Quantcast
Channel: imot – In My Own Terms
Viewing all 192 articles
Browse latest View live

I’m back!

0
0

[Valid RSS]

Slowly but surely, I will restart publishing soon. It’s been about a month since my last post, but I had a few personal issues to deal with, from moving to a new place to closely monitoring my family’s situation in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. As you know, I am originally from Costa Rica, but my older sister and her family have been living in the beautiful island of Puerto Rico for many, many years. I finally got a call today from her saying that they are fine. We had heard from our nephew a few days after the hurricane that they were fine, but there’s nothing more reassuring than being able to talk to them after so many days without communication. There is a lot of damage in Puerto Rico. Food, gas, and water are scarce, but they are trying to get ahead.

I will start posting soon, but in the meantime, please look for a way (Red Cross or other organization) to make a donation for Puerto Rico.

Thank you to those who have been asking and I am deeply touched by your messages and a special welcome to the people who have been subscribing to my blog during my absence. The world is going through tough times, but it is our obligation to keep doing what we are doing, to take care of our friends and family and to help those in need.

Best,

Patricia

The post I’m back! appeared first on In My Own Terms.


The Basque Centre for Terminology and Lexicography (UZEI)

0
0

[Valid RSS]

Last year, during the Eighth European Terminology Summit in Luxembourg, I had the pleasure and the honor to meet Imanol Urbieta, manager of the Basque Centre for Terminology and Lexicography (UZEI), and Begoña Arrate, a terminologist at UZEI. So after a short break from blogging, I am very pleased to start again by presenting a brief profile on UZEI.

The Basque Centre for Terminology and Lexicography has been providing linguistic services for almost four decades now. In fact, it will be celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2018. Terminology is its core activity, the main outcome of which has been the creation of EUSKALTERM, a public terminology databank, which UZEI has maintained since 1989.

UZEI also focuses on other activities such as lexicography, linguistic corpus management, specialized translation, and software tool development. As a result, UZEI supports the lexicographic work of several task groups of The Royal Academy of the Basque Language (Euskaltzaindia), and is regarded as a technological agent by the Basque government. Moreover, it is a member of the Basque Science, Technology and Innovation Network.

UZEI’s research activities have also resulted in the development of an advanced translation memory management program, a Basque spelling and lexical checker (HOBELEX), a Basque text anonymizer, as well as several diagnostic tools for terminology usage. Its line of work in language technology includes text corpus management, translation technologies, natural language processing tools, and the creation of terminology dictionaries and lexicons.

UZEI currently has a staff of 17 employees and an estimated budget of €800,000, 3% of which is allocated to research, development, and innovation.

 

The post The Basque Centre for Terminology and Lexicography (UZEI) appeared first on In My Own Terms.

Motivated (or transparent) terms

0
0

[Valid RSS]

When reading about the formation of new terms (neology), you might come across the term “motivated” or “transparent” term. A motivated term represents key features of a concept. Sonneveld and Loening on Chemical Neologisms note that “A term is motivated when a language user is able to deduce, at least partly, the meaning of the term from the analysis of its components. Words that respect the morphological laws are generally said to be motivated”. Termium defines it as “transparent term”, as follows: “A term whose meaning is readily understood from the form or meaning of its main components, e.g. energy-efficient building”.

In her article “High Tech Translation in the Information Age”, Heather Leighton provides an example with the term “thesaurus” and its translation into Spanish: “She gave me the example of the term “thesaurus” which is a word-processing feature in the software that her company markets. Pointing and clicking on the “thesaurus” arrow gives access to a drop-down menu of synonyms (called sinónimos) that the end user can choose from. The Spanish translation of “thesaurus” poses a problem since it is a word that designates two different concepts: thesaurus and treasure. In order to avoid this ambiguity, terminologists and translators choose a key characteristic of the concept as a suitable term. In this particular case, sinónimos was chosen instead of tesoro. Translators and terminologists refer to this as a motivated term: a term which represents an essential characteristic of the concept.”

And just as we have motivated terms, we also have unmotivated terms. Take for example, the financial term “greenmail*”. You would not be able to figure out its meaning just by analyzing its components; unless we start receiving some type of environmentally friendly mail in our mailboxes!

Sources and further reading:

Standardization of Technical Terminology: Principles and Practices. The Road to a Truly Authoritative Chemical Dictionary, Kurt. L. Loening

Essays of Terminology, Alain Rey

 

* Greenmail is the process in which a buyer acquires a large number of a target company’s shares and threatens a hostile takeover but, instead, forces the target company to then buy back their shares at a higher price. (Divestopedia)

The post Motivated (or transparent) terms appeared first on In My Own Terms.

Attending ATA terminology sessions

0
0

[Valid RSS]

Calling all terminology lovers who will be attending ATA this week. I’d like to know if you are attending ATA’s conference in Washington, D.C. this week. I will be attending a few terminology sessions and taking a lot of notes! I can’t wait to be there. Send me an email to inmyownterms@yahoo.com,

I will be happy to report back to you with any new terminology insights I learn.

 

Love your Terms!

The post Attending ATA terminology sessions appeared first on In My Own Terms.

Bilingual Terminology Extraction from TMX. A state-of-the-art overview

0
0

[Valid RSS]

Take some time to go through this presentation “Bilingual Terminology Extraction from TMX. A state-of-the-art overview” by Terminologist Chelo-Vargas Sierra, published a year ago. I found this publication during a recent workshop on Terminology at ATA’s 58th Conference here in Washington.

Her presentation offers a quick overview of four term extraction tools: Multiterm Extract, SynchroTerm, Similis, and Sketch Engine. For precision, Similis takes first place, followed by Sketch Engine, SynchroTerm, and MultiTerm. For recall, SynchroTerm is at the top, followed by Similis, Sketch Engine, and MultiTerm. For extraction Similis is closely followed by SynchroTerm and for validation SynchroTerm takes second place while Similist takes first.

In the overall classification that takes into consideration effectiveness, efficiency, satisfaction, and context coverage,  SynchroTerm takes first prize, but followed closely by Sketch Engine, MultiTerm, and Similis.

In summary, it looks like all four tools have a lot to offer. In case you are still wandering which tool to get, I am sure this information will help you make a decision. In case you already have one, what do you think about these results? Which one is your favorite? I know for a fact that TermCoord uses SynchroTerm for IATE, which is a good sign that it is a good product.

P.S: If you ever need to come back to this post, I have added it to my cloud under the “toolbox” tag.

The post Bilingual Terminology Extraction from TMX. A state-of-the-art overview appeared first on In My Own Terms.

Water terminology

0
0

[Valid RSS]

A colleague and friend shared with me this list of water/hydrology glossaries that he received during a session on water conservation at ATA’s 28th conference. I usually don’t share glossaries, since there are a lot of places where you can get them online, but I thought the list of glossaries from the Euro-Mediterranean Information System is very comprehensive and worth taking a look.

  1. Euro-Mediterranean Information System on know-how in the Water sector
  2. AQUASTAT. FAO’s global water information system. Search directly here: http://www.fao.org/nr/water/aquastat/data/glossary/search.html
  3. Water resources in the US (The United States Geological Survey)
  4. Lenntech’s water glossary. Lenntech is a water treatment company

And we all know Lexicool and its glossaries, but I’m sharing the link here too: https://www.lexicool.com/online-dictionary.asp?FSP=C16&FKW=hydrology

If you know any related termbases or glossaries dedicated to water, feel free to share in the comments.

 

.

The post Water terminology appeared first on In My Own Terms.

Nine Terminology Extraction Tools: Are they useful for translators?

0
0

[Valid RSS]

I am happy to share this 2016 article that was recently brought to my attention during the ATA Conference: Nine Terminology Extraction Tools: Are they useful for translators? by Hernani Costa, Anna Zaretskaya, Gloria Corpas Pastor and Miriam Seghiri from the University of Malaga.

Originally published in MultiLingual Magazine, the authors picked nine term-extraction tools to figure out if “they provide the translators´ most favourite features”. The tools revised are: MultiTerm, Simple Extractor, TermSuit, Sketch Engine, Translated s.r.l. Terminus, Rainbow, and JATE. Some of these are not so well-known, so if you have used them let us know in the comments.

I thought this would be a good complement to my recent post on a similar comparison of extraction tools. Enjoy!

 

 

 

The post Nine Terminology Extraction Tools: Are they useful for translators? appeared first on In My Own Terms.

VARIENG: Corpus Resource Database

0
0

[Valid RSS]

I´m hoping no one is complaining about too many posts. This is what happens when you attend a conference and people are sharing information. So here is another little jewel: The VARIENG corpus search tool.

According to their home page, “VARIENG stands for the Research Unit for the Study of Variation, Contacts and Change in English. It also stands for innovative thinking and team work in English corpus linguistics and the study of language variation and change. VARIENG members study the English language, its uses and users, both today and in the past. We are interested in how language is situated in social, cognitive, textual and discourse contexts, and produced in speaker interaction; how language varies and changes in meaning and structure; and how change is connected with language typology.”

The corpora list looks like an Excel file with filters. You may start clicking to your heart´s content here: http://www.helsinki.fi/varieng/CoRD/corpora/corpusfinder/

I will save this post under my CORPORA tag in this blog´s cloud. Please remember to share the love!

The post VARIENG: Corpus Resource Database appeared first on In My Own Terms.


Phrase Miner: A term extraction macro

0
0

[Valid RSS]

Who doesn’t love macros! I know I do. If you like to experiment, I have a task for you. Let me know what you think of this macro created by David Turner. It looks interesting, but I don’t have time to play with it right now, so take a look and let me know if you used it and how it worked. You need to send Mr. Turner an email: asaptraduction@gmail.com in order to get the file.

Click here to read about Phrase Miner: http://asap-traduction.com/PhraseMiner where you will also find some screenshots of how it works. Also, please note what the author says on his page: “PhraseMiner is available under the same conditions as CodeZapper, i.e. you pay a small, one-time development donation of twenty euros, which entitles you to free future updates”. Sounds like a good investment to me. If it works for you, you might be saving a lot of money as compared to buying more expensive tools.

I have added this to my TOOLBOX cloud tag. Happy mining!

 

The post Phrase Miner: A term extraction macro appeared first on In My Own Terms.

The New Terminologist – An All Around Talent

0
0

[Valid RSS]

The Translating for Europe Forum took place this week In Brussels and Rodolfo Maslias, Head of TermCoord, made a very engaging presentation focusing on the skills required from terminologists. I recommend you check out his full presentation as it gives an overview of the work that TermCoord is doing.

In TermCoord’s blog post “TermCoord presents their new profile for terminologists“, they indicate that the terminologist “nowadays needs to cover not only linguistic but also communication and technical skills in order to adapt to the huge challenge of gathering, selecting and connecting the accurate terminology with all kinds of new tools assisting and automating translation.”

Terminology and language skills

  • Advanced knowledge of terminology theory and practice
  • Competence in linguistics and field-specific languages
  • Competence of management of databases and glossaries research skills, ability to analyse and Identify reliable sources with a certain rapidity and accuracy, filtering, prioritising etc.
  • Ability to collate and/or create terminological resources for specific purposes or target groups
  • Competence in standardization
  • Prescriptive vs. descriptive terminology work

Technical skills

  • Tools expertise, including the ability to evaluate relevant software, such as:
  • Terminology management systems (TMS);
  • Computer-assisted translation (CAT);
  • TMS interfaces to other applications;
  • Term extraction tools, and related tools such as concordance; software;
  • Proficiency in the use, creation, and management of terminology databases;
  • Competence in information theory and knowledge management (ontologies, data fields, and structure, big data, semantic web etc.).

Communication and coordination skills

  • Competence in project management
  • Ability to teamwork and networking
  • Argumentation / negotiation skills
  • Flexibility – colleagues, working place, working times etc.
  • Competence in using media technologies
  • Competencies related to netiquette, confidentiality, data safety
  • Ability to liaise with experts
  • Knowledge and teaching skills (terminology training for different target groups)

Education and professional experience

  • Advanced university degree (or professional training) in the field of languages, terminology,
  • Language technology or translation or
  • Specialised terminology training (certification/courses) or
  • A proven ability to perform the tasks required by the position

Professional experience (optional):

  • At least two years’ professional experience in a relevant field (preferably in the field of terminology,
  • Language technology or translation, including practical experience of translation-oriented terminology work preferably with terminology management

The post The New Terminologist – An All Around Talent appeared first on In My Own Terms.

Word macro for multiple term searches in Google Chrome

0
0

[Valid RSS]

Laura Ramírez Polo is a lecturer for terminology management, among other things, (see her Linkedin profile here) and she gave an excellent presentation on terminology tips and tricks during the recent ATA Conference. One of the very useful tools that she shared was this macro code for Word. Those of you who, like me, love using macros will find it very useful. The original macro used Internet Explorer, but I have experienced problems with IE before, so I have adjusted it to open your favorite terminology databases in Google Chrome. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions. If you don´t know how to install macros, Google will probably help you with that better than I could.

If you want to add more dictionaries, replace the “3” in “arrSites(3)” by the number of dictionaries you want to add and add the dictionary to the list (text marked in blue). Make sure you don´t delete any codes while changing this. In this macro, I have added UNTerm, IATE, Termium, and Linguee. Needless to say, if you want to turn this into a monolingual search, just change the URLs with your favorite dictionaries, and don´t forget to change the number (3) if you want to add more.

Sub Dictionaries()

‘ Look at different dictionaries

Dim theTerm As String ‘ Term to look up in dictionary

Dim strURL As String ‘ The URL to open in Explore

Dim arrSites(3) ‘Web pages

Dim appPath As String ‘Browser Application path

 

‘Path for Chrome

appPath = “””C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe”””

 

‘ If nothing is selected

If Selection.Type = wdSelectionIP Then

‘ Select the term where the cursor is located

theTerm = Selection.Words(1).Text

Else

‘ Use the current selection

theTerm = Selection.Text

End If

 

theTerm = Replace(theTerm, vbCr, “”)  ‘ Remove any soft returns in the phrase that you have highlighted

theTerm = Replace(theTerm, vbLf, “”)  ‘ Remove paragraph breaks in the phrase that you have highlighted

theTerm = Trim(theTerm) ‘ Remove any spaces

 

arrSites(0) = “https://cms.unov.org/UNTERM//search?urlQuery=” + theTerm

    arrSites(1) = “http://iate.europa.eu/SearchByQueryLoad.do?method=load” + theTerm

    arrSites(2) = “http://www.btb.termiumplus.gc.ca/tpv2alpha/alpha-fra.html?lang=fra&i=1&srchtxt=” + theTerm

    arrSites(3) = “https://www.linguee.com/english-spanish/search?source=auto&query=” + theTerm + “&title=21st”

 

For i = 0 To 3 Step 1

strURL = arrSites(i)

‘Open browser using the path specify for each url

Shell (appPath & ” -url ” & strURL)

Next i

 

End Sub

 

The post Word macro for multiple term searches in Google Chrome appeared first on In My Own Terms.

Happy Thanksgiving, Terminology Lovers!

0
0

[Valid RSS]

I know that not all of you celebrate Thanksgiving. We don´t celebrate it in my country, but living in the US, Thanksgiving is part of our lives during this time of the year. I believe that the nicest part of this holiday, even more than the food, is taking a pause and being thankful for what we have: our family, our friends, our health, our jobs, and all the things that sometimes we take for granted.

So on this day of “giving thanks”, I want to thank you for your support to my blog, whether you started with me from day one and have seen me grow, or whether you recently signed up to know about Terminology with a curious mind. I am thankful to each one of you. I hope we have more years together and that we can enjoy the little things (and big things) in life and be thankful for them.

Thank you! ¡Gracias! Merci! Obrigada!

The picture was taken in my backyard. Autumn and Thanksgiving always go together!

Patricia

The post Happy Thanksgiving, Terminology Lovers! appeared first on In My Own Terms.

TermTime (Connections)

0
0

[Valid RSS]

The fourth edition of the translation magazine “Connections” is out. Take some time to read the different (short) articles by our translation colleagues. My column “Term Time” talks about getting training in Terminology.

I am happy to participate in this initiative as a way to promote terminology and increase awareness among translators and language lovers. Please support our effort by reading the magazine and sharing it on social media. Thanks!

http://somastermind.com/project/4-2017/#page/15

Click on my cloud tag “TermTime” to read previous magazines.

The post TermTime (Connections) appeared first on In My Own Terms.

Search your terminology with custom Google Chrome keywords

0
0

[Valid RSS]

I learned about this Google Chrome trick during a terminology workshop at the ATA annual meeting by Laura Ramírez Polo. Please note that your GC version might be different than mine, but the steps are similar.

I explain it below but it might be easier for you to understand this first: The end result is a keyword that you create, let’s say “lg” for “Linguee”, which you put in your address bar so that Chrome knows that you want to search a term in Linguee. After you press on the space bar, it generates an automatic text, in this case, “Search Linguee”, followed by a straight bar “|”. You then type the term you want to look up and it opens it in Linguee. Below are the instructions and links for more info.

First, write the URL of your favorite dictionary or database in the address bar and make a search of a term in the dictionary. Right click on the bar. Let’s say you want to save the Merriam Webster Dictionary. The electronic address is https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/. Search for any term and go to the address bar. Right-click to show a floating menu that appears to pick Edit Search Engines. Chrome opens a new tab in its configuration under “Manage Search Engines”. You will see a list of all the sites that you have visited that are search engines. Click “ADD” to integrate the MW Dictionary into the list. A window pops up to fill in three blank spaces:

  1. The name you want to give to the page, e.g. “Merriam Webster Dictionary”
  2. The keyword you are going to use in the address bar to search for a term, “mwd” or “mw”
  3. The URL of the page, followed by “%s” which will be the code that will tell Google Chrome that it will represent your term. (The window explains this, so don’t worry).

Click on “ADD”. And that’s it! Test it! Go to the address bar, type your keyword, press spacebar and type your term.

By the way, this would also work to quickly search your Xmas presents on Amazon! Or add my blog and use a keyword such as “imot” to search its contents.

Still not clear? The same happened to me when I started playing with this. But I found this blog post by Simon Slagen that helped me understand better:

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/create-custom-search-engines-google-chrome/

I also found this video that might also help you. It also shows another way to edit your search engines.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAgXj-8jwkc

Happy searching!

 

The post Search your terminology with custom Google Chrome keywords appeared first on In My Own Terms.

The Brussels Declaration – for international cooperation on terminology

0
0

[Valid RSS]

The first Terminology Summit of the European Association for Terminology (EAFT) took place in Brussels (Belgium) fifteen years ago in 2002 and the Declaration for International Cooperation on Terminology, signed on June 15, was one of its key outcomes, as it gathered a series of principles and actions to promote “special language communication based on multilingualism”. The idea behind this document was to showcase Terminology in society as a whole and provide a useful tool that could be used in different contexts.

It is important to include it in this blog as permanent reference, and it is also a good opportunity to take a quick look at some highlights. The declaration starts by saying that the signing representatives consider that “terminology is omnipresent in all human activity”. This is certainly a useful fact when we are selling Terminology, and a phrase that has to be repeated over and over again if we want to keep giving Terminology the place that it deserves.

Another element of the Declaration points out to the value of terminology “as a tool for communication and transfer of knowledge” and that we need to make professionals and decision-makers aware of this fact—not an easy task when we are trying to sell terminology! However, I think that the Declaration is indeed a good tool for us to prove that managing terminology effectively and efficiently is a great investment towards delivering high-quality translations and technical documentation.

The second part of the Declaration encourages States and governments, intergovernmental bodies and international organizations to get involved in language policies and it offers 13 suggested lines of action to achieve this purpose. Although it focuses on the work that needs to be done by those entities —e.g., establish policies and funding—I believe that we, as individuals, can take it as a guideline to bring the Declaration to our own realities.

We can make alliances with peers to find new ways to collaborate with each other by sharing experiences, initiatives, and projects. We can raise awareness on the importance of doing systematic terminology work. We can create initiatives to promote the use of terminology in our field. We can help encourage multilingualism. We can share terminologies with colleagues/peers. If we cannot afford travel, we can follow international activities in social media. If you work in the academics field, you can try to encourage authorities to include Terminology in translation curricula (or in the industry that you are working).

If you want to read the full text (it’s just two pages), you can download it here (see below) or visit EAFT’s website.

Brussels Terminology Declaration

The post The Brussels Declaration – for international cooperation on terminology appeared first on In My Own Terms.


The Helsinki Term Bank for the Arts and Sciences

0
0

[Valid RSS]

You might have heard about the Bank of Finnish Terminology in Arts and Sciences, but now you might be one of the first persons to know that it will be changing its name to the Helsinki Term Bank for the Arts and Sciences in order to highlight the fact that it includes other languages besides Finnish.

The Helsinki Term Bank is a research infrastructure project created with funding from the Academy of Finland and maintained by the University of Helsinki, in cooperation with the FIN-CLARIN consortium. It is an open-access terminological database, whose content is added, modified, and updated by niche-sourcing, i.e, participation is limited to a particular group of experts from selected subject fields. Thanks to this niche-sourcing method the research community takes responsibility for the availability of up-to-date terminology in their research field.

Sharing this responsibility among top experts guarantees the quality and accuracy of the term base content. Furthermore, when shared among the group of experts, the task is not too large for any individual participant. This is also a more democratic way of carrying out terminology work: there is no single gatekeeper in the field.

In 2012, the project opened a wiki-based website which offers an open and collaborative platform for terminological work and a discussion forum open to all registered users. The project’s staff manages expert groups in different fields, provide support with terminology work, and feed available terminologies into the term bank, which includes 35 fields containing over 40,000 concept pages and 300,000 terms/lemmas.

The data available for all users includes: (1) the term and its synonyms; (2) definition(s); (3) the concept’s place in the concept system and concept diagrams; (4) information about the term’s morphological structure; (5) ostensive definitions (e.g. pictures); (6) contexts (e.g. links to abstracts of articles); (7) term equivalents in other languages (and information about the translatability of terms when necessary).

The Helsinki Term Bank offers a platform for international cooperation in terminology work. For example, a Nordic expert group is currently doing terminology work in the field of language technology. It also offers to possibility of linking different databases, term banks and portals. Therefore, they are constantly looking for partners focused on terminology research.

One of their future projects is to develop automatic tools based on data mining in collaboration with Fin-Clarin. For instance, to provide contextual examples for the terms or to search term candidates and definitions in different languages from research texts in order to help experts in their terminological work. As a first step in this process FIN-CLARIN is creating a corpus of research texts in various fields.

A possible future project may include transforming terminologies in their term bank into ontologies. They have also conducted one experiment in the field of plant morphology. This transformation is far from simple and requires lots of manual work in order to ensure that all the necessary relations between the concepts are properly defined.

Special thanks to Johanna Enqvist, Research Coordinator, who provided me with the information that I have adapted for this post. For more details, visit the Helsinki Term Bank for the Arts and Sciences. I hope you enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed writing.

The post The Helsinki Term Bank for the Arts and Sciences appeared first on In My Own Terms.

Terminology Summer School 2018 by Termnet

0
0

[Valid RSS]

Get your super early bird 15% discount (before 12/31) for TSS 2018 – taking place in Vienna, Austria, from 9 July to 13 July. Price for individuals is 700 euros. Here is the info on their webpage:

“Benefit from a training that will bring you to the next level of professional terminology work and management – learn from your peers and the leading terminology experts – enjoy one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

The International Terminology Summer School (TSS) is the leading and largest international summer school for terminology professionals with about 70 participants from some 35 countries and almost every continent.

TSS offers a one-week, practice-oriented training course covering a comprehensive overview of the methods and principles of terminology management in theory and practive.

The course is taught by some of the most renowned and prominent terminology experts in the world. Participation in TSS qualifies to obtain the ECQA Certificate for Terminology Managers.”

The post Terminology Summer School 2018 by Termnet appeared first on In My Own Terms.

The terminologist today and tomorrow: An interview with Rodolfo Maslias

0
0

[Valid RSS]

I am honored to interview Rodolfo Maslias, Head of the Terminology Coordination Unit (TermCoord) of the European Parliament (EP), this time to talk about his presentation on the changing role of the terminologist titled The new terminologist. An all-round talent. Application Scenario for the European Parliament, under the topic “New Profiles for New Markets” that was discussed during the Translating Europe Forum which took place in Brussels last November.

  1. I was privileged to be part of the European Terminology Summit last year in Luxembourg and one of the presentations that really left an impression on me was Georgeta Ciobanu’s talk about the Terminologist of the 21st Century, and you reintroduced the topic in your presentation. How does this translate into changes in the university curricula to tackle these new challenges?

We are experiencing an impressive increase in the development of curricula and even full master’s degree programs on all aspects related to translation, communication and IT development, and always including a substantial part on terminology. Based on the master’s level course that we have been teaching with some colleagues since 2013 in the Communication Master’s at the University of Luxembourg, I have prepared—initially at the request of the University of Grenoble—a course on the new challenges of terminology which has a high demand in many countries. In all academic conferences, the new skills required for terminology management and the position of this specialisation in the globalised and multilingual market are always a hot topic.

  1. Early in your presentation you pointed out that “Terminology is the only error category present in all systems for translation quality assessment”. Is this a problem, and if so what can we do to overcome it?

It is a problem for all tools developed to assist or automate translation, but it is a big challenge for terminology, because all new tools can be successful and provide the quality required by the clients only if they use accurate normative terminology as a resource (ex ante) and as a guarantee for proofreading and quality control of their product (ex post). Terminology is the brain of the machine. Preparing and facilitating its use for machine translation tools is a human endeavor.

  1. One of the elements in your presentation that caught my attention was the new Guidelines for Terminology Management in the Language Units. What do the guidelines include that others can use as a benchmark?

As you experienced when you spent some time with us as a study visitor, the European Parliament has a very complex multilingual environment with 24 official languages and more than 110 domains of European legislation in which our translators have to work. This is undertaken by 24 translation units with some 30 people in each one, who have to organise their terminology work and incorporate it into their workflow and daily management. Once we allowed them to freely organise their terminology work according to their perception, we were able to gather the best practices and draft guidelines to fine tune and harmonise the management of terminology. These guidelines were officially agreed by the Directorate of Translation and now we only monitor if they are applied to ensure efficiency and cooperation in terminology.

  1. One hundred terminologists work for the EP, a minimum of two terminologists per language unit. How is that number established? In other words, what elements are taken into consideration to establish a ratio between number of terminologists and translators/languages needed in an organization?

Well, our “Framework for Terminology Work” approved by the Directorate General in 2015 imposes to each translation unit a minimum of two terminologists. Most units have decided to add more interested translators to the terminology team and we have some units with 7 or 8 terminologists. They share terminology work which covers, among others, interinstitutional cooperation through the wiki, workflow follow-up, supervision of trainees in the terminology projects they prepare, and clean up of legacy and obsolete data from the database.

  1. When reviewing the terminologist’s skills, you mention change in tools and changes in the nature of translation as a profession. Could you elaborate on this?

When I started translating for the European Parliament in 1981, you could fall in love with your translated text. The texts in the Parliament were different, more interesting, more political and theoretical, and the way we translated was different. We dictated the translation and then we received it typed and had all the time to improve our text as a new original, as a piece of literature. Now the Parliament has legislative powers and translators work with texts that are much more technical and, in addition to this, they have to use several preexisting segments or terms, which makes the translation work partly a technical task. Outside the institutions, the translator also becomes more and more a “cultural mediator”.

  1. The new skills include competence in information theory and knowledge management (ontologies, data fields and structure, big data, semantic web, etc.). Any specific recommendations for the terminologists who want to add this skill to their curriculum?

Every significant change in a profession or in the job description requires training and continuous learning. In house, we provide this training but in the outside world you can also find a lot of courses, mostly postgraduate ones, webinars, training sessions, etc. The terminologist must nowadays follow the evolution of the profession and of his or her tasks; he or she has to adapt to the new methods and to the requirements of the respective client.

  1. When I took TermNet’s certification, Gabriele Sauberer insisted that a terminologist should get training on project management (PM) and you also included it on your list of communication skills. Is there any particular PM competence that a terminologist should at least learn about?

I am glad you mention the TermNet ECQA certification, because we have also been offering these webinars to five terminologists per year for some years now, and so we have in the EP a lot of translators in the various units with advanced terminology knowledge. Additionally, we have cooperated with TermNet to adapt the webinars to the needs of international institutions and we follow the evolution of the content, including now a lot of guidance to enable terminologists to manage whole projects with all the linguistic and communication or technology knowledge that the tasks require today.

  1. As technology gives us new tools and challenges, what measures should we, as terminologists and language specialists, take now to deal with them and stay updated in our field?

This is a big challenge for us terminologists and a crucial moment to make terminology the main condition for the success of this revolution in translation and multilingual communication. First of all, we must realise that if we don’t succeed in bringing terminology up on the screen and in the translation of the text in an automated way, we have lost the game, our databases will not have any utility. Then, we must adapt our terminology data to really serve the needs of the automation tools; this means a normative terminology that provides one reliable solution in term recognition. For this, we need termbases without noise, we need to rid them of duplicates and obsolete terms or legacy data, and to create the filters and the ontologies that allow the machine to pick the right term for the translation. Finally, we need to develop the protocols and the right interface (APIs and web services) for the smooth selection and download of the terminology data. And, last but not least, we have to take advantage of the technical possibilities offered to interlink databases with cloud or metasearch technology to make sure that the machine is able to fish in a vast repository of terminology created in each field by the respective experts. In a few words, we must achieve excellence in our terminology work since a machine is no substitute for a brain, and is therefore unable to select the correct term.

  1. Talking about tools, IATE keeps growing and becoming one of the most consulted termbases in the world, with 8 million validated terms and 3.600 visits per hour! Tell us about the new IATE2 and the main features that end users will see in 2018.

In 2018 you will discover a fantastic brand new IATE. I cannot hide that I am very enthusiastic about the upcoming new version of our EU terminology tool (but enthusiasm is often an uncontrollable part of my character…). Some of my dreams for the new IATE could not be fulfilled, like my conviction that we should change the name to make clear that it is a European terminology database, calling it EurTerm like EurLex or EuroVoc, and my dream to offer it to the public as a portal, making our internal collaborative terminology portal public (like all other big international institutions have, such as UN-Term or NATO-Term). Nevertheless, the work done by our developers under the guidance of the IATE Management Group that steers the terminology policy of the EU institutions is absolutely amazing. I invite you to check it as soon as the test version is available. I know that I raise big expectations but I am not scared of this. You will like it and its use, which by now stands at 3.500 clicks per hour, will increase.

  1. 2017 was IATE’s 10th anniversary and in 2018 TermCoord will also celebrate its 10th anniversary. Your website also broke a record this year, with 46.499 visits in November alone. What are your plans for the next year?

We have a wonderful team that has made me proud and happy in the ten years since I was asked to create this Unit in 2008. The success of our work is due to the excellent collaborative work of our very enthusiastic small team of permanent staff, but also to our perseverance involving some 150 top professional trainees who have come to TermCoord and taking advantage of their fresh knowledge and creativity. We trained them in terminology and on how to behave in a big institution (or company), but we learned more from them and we implemented their brilliant ideas: the terminology portal, the interviews with terminologists, the newsletters, the food term of the week, etc. In addition, we were finally able to make terminology a priority in the European Parliament and managed to get the upper echelons to approve a framework and concrete guidelines for harmonized terminology management and collaboration in all languages, and we have to consolidate all these achievements. We are a small team and cannot add new projects. We are proud of what we run now, and we want to continue and improve it. All this and the new IATE will be presented in the European Parliament, in a major event to celebrate TermCoord’s 10 years in November 2018, and I hope you will join us.

  1. I would say you are one of the few people I know who is fully involved in Terminology at a high level, attending important events, giving presentations, teaching at universities, leading a group such as TermCoord, and major projects such as IATE, do you foresee any new developments in the short- and long-term that we should prepare for?

We all try to make joint efforts so that terminology becomes a new profession covering all skills that the market needs today: linguistics, communication, and IT. Terminology is part of every knowledge base development; it even becomes a means to find jobs using the linguistic concordance in websites with job offers. Terminology is part of the computational linguistic research and development of CAT tools and machine translation software. Even in the EU we undertook the initiative to suggest a specific job description for posts in the European Personnel Selection Office (EPSO) competitions, since there are already more than 150 professionals working full time in terminology and no longer translating. So, yes, we have to expect and to prepare for big changes in the methods and in the role of terminology in institutions, academy and industry.

  1. Lastly, what can you say to all those young language lovers out there who want to become terminologists? Will there be a market for them in the future?

Linguistic studies adapt to changes in communications. In today’s globalised world where communication tools are increasing vertiginously, multilingualism becomes more relevant, but also the competition gets more difficult. Language studies have improved everywhere, people travel more and it is common to have a good level in several languages. So, being able to translate no longer guarantees a job. In fact, specialisation in one of the new fields of the linguistic industry is the new focus in every university, and terminology is one of the most multidisciplinary fields. Every big company runs a multilingual website, creates specialised glossaries, and needs linguistic equivalence of legal documents for any international cooperation.

In recent years, because of the budget cuts for humanities, we experienced a decrease in the number of students in the language departments. Now the trend has inverted. Linguistic studies are being connected with new needs of the market and I am very pleased to see how many universities are developing new graduate and postgraduate modules, connecting language with communication and technology and I can assure you, terminology with all its multiple aspects and uses is always part of them.

Thank you, Rodolfo. This has been a very eye-opening interview. Those of us who are involved in this field are always interested in knowing what is happening at all levels of the terminology world and you definitively are the right person to keep us informed. I am sure that many people will agree with me that we are all looking forward to learning about new developments in the terminologist’s career and to discovering the new initiatives and information that you and your team will generate, not only in 2018 but also in the coming years. Congratulations for the anniversaries and for the record-breaking year and thank you, again, for taking the time to answer these important questions.

Read my first interview with Rodolfo here.

The post The terminologist today and tomorrow: An interview with Rodolfo Maslias appeared first on In My Own Terms.

Lessons learned from TermCoord’s terminology interviews in 2017

0
0

[Valid RSS]

It is very enlightening to read what terminologists around the world have to say, so I present below some quotes from the language lovers interviewed by TermCoord this year. I believe they help us reflect about important terminology issues. Not one comment is more relevant than the other, so I present them in alphabetical order. Please check the links to read more about their backgrounds and the full interviews. Enjoy !

  1. I am thoroughly convinced that, while terminological training should involve learning about and applying the main terminological theories, there should be a focus on the methods students are most likely to use in their future careers, which will see them working with various text types and discourses and managing a number of terminological resources. When thinking about new ways of teaching terminology, we should also consider how it can vary according to context and/or text type (including the web genre).Jana Altmanova, researcher and lecturer of French language, linguistics and translation in the Department of Literature, Linguistics and Comparative Studies at the Orientale
  2. Corpora have improved and accelerated practically-oriented applied research in terminography and lexicography and have promoted semasiology, that is working from a term to a concept by analysing corpus data, including the collocational environment of terms, to arrive at their meaning. It’s difficult to imagine a modern bilingual dictionary or a termbase developed without any input from parallel and comparable corpus data. —Łucja Biel, Associate Professor at the Institute of Applied Linguistics, University of Warsaw, Poland.
  3. The future translator has no choice but to increasingly use technologies that get sophisticated in time, in order to deliver a final top quality product. The new translator profile must include advanced technological competence, which will lead to new professional openings such as terminologists, writers and reviewers of specialised texts, TM reviewers, CAT engine creators and localisers, etc.Anabel Borja, PhD degree in Translation (UAB), a Master’s degree in Business Law (UV), a Postgraduate degree in University Training (UV)
  4. It is correct to say that terminologists now integrate both the traditional concept-to-term approach (onomasiology), as well as the term-to-concept approach (semasiology) that was previously more typical of lexicographers. In terminology, the driving force behind the move towards semasiology has been corpora. A corpus is a large collection of authentic texts stored in electronic form. The most direct access points into a corpus are lexical items, rather than concepts. —Lynne Bowker, Full Professor of Translation (FR-EN) and Information Studies at the University of Ottawa, Certified Translator, Member of the Association of Translators and Interpreters of Ontario (ATIO).
  5. Personally, I try to make them see [students] that, thanks to terminology work, they can resolve their lexical needs from any one of its perspectives: cognitive, socio-functional, grammatical. I do think that having an excellent skill in terminology management does add value to language professionals’ CVs whether working in languages from a monolingual or a multilingual perspective. —María Rosa Castro Prieto, Spanish Philology Department at the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM).
  6. Today it is important to elaborate linguo-technological and linguo-didactic principles of future terminology, which will contribute to the further development of integrated traditional, electronic and virtual terminology studies. —Victoria L. Ivashchenko is the Head of the Terminology Commission under International Committee оf Slavonic Scholars, Professor
  7. I believe that theory-based or theory-oriented terminology can be studied as a separate discipline but I am a very passionate supporter of the interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary nature of terminology exactly because it connects to knowledge about the world; I certainly cannot think of contemporary translation studies without terminology in the curriculThemis Kaniklidou, Assistant Professor in Translation Studies and Associate Director of the Ph.D. programme at the Hellenic American University.
  8. With machine learning being used more frequently in different types of applications, I expect that future ‘intelligent’ technologies in practice-oriented terminology will take over some of the tasks when creating terminological databases, such as creating definitions for new concepts. Perhaps we will witness a meaning extension of the term ‘post-editing’ in the near future as it will probably also become partly a reality in practice-oriented terminology. — Koen Kerremans, Assistant professor at the department of Linguistics and Literary Studies (Faculty of Arts and Philosophy) of Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB)
  9. Linguistic studies are being connected with new needs of the market and I am very pleased to see how many universities are developing new graduate and postgraduate modules, connecting language with communication and technology and I can assure you, terminology with all its multiple aspects and uses is always part of them.Rodolfo Maslias, Head of Terminology Coordination Unit of the European Parliament.
  10. Nowadays, everything is easier for young people stepping into the world of terminology than it was for my generation. We were mostly autodidacts, whereas today there are terminology workshops, seminars, schools, meetings in which terminological knowledge and skills can be acquired. I made my own methodology for my PhD thesis because I had no role models, and today there are many PhDs on terminology issues related to various fields. However, the important thing is practice, constant work on concrete language material and continuous collaboration between linguists and experts in a specific field. —Milica Mihaljević, PhD in linguistics from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb in 1984.
  11. It really matters that translators can have immediate access to reliable terminology in the numerous fields they tackle. I would say that the less time they have to translate a text, the more solid terminology has to be. Indeed, the search for the right word for a concept can take a lot of time, so you can imagine how much time you can save when you happen to find in one click all the terminology you need. —Caroline Soteras-Scuflaire, French translator and terminologist at the European Parliament.
  12. I would say that terminology, together with a very good knowledge of the culture and customs of your client, is one of the most important things when interpreting. I always prepare a glossary. Even when I am already familiar with the topic, I always compile a special glossary or update the existing one. In our jargon we call this a ‘crutch’, which helps us to manage various challenging situations that occur during every interpreting task. —Tomáš Sovinec, PhD in Translation and Interpretation from the Faculty of Arts of the Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia.
  13. The quality of the MT output depends a lot on the construction and maintenance of the underlying dictionary. This is where terminologists play a significant role, in making sure that the right set of contextual vocabulary is in place, is broad enough and is adapted as required along the project. —Axelle Vansnick, Terminologist at the NATO Standardization Office (NSO).
  14. Beside solid knowledge of the theoretical framework of terminology, information mining competences and technology competences are essential. So are knowledge about language resources (e.g. corpora), repositories and catalogues. And since terminologists are increasingly required to work collaboratively, a capacity for teamwork also comes in handy.Tanja Wissik, PhD from the University of Vienna in translation studies with a specialization in the field of terminology and corpus linguistics.
  15. Terminology is ‘applied philosophy’, in the sense that it forces you to think about the nature of a concept, that is: to think about the essence of something, about what it really is. —Folkert Zijlstra, Senior Terminologist and Head of the NATO Terminology Office).

Further reading:

Why is Terminology your Passion? A collection of interviews by TermCoord.

The post Lessons learned from TermCoord’s terminology interviews in 2017 appeared first on In My Own Terms.

Happy New Year, Terminology Lovers!

0
0

[Valid RSS]

2017 was an excellent year, and I look forward to sharing a lot more in 2018. I want to thank all of you for your support during this year, whether it was subscribing to my blog, sending messages, or sharing in social media. There were times in the recent months when I didn’t even have time to share my posts as much as I wanted, but thanks to you they were tweeted and retweeted many times (you know who you are!).

May the New Year bring many beautiful moments with your family and friends, and to your personal and professional life. Remember to hug, kiss, and enjoy every day of your life.

Thank you! ¡Gracias! Merci! Obrigada! Grazie! Gràcies!

The post Happy New Year, Terminology Lovers! appeared first on In My Own Terms.

Viewing all 192 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images