TERMINOLOGY IN THE CHANGING WORLD OF COMMUNICATION – a selection of articles
From Words to Data
A 40-years Journey Hand in Hand with the EU-Terminology
Article on my experience in terminology management and the history of the interinstitutional cooperation in the field of terminology, published as paper related to the presentation in the MDTT Conference 2023 in Lisbon:
Abstract
A description of the way terminology has been managed in the European and the European Institution from the early eighties when I joined the EP as translator until 2022 with all the experience of creating and heading the Terminology Coordination Unit. From the perspective of the EP, a description of the evolution of the interinstitutional work and cooperation in terminology around the EU-Database IATE and its evolution.
http://mdtt2023.dei.unipd.it/files/maslias_mdtt2023.pdf
Essays (Δοκίμια), Καινοστομίες ή Κενοστομίες
Philosophical Analysis of concept-words starting from the linguistic approach. In Greek
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/2033521304194337739/3567650345610684174
Translated from the Essays «Καινοστομίες και κενοστομίες»
RELIGION
Nobody can claim to have no need to believe in something which is out of their control. And exactly because they cannot control it. In some force considered or they consider being above their forces. This need shows the variable limits of our weakness. This need, like all other ones, material and spiritual, the system utilizes and converts it into one of its levers of influence. Therefore, there is no society without a religion. Without a massive, artificial belief. The religion, any religion, is a complex system of spontaneous ideas and of orders coming from outside or from the higher levels of the system, fermented over the centuries with the experiences, the circumstances, the social and economic development of a group of people, with the needs of their leaders in order to better oppress their subjects. It gets kneaded into a compact mass, it is in a constant struggle with the development, the scientific progress, and any other kind of progress, which it sometimes follows or embraces fast or late, sometimes rejects and demonizes, sometimes tries to precede the progress inventing unexplained phenomena or adopting banal forecasts presented as prophecies, kismet or destiny; escape from the tricks of religion is impossible. This multidimensionality of the religions and of each religion separately makes them apart of an element of every civilization – Eliot insists that there is no culture without religion – rather a separate culture, a culture running in parallel to the development of any society, a culture in itself, sophisticated, dominating, heaven sent, univocal, the one and superhuman culture. Countless are religions and beliefs over the centuries and I would say passing, provisional and replaceable, adapting necessarily with less or more difficulty to the life in every society differently according to place and time. Therefore, depending on the particular aspects of this general need for something greater that governs us and explain the (still) unexplained, every religion has its own reference and its own path. And by religion I mean every “belief” and not what each system calls or accepts as religion. Why wouldn’t it be religion everything sourcing from our insecurity but is rejected by the system and the rulers as heresy because it puts into question the hitherto necessary. The by then established and accepted. The common denominator of all religions, trying to use them as a means of governance, is the role of the punisher and the incriminating factor. Common enemy is relativism, the basic element of pluralism which is the enemy of the absolutism that every religion uses as shield and elixir. Belief vs thought. Another common denominator of all religions without exception is mysticism. Mysteries. Unexplained phenomena that only the ones having access to any kind of sanctuaries can understand. The secrets held by insiders. For totally initiated we can even move a step further. The occult. This is also a means of fostering the ignorance of the masses in the name of supposedly supreme knowledge of the few. Other religions have as a reference the axioms of an initial untouchable written law, the Torah or Kabbalah, the Bible or the Koran, others accept more continuous update, Buddhism or Hinduism, others have invented the soul, others start from the body, trying to achieve a balance to everyday life, such as Confucianism inspired by the long Chinese tradition of deep knowledge of the body. Other religions sanctify the ban of harmful habits like the teaching of Falun Dafa, prohibiting alcohol and smoking, but in the same time resists to temporary or foreign habits, like rock music and abstract art in an effort to impose through religion a cultural nationalism, ultimately similar to the one pursued by Hinduism which requires all the tribes of India to espouse its theories and fights against heterodox people using methods of religious activism. Islam, in contrary, is strongly marked by the gender discrimination and follows an oppression of women completely inconsistent with the apparent attempt to adapt to modern economic trends. And in front of all these countless, official, patented or invented religions recognized and used by different systems of power, appear occasionally new visions, subversive or corrective philosophies, which in order to spread andto be heard – or to succeed in their turn in the manipulation of a small or large group of people – claimthe status of religion. Thus the movement Baha’i is represented as religion and Scientology calls itself a church. And the manipulation of learners by heresies often reaches extreme phenomena such as mass suicide. There is no limit to the submission and self imposed blind belief towards the higher and unknown (and certainly inexistent) being. The endless attempt of humans to build a superhuman, transcendent system of ideas, makes every result, every religion except of superior and dominant, worthy of study and respectable. Religion is certainly the most appropriate tool to study the evolution of a society, the strength and weakness, provisional or timeless. While the central idea is the same, the reason to exist also, the goal, and the initial course is always the same for every religion, yet the study of every religion offers conclusions about the history of humanity and of each one of its nuclei, each society. So this wonderful system of studying birth, life and death is at the same time the most effective tool for manipulation of thought in the direction desired by the system of governance of a society, in short, medium or long term. We say or they say that religion is a philosophy, or that religions are philosophies. Until Descartes, indeed, the philosophy coincided in the old World with theology. But philosophy is a product of thought, of free thought, religion imposes thoughts of others, seeks to become blind thought of the masses, to subordinate the relative to the absolute, the said by god. It is easy to impose the artificial ideologisms of religion because they explain the unexplainable. The most arrogant and smug creature of nature lives with the utopia that it leaves nothing unexplained. Birth, life, death. Ignores that in essence all religions strive to explain more death, because the goal is to explain more what scares humans. Because demonstration of strength is just proof of weakness. And death is feared by the mighty man who built the almighty in his image and likeness, because he doesn’t know what comes afterwards. He thinks that there is certainly a day after, because he believes, he has convinced himself that he is immortal because otherwise what would mean omnipotent and allmighty. So he has invented a future also after his breakup, after the disordered retreat of the cells and microorganisms that make up his body. What remains is to define how exactly this future will be. Field of action of the religions is also anything that is not absolute but must be shown to be absolute to be used as a means of power. Moral is thus an easy victim. But the absolute moral. Not the personal individual one, rooted effortlessly from our thought depending on the environment in which we live, no, the moral of the masses, the imposed one. Morality. Because apart from natural phenomena, religions must justify and enforce also behaviours. Baptizing them appropriate or inappropriate. Moral or immoral. The vague and malleable sense of morality in serves religions to resist the progress of science and technology. The progress of the humans. That harm their plans. Usually they are forced to follow with some time delay. In the more advanced societies for instance, religious leaders have needed some centuries to admit that we didn’t need to burn this objector who insisted that the earth is round. That finally it was not so ethical to burn witches. Witches are those who disagree with our ethics. The moral of that times. This is the most vulnerable aspect of religion. Its morality is absolute. But absolute can be only the morality of today. So absolute that it is entitled to negate the former one, considered absolute by the religion in its times. I watch since a long time with much interest the behaviour of religious fanatics. The more religious one shows to be, the more heinous aspects of his character he tries to hide. Hateful to him. Aspects that shame. The bigotry is a showstopper, it is trying to impose thoughts on others, but mostly to yourself. Because when you teach something with absolute in an absolute way, you are trying to convince yourself, for it is obvious that in this absolute way you can not convince others. Watching religionists, one day I saw someone at a funeral, tragic like all funerals, but maybe a little more because of the tragic circumstances, I noticed someone in playful mood to try to justify hisa cheer, because the departed – as he said – went there we all want and are impatient to go. And I still wonder if he tried to impart consolation because of love for the departed or for the others, or if his excessive fear of death has filled his imagination with dreams of a non existing heaven, or if clumsy vision of life and people is trying to hide behind an artificial and projected bigotry, a picture of things that toils to remain incomprehensible, unperceivable for the others. Indeed, how much hateand resentment tends to invade relatives at a funeral. There where they are called to praise, thank and forgive him (even with a capital H) who deprived them – supposedly – from their beloved relative. Prematurely. Anyway. How absurd is all about. And how acceptable we have made all this. The so true feeling of pain is mocked in a banal and thousands of times played show, where the main actor, the priest hypocritically laments for the anonymous client who had his turn, mocking those who have lost something so eponymous, a so physical and not at all metaphysical loss, so real, so painful. It is one of the most lucrative resources of religions. Trafficking of death. It is certain that bigotry, very convenient means of submission to the doctrines of the churches around the world, is both the most genuine mirror of the rigidity of these oppressive, authoritarian systems misleading the masses, called religions, but on the other hand, they harm, shake and injure this wonderful side of the philosophy of life which religions are seeking, all religions. Religions are fragile systems because they reject the objection. Strong systems grow and are taught by the controversy. When discarding the divine, the holy, the undefined, then what remains are the worldwide churches, the clergy, the popes, the patriarchs, the cardinals, the rabbis, the mullahs, the gurus, the pastors, the mass boys of every parish, all elements of lucrative and authoritarian systems in one form or another, religion, sect, creed, spread across the world representing on earth the unexplained and the absolute. Conflicts and mutual anathemas is but the expression of competition between rival companies sharing the same market. They use all means that prevent and prohibit judgement and doubt. The churches around the world prohibit and resist the completion of the human being. Thus they negate the objective itself, the supposed goal of every religion: virtue. Good and right. But the good and right can be achieved only by a superior, completed being . But it is more profitable when faith dominates ratio. Faith. Mysteries. Witchery, evil eye. Satan. (The enemy whom the almighty could not eliminate. Or did not want to for pity). The perpetual subsistence of these systems and their influence fluctuates depending on the difficulties of times. It is a system fed by all kinds of calamities, famines, plagues and wars. And when war doesn’t break out, the different churches all over the world proclaim it. Religious war. What a brilliant combination of words. The concept that explains every function in the world, the concept that monopolizes and teaches love, universal love, and even extra-terrestrial love, forgiveness, tolerance. This concept, religion, becomes an adjective of the disaster, of the tool of increasingly massive death, of increasingly hideous forms of extermination of the species that religions claim to have created and to protect. In the script, the so-called holy script, when David, elected to defend the beloved people of God, defeated Goliath, leader of the non-chosen people of God, the Philistines, Jesus explains this paradox victory, teaching that also war belongs to God and he decides who will win it. And if we browse history, we will notice that most wars were religious. And those who were not from the beginning, became ones during their course. And the religious wars were always the toughest. The most bloody. Because two absolutistic worlds are confronted. Neither leaves room for negotiation. Retreat. Conciliation. The aim is the absolute predominance on the other absolute. Because religion is the easiest means of suspension of human logic and thought. It presents us as perfect to ourselves and it flatters us. And so we follow it. Finally, are perhaps the other animals on the planet (and of the rest of the universe) inferior to us humans, because they have no religion? Is it perhaps there where we excel? I mean, because they never asked themselves how they were born and they are not afraid to die. My G(g)od! What animals!
Η Πολιτιστική από Μέσα
Cultural Management: My experience as Director of International Relations and organiser of the International Cultural Events in Thessaloniki 1997, European Capital of Culture. In Greek
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/2033521304194337739/4743949598942968523