Terminology Management FAQ

Web-Glossary FAQ

Glossary Format

Is there a recommended format for documenting the terms used in a special language?

You are familiar with the standard dictionary format used for general language words: each entry provides definitions and other information about a single WORD and all its various SENSES or MEANINGS.

You probably aren't interested in recording information about all the words in general language, however. You want to document a relatively small set of terms taken from a specific technical or scientific subject field, or from a domain like law, art history, or the social sciences. Especially in cases where you want to document equivalent terms in more than one language, it is much more efficient to record just the information for a single concept in each one of your entries. These entries are called terminology entries or term entries for short.

What are the standard rules for concept-oriented term entries?

All the information in the entry applies to the single concept covered by that entry.

No other entry in the glossary pertains to this concept.

All synonyms referring to this concept are listed in the entry.

All bilingual or multilingual equivalents associated with this concept are listed in the entry or linked to it.

Terms with the same spelling (usually called homographs or polysemic terms) representing other concepts are treated in other entries.

What if my area of interest can be subdivided into more specific subject fields, e.g., automotive drive train components can be divided into transmissions, clutches, U-joints, etc.?

Create a picklist for yourself, cataloging the sub-fields you want to use and consistently indicate them for each term. One way to do this might be:
friction facing, n, <driven discs> ...

If you want to, or you feel your field needs to be viewed from several angles, you can include several levels of classification.

TERM-RELATED ISSUES

What should terms look like when they are entered in a glossary?

All languages have developed traditions for entering terms in dictionaries. This form is frequently called the canonical form of the term. Grab your favorite dictionary and look at the form that is used for words and terms. You'll probably see that:

Terms are spelled correctly.

Terms are in lowercase unless they are usually spelled in uppercase in texts. In multilingual dictionaries this might mean, for instance, that German nouns are capitalized and that almost no words are ever capitalized in Romance languages like French and Spanish, where only the first word of multiword proper nouns is capitalized. If you report terms in this way in your glossary, users will know how to type them when they use them in texts.

Each term is recorded in the singular unless it is always used in the plural (e.g., trousers, scissors, German Leute).

For non-English terms, do NOT preceed nouns with articles (le, la, der, die, das, etc.). Indicate gender (m, f, n) the way you see it in a standard dictionary, or, if you are creating a database, create a field just for gender.

Record verbs in their infinitive form but don't include the Infinitive particle (to, à, zu, etc.).

Check to see how adjectives are recorded in your language and use that form for your glossary. For instance, Spanish adjectives are recorded in the masculine singular, and German adjectives use the non-inflected form.

Multiword terms are recorded in spoken order, for instance: type automotive drivetrain technology, not technology, automotive drive train. In databases, you can always find elusive terms with a string search or even using what some systems call a "fuzzy search," but if you are creating a glossary to print out, you may want to create cross-reference entries that point from inverted terms like the one in this example to the proper term in spoken order.

To restate some of these rules in the negative, lexicographers and terminologists consider some of the practices you see on the Web to be bad form, for instance:

DON'T record your terms in all caps.

DON'T capitalize each word in multiword terms, unless they are always written that way (English proper nouns, German nouns).

If you want the terms in your entries to stand out nicely, use boldface, a brighter color, or a larger font size to make them stand out from the surrounding text, or set up a table so that the terms appear in a column to the left of your definitions and other descriptive information.

Are there other pointers for providing really helpful information about terms?

If there are synonoyms for your term, indicate any differences in meaning or usage that exist between these synonyms.

If you are creating a database, list only one term in a given data field. Provide the option to create multiple fields for listing all the terms instead of listing multiple synoyms in the same data field.

Indicate if a term is associated with a common abbreviation, full form, or variant.

Indicate if variants are linked to regional usage.

Don't bury synonyms, abbreviations, full forms, variants, etc. in definitions or notes. Make it easy for users to see or find them.

Ensure that each term (synonym, etc.) is accompanied by appropriate grammatical, descriptive, and syntactical information. Don't limit reporting gender, etc., to your main or preferred term. There may be reasons why your users (technical writers, translators, etc.) may need to know important information about synonyms.

Terms that are defined in the glossary are called entailed terms when they show up in other definitions and notes. Any possibly unknown term used in a definition should be clearly defined in its own term entry.

The definitions, contexts, and notes you use to describe and illustrate your term entries will probably use some of the other terms that are defined elsewhere in your glossary. If your glossary is very large, it's a good idea to create hypertext links from the terms where they occur in running text to the entries in the glossary where they are defined. This is one of the really neat advantages of creating html glossaries. You can even link terms to definitions that are stored in other Web pages.

DEFINITION-RELATED ISSUES

Are there special rules for writing definitions for terminological entries?

It's usually not adequate to define a special language term by just stating a synonym, e.g., it's not enough to type: diaphragm spring, n, <drive train technology>, Belleville spring

There's a good chance that your users don't know what a Belleville spring is either.

State what kind of thing your concept represents:

diaphragm spring, n, <drive train technology>, a conical disk spring ....

This part of the definition is usually a broader concept and is called a genus in classic lexicography, terminology, and logic.

State what differentiates your concept from other closely related concepts in the field.

diaphragm spring, n, <drive train technology>, a conical disk spring with integrated control levers called the the diaphragm spring fingers, which are located around the inside diameter of the disk spring.

These components of the definition are called the differentia in classic definition theory.

Note that the definitions take the form of a kind of predicate statement. You don't repeat the term in the definition (an exception here is the German standards community, which does repeat terms) and you don't use a finite verb, like is, refers to, etc.

Try to provide just one good definition. Multiple definitions can be confusing.

Keep your definitions brief, but complete. Additional information about the concept can be entered in a note or, if appropriate, a context field.

Definitions for other meanings of a term are treated in the appropriate (other) entry. (See the guidelines at the beginning of this list.)

Decide how you want your definitions to be laid out and be consistent. For instance, if you decide to start each definition with a capital letter and end it with a period, always use this format. Check several dictionaries to decide what layout suits you best. There are many different formats.

CONTEXT-RELATED ISSUES

Are there any other pieces of information I should include in a term entry?

If you anticipate that translators or technical writers may use your glossary in addition to subject area specialists, they will very much appreciate the inclusion of contextual references.

A context contains the term documented in a given terminology section. In many cases, a good context will illustrate how the term is used in conjunction with other words, such as verbs, adjectives, and prepositions that frequently co-occur with the term. The context also serves to prove that the term really does occur in texts written for the subject area.

A defining context contains definitive information that may look very much like a definition, but is incomplete or doesn't have the right form for a definition.

An explanatory context includes explanatory material, but is not as complete as a definition or defining context.

An associative context makes it clear that the term and the concept go together and it helps orient the user to foreign equivalents, but it really doesn't explain much about the concept.

A situational context orients the concept and the term to the subject field or subfield, but doesn't contain explanatory or definitive information.

Be sure to double check your own sources and contexts. There's lots of misinformation out there on the Web in many fields. Be especially careful if you think a piece of information just might be a bad transltion. Once you find a term, try to validate it in other sources.

Decide how you want to document contexts and be consistent. There are no universal rules.

What other kinds of things are useful in a term entry?

Illustrations are great. Here's one of a diaphragm spring, showing how it looks built into a clutch. In an html file, you could even turn such an illustration into a bitmap so that the user could jump from different components in the illustration to individual term entries.

http://www.luk.de/english/Produkte/Tellerfeder2.html

DOCUMENTATION

How can people know whether they can trust the information in my Web glossary?

People are justifiably wary of information they find on the Web. The best way to indicate your information is trustworthy is to provide them with the proper documentation.

If you are yourself an expert, or if you represent a bona fide organization that specializes in a topic, be sure to put that information on the site where people can find it. If you have the resources to provide some informational support, including an email address is great.

If you don't write all the textual information yourself, identify the sources for items like definitions, contexts, notes and other text chunks.

Identify the sources for terms if they are relevant or unusual. Terms that are common within an industry (like the diaphragm spring defined here) don't need to be documented for source.

When you find information on the Web, be sure to include the URL.

For hardcopy materials, create a reference list following some industry bibliographical standard and provide links in some way. Short identifiers, called sourceIDs, can be used as pointers.

OTHER RESOURCES

Are there other places where I can find out more about documenting terminology?

Check John Benjamins Website for books by Sue Ellen Wright, Gerhard Budin, Juan Sager, and Teresa Cabré and others.

http://www.benjamins.com/jbp/index.html

For course materials on translation-oriented terminology management, check:

http://appling.kent.edu/ResourcePages/Courseware/Terminology&ComputerApps/60011Syllabus-2006.htm

For information on the exchange of terminological data, check:

http://www.loria.fr/projets/SALT/

http://www.ttt.org/salt/index.html

http://www.lisa.org/standards/tbx/

For information on terminology standards, check:

http://www.iso.ch/iso/en/commcentre/presentations/presidents/tcsc-conf/hjulstad.ppt

http://www.infoterm.info/index.php

For information on terminology database management systems, check:

http://www.trados.com/

http://www.star-group.net/engl/home.html