. Concept systems and conceptoriented terminology work
Other kinds of onomasiological resources
A taxonomy is traditionally a scientific system of categories of
concepts and hierarchical relations between them
But there are also “folk taxonomies“
Taxonomic approaches have been applied to the description of the
lexicon of a given language (e. g. WordNet)
(but are they really language-independent?)
42. Concept systems and conceptoriented terminology work
Other kinds of onomasiological resources
A nomenclature is a list of designations in a given domain,
especially in science
e. g. Bacterial nomenclature
http://www.dsmz.de/fileadmin/Bereiche/ChiefEditors/BacterialNo
menclature/DSMZ_Bactnames.pdf
43. Concept systems and conceptoriented terminology work
Other kinds of onomasiological resources
Finally, ontologies
Traditionally a discipline of theoretical philosophy/metaphysics: categorisation
of elements of existence
In the narrower AI sense: form of knowledge representation that makes
explicit concepts and the relations between them and imposes functions,
restrictions, rules, axioms and the like
Ontologies can be lexicalised, but don‘t have to be
Gruber: “An ontology is an explicit specification of a conceptualization.”
(http://tomgruber.org/writing/onto-design.pdf)
44. Concept systems and conceptoriented terminology work
Other kinds of onomasiological resources
Finally, ontologies
Examples:
Cyc, an ontology of common sense knowledge for AI
DOLCE, a descriptive ontology for linguistic and cognitive engineering
SUMO, the suggested upper merged ontology
… and many others and many similar
45. Resources
Ontology languages and knowledge representation
specifications:
RDF and RDF Schema
OWL, the web ontology language
SKOS, the simple knowledge organization system (builds on RDF
and RDFS)
lemon, a lexicon model for ontologies
RDF, RDF Schema, OWL and SKOS are W3C standards
46. Resources
Tools and semantic resources:
Protegé, an ontology editor with reasoning component
Snomed CT, Systemazized Nomenclature of Medicine – clinical
terms
UMLS, Unified Medical Language System
47. Resources
Relevant Standards:
ISO 704 (2000): Terminology work – Principles and Methods
ISO 1087-1 (2000): Terminology work – Vocabulary – Part 1: Theory
and application
ISO 12620 (2009): Terminology and other language and content
resources – Specification of data categories and management of a
Data Category Registry for language resources
ISO 30042 (2008): Systems to manage terminology, knowledge and
content – Termbase eXchange (TBX)
(http://www.ttt.org/oscarStandards/tbx/tbx_oscar.pdf)
48. Resources
Web pages:
www. isocat.org - ISO TC 37 Terminology and Other Language and
Content Resources: data category registry
www.taus.net – association of companies in translation industry
with interesting resources, downloadable TMs for members
termcoord.eu – web page of the European Parliament’s
terminology coordination unit
tekom.de – German association for technical communication
49. Resources
Journals and conferences:
Terminology (Benjamins)
TIA, Terminologie et Intelligence Artificielle
TKE, Terminology and Knowledge Enginerring
TEKOM
50. References: Literature
Auger, Alain / Barrière, Caroline (2008): “Pattern-based approaches to semantic relation
extraction”. Terminology 14 (1), pp. 1-19.
Baranov, Oleg S. (1995): Ideografičeskij slovar’ russkogo jazyka. Moskva: ETS.
Dornseiff, Franz (2004): Der deutsche Wortschatz nach Sachgruppen. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Gläser, Rosemarie (2007): “Fachphraseologie”. In Burger et al. (eds.): Phraseologie. Vol.1., pp. 482505.
Gruber, Thomas. (1993): “Toward Principles for the Design of Ontologies Used for Knowledge
Sharing”. Human-Computer Studies 43, 907-928.
International Organization for Standardization (2000a): International Standard ISO 704: 2000 (E) –
Terminology Work – Principles and Methods. Geneva: ISO.
International Organization for Standardization (2000b): International Standard ISO 1087-1: 2000 –
Terminology Work – Vocabulary – Part 1: Theory and application. Geneva: ISO.
International Organization for Standardization (2008): International Standard ISO 30042:2008 Systems to manage terminology, knowledge and content – Termbase eXchange (TBX). Geneva: ISO.
International Organization for Standardization (2009): International Standard ISO 12620: 2009 –
Terminology and Other Language and Content Resources – Specification of Data Categories and
Management of a Data Category Registry for Language Resources. Geneva: ISO.
51. References: Literature
Kipfer, Barbara A. (2010): Roget’s International Thesaurus. New York:
Collins Reference.
Nuopponen, Anita (1994): “Wüster revisited: On Causal Concept
Relationships and Causal Concept Systems”. 9th European Symposium on
LSP, Bergen, Norway, August 2-6, 1993, pp. 532-539.
Schumacher, Helmut (1986): Verben in Feldern: Valenzwörterbuch zur
Syntax und Semantik deutscher Verben. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Švedova, N. Ju. (2002): Russkij semantičeskij slovar’: Tolkovyj slovar’,
sistematizirovannyj po klassam slov i značenij. Moskva: Azbukovnik.
Wright, Sue Ellen / Budin, Gerhard (eds.) (2001): Handbook of Terminology
Management. Vol. 2: Application-Oriented Terminology Management.
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
53. Contributions to this Presentation
Dr. Ana Hoffmeister, Volkswagen After Sales Language Service
Prof. Elke Teich, Saarland University
Prof. Klaus Schubert, University of Hildesheim
