Terminology without Borders

I launched the programme for the academic cooperation of TermCoord “Terminology without Borders” as a continuation of the so called “IATE University Projects” when the resources in the Unit but also in the translation units could not cover anymore the validation tasks needed for the insertion of the produced terms in IATE, because of the constant increasing of universities producing terminology projects. We created a separate website https://yourterm.eu to publish the projects on their own responsibility after revision by experts of their choice. For some projects (e.g. YOURTERM MARE) we involved also the experts of the relevant EU Agencies with the help of the Translation Centre coordinating their terminology work. The projects contained the IATE IDs and contribute to feeding or updating the database when they can be validated by the terminologists of the 24 language units. The new platform had permited also collaborative multilingual projects between universities from many countries.

The description of the project from the dedicated website:

The Terminology Without Borders project of the Terminology Coordination Unit (TermCoord) reflects and supports the goal of the European Parliament’s Directorate-General for Translation (DG TRAD) to communicate with citizens in clear language.

It makes part of the collaboration with Universities for Terminology.

TermCoord launched Terminology Without Borders in collaboration with

University post-graduate terminology and language departments

The main aim of the project was to give the possibility to Terminology Professors to teach to their students terminology management in collaboration with a European Institution creating multilingual projects.

Each one of these multilingual projects contains terminology resources of the partners provided to the users and serving as a reference for the collaborating universities, the ongoing terminology entries and tables and related articles written by experts in each field.

The Workflow consists of several stages:

  • term extraction from corpora to create projects (English is preferable as the source language to enable more Universities to collaborate)
  • research by students for the equivalents in their language
  • revision carried out by the experts of the partner organisations
  • creation of the glossary with all the fields required by a standard table

The outcome of the projects will also be used to enrich IATE following the required validation by terminologists of the EU Institutions. (Therefore, students should check in IATE and add the ID if the term exists and either copy it in their language or make update suggestions).

The quality of the published glossaries is under the responsibility of the collaborators. All collaborators are invited to consult experts to ensure the accuracy of the terms.

Universities used the Application FAIRterm created by the Professors Giorgio Maria di Nunzio and Federica Vezzani (University of Padua), permitting also collaborative projects between one or more Universities:

FAIRterm Application

FAIRterm is a free tool for the compilation of multilingual terminological records. This Web application has been developed at the University of Padua by Federica Vezzani, Assistant Professor in Terminology (Department of Linguistic and Literary Studies), and Giorgio Maria Di Nunzio, Associate Professor in Computer Engineering (Department of Information Engineering).
FAIRterm is the first terminology tool designed in order to meet the FAIR principles (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability) for research data and implemented according to the ISO TC/37 SC/3 standards currently in force for terminology management. The theoretical premises behind the design of the tool are based on the paradigm of the “FAIR terminology” whose goal is to provide a model for the optimal and efficient organization of terminological data. For more details, see: Vezzani F. 2022 (open access book), and Vezzani F. and Di Nunzio G. M. 2020 (Terminology Journal, 26:2, pp. 265–297).

Within the Terminology without borders project, the TermCoord supports the use of the FAIRterm tool for the compilation of multilingual terminological records by the partners collaborating in the project.

The advantages deriving from the use of the FAIRterm tool are:

  • ensuring the consistency among the YourTerm projects;
  • harmonizing the terminological workflow between partners;
  • supporting the FAIRness of terminological data for the scientific community;
  • complying with European requirements for Open Science.

The web application is free, but you need to fill in this Google form in order to get your login credentials. Once you received your credentials, you can directly access the FAIRterm tool by clicking here.

The Web application allows both the individual and collaborative terminology work. We kindly ask you to specify this information in the Google form.

About FAIRterm: The Presentation from the workshop given to all participating Universities by Professors of Padova Giorgio Maria di Nunzio and Federica Vezzani:

Presentation

Recording

Frame Based Terminology

Universities also worked on Frame Based Terminology projects creating Terminology Events, with the help of Prof. Olga Koreneva (Universities of Granada and Seville):

Framed-based Terminology – FBT [Faber et al. 2006; Faber 2015; Faber et al. 2017; Faber 2022] is a cognitive theory for the effective terminology management, that incorporates the more useful and practical of the premises of Socioterminology [Gaudin 2003], the Communicative Theory of Terminology [Cabré 1998; 2003], Sociocognitive Terminology [Temmerman 2000; 2001], applies Frame structure [Fillmore 1985; 1986; 1976: 2006] and the cognitive approach – event or action-environmental interface [Barsalou 2003]. The FBT was developed at the
University of Granada (Spain) by the terminology research Group LexiCon (Head: Pamela Faber) and uses frames as dynamic and universal for every language constructs to organize and study the specialized domains. This theory pays particular attention to the non-hierarchical conceptual relations and is based on innovative psycholinguistic and neurological experiments with terms (Faber, P., Verdejo-Román, J., León-Araúz, P., Reimerink, A. & Guzmán Pérez-
Carrillo, G. 2017; Koreneva Antonova 2017) incorporating the latest developments in embodied cognition (more in http://lexicon.ugr.es/fbt).
In this way, the dynamism inherent in the domain of the speciality can be successfully considered in the corresponding Event-Structure as conceptual organisation of the specialised domain and reflected in the construction of effective terminology databases (for example – Environmental domain EcoLexicon – https://ecolexicon.ugr.es/visual/index_en.html).

This approach is easy and practical to apply by experts, translators, interpreters, students and non-experts.

Olga Koreneva

Some examples:

Projects

Click on the titles (active links) for the list of participating coordinators and students

YOURTERM MED

YourTerm MED aims at creating multilingual glossaries in the healthcare field, which will enable people of different medical systems, studies and backgrounds to reach a common understanding of each medical concept and use the same term when referring to it. As a result, communication misunderstandings will be eliminated, helping communities and societies to create a solid communication basis among health-care professionals of different linguistic profiles.

Due to the numerous diastratic variations of medical terminology, this project can help in reaching a sustainable effective medical policy and practice for medicine and will reinforce communication between health-care professionals and their patients, also promoting medical policies, discoveries, and treatments all over the world.

There are currently several sub-projects for MED:

Bipolar Disorders

Bipolar Disorders are one of the categories belonging to psychiatric disorders, which currently affect the majority of the population and have devastating consequences on patients. This glossary will provide a depth description of the many manifestations of the illness, as well as the causes and treatments of this serious condition.

Complementary & Alternative Medicine

CAM is a group of medical and health-care systems, products and practices which is not considered as part of the conventional medicine, but which proved to give benefits in a wide series of contexts. Due to its innovative practice, a glossary on CAM will increase consistency in the use of terminology and eliminate scepticism.

Diseases

Due to the evolving status of human health and safety, there is the need to track diseases and potential threats by bringing knowledge and finding solutions to increase worldwide safety. This glossary will share consistency among health-care professionals and researchers who need to quick an precisely name arising diseases and method of treatments.

Eponyms

Eponyms are a long-standing tradition in medicine, which can sometimes cast a shadow on the origin and manifestation of a condition. A fully-fledge termbase in this sub-domain not only provides highly reliable equivalents, but it can also describe each aspect of a pathology.

Vaccines

Immunization through vaccines prevents million deaths every year and it is the most efficient defence against viruses. The creation process and the method of action of a vaccine can be extremely complicate and can find space in biomolecular medicine. Therefore, this glossary will provide highly specialised terms in many medical sub-domains.

Oncology & Palliative Medicine

It is estimated that nearly 18 million people are diagnosed with cancer per year worldwide. This is why there is a urgent need of developing new oncological treatments and palliative cares aimed at improving quality of life by eliminating bothersome symptoms and psychological distress.

Computational Pathology

Computational pathology is a recent domain centered on computer-assisted diagnosis tools to analyze digital pathology images automatically. Although structured reporting is being increasingly applied, much diagnosis information is still represented as free text. The information contained in this free text is also invaluable for the clinical process. In this case, the process of knowledge extraction is often manual and thus highly time-consuming due to the high volumes of data, noise, and the lack of a standard shared terminology and structure between institutions. In this regard, this sub-project aims at collecting and analyzing the terminology used in Electronic Health Records in order to support the comprehension of medical information.

COVID-19

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. It was born in China in 2019 and spread in the whole world in 2020, resulting in a pandemic. It has caused health, political and social issues and since its appearance has been (and continues to be) the most discussed topic among doctors, scientific experts, politicians and common people. This multilingual glossary is to establish fixed terminology in all languages, which is of great importance for all fields of life nowadays.

Occupational Health and Safety in the Agricultural Sector

The following terms were specifically chosen due their validity in relation to the agricultural sector. The terms range from Personal Protective Equipment to other general OHS terms. The former and latter contribute to the understanding of the dangers present in this sector and even more importantly on how to prevent them. Furthermore, from a terminological point of view these terms (together with the others in the second sub-project) presented the opportunity to penetrate a domain up until now not explored.

 

YOURTERM ENVI

Environment & Conservation

YourTerm ENVI is a terminology project aiming at creating multilingual glossaries in the field of environment and conservation, and at promoting the harmonisation of environmental terminologies.

Conservation of the global environment is one of the major issues at stake to define the future of contemporary societies: committing to a more sustainable and fair development is surely the key for the protection of all ecosystems.

The following sub-projects collect and classify relevant terminology in the macro-field of environment:

Climate Change

One of the most topical issues of current times, climate change includes terminology from a variety of disciplines and research fields, from science and biology to communication, health, and social studies.

Natural Parks

Natural Parks are one of the most valuable means for the protection of natural ecosystems. This sub-project includes terminology about inland reserves and protected terrestrial areas, with relevant terminology in the domain of conservation.

Nature and Biodiversity

All natural environments are incredibly rich in biodiversity. In this sub-project, terms about natural environments, biodiversity and its forms are collected.

Oceans and Seas Conservation

Conservation of the marine environment is pivotal to the future of our planet. This sub-project collects multilingual terminology on global oceans and seas from several domains, such as science, chemistry, biology, but also international law and policy-making.

Green Finance

Green finance is a broad term that can refer to financial investments flowing into sustainable development projects and initiatives, environmental products, and policies that encourage the development of a more sustainable economy.

Zoology

Zoology is the branch of biology devoted to the study of animal life.  It covers areas ranging from the structure of organisms to the subcellular unit of life.

Agricultural Sector

In contrast to the previous sub-project the following terms directly deal with the hazards and diseases present in this sector. The structure and phonetics of these terms presented some challenges during the research process that aimed at identifying the target term in Maltese, where possible. However, such challenges served as an inspiration to dig deeper during the research process to uncover various theories and methods in order to find the most suitable target term.

YOURTERM CULT

“Get to Terms with Culture, the Soul of Europe”

Culture is one of the most important fields where multilingual communication meets the need of clear message to a very diverse audience.
This is why the Terminology Coordination Unit of the European Parliament included a project on cultural terminology in its new program Terminology without Borders.

The project on culture has six sub-projects:

European Capitals of Culture and Cultural Events

It is one of the most successful projects of the EU with various fields of activity topics that mobilize many people. The number of cultural and artistic projects drafted by the hundreds of cities bidding or participating since 1985 is huge and offers an ideal corpus for the extraction of terminology related to culture.
This project can be a helpful complementary tool to enable people coming from different countries understand each other.

Museums and Cultural Institutions

Terminology is extracted from corpora made with the texts that museums in any field of art or other activity publish on the web. This project can be useful for the multilingual digitalisation efforts of the museums, thanks also to a layer of plain terminology permitting communication with the visitors in clear language (e.g. through the audio guides)

The European Parliament has translated in all languages the material for The House of European History and created a Unit in the Directorate General of Translation dedicated to this permanent task, which was one of TermCoord’s main partners in this project.

House of European History

The texts translated by the Translation services of the European Parliament for the House of European History and the Parlamentarium  form a unique corpus to create a cultural glossary in all EU official languages, since they have been translated in all of them. TermCoord has been creating a corpus of this texts and performing term extraction.

Archaeology

The archaeological vocabulary consists of specialised terms, sometimes represented by borrowings from ancient languages such as Latin and Greek, but also common words. Although some scientific communities felt the need to structure their knowledge in thesauri or ontologies, the scenario is still very fragmented. There is, therefore, the need to establish a terminological common core shared across languages which might represent the basis for improving scientific cooperation and advances in this field.

Sports

The notion of culture is widely used in the sociological, anthropological and historical study of sport. We inhabit a world in which sport is an international phenomenon and part of the social and cultural fabric of different localities, regions, and nations. It is therefore impossible to fully understand contemporary society and culture without acknowledging the place of sport. This multilingual glossary encompasses a broad range of sports and is aimed at encouraging European citizens to consider the meanings, symbols, rituals and power relations at play within any particular sport culture.

 

Music

Music is a central discipline and branch of Culture and it is part of people’s lives in a constant and unconscious way. It is a very dynamic, ever-changing topic, as there are more and more singers and new genres, which is why its terminology is constantly expanding and developing. Musical traditions in different cultures are of great variety and lots are the interesting linguistic phenomena concerning this field. This multilingual glossary concerns music and musical instruments.

YOURTERM FEM

YourTerm FEM focuses on a range of women’s right-related issues and contributes to talk about gender equality by providing an accurate multilingual terminology, including health professionals, researchers, policymakers, humanitarian workers, legal sector workers and ordinary citizens.

This project aims to create multilingual terminological databases containing concepts that are crucial to address women’s right issues, such as domestic violence, sexual violence, gender-based discrimination, economic justice, pay equity, women’s health, reproductive and justice rights, women’s representation in the media and global feminist issues.

It contains following sub-projects.

Violence Against Women

Violence against women – particularly intimate partner violence and sexual violence – is a major public health problem and a violation of women’s human rights. The fight against it is a very current topic and it is spread worldwide. Estimates published by WHO indicate that globally about 1 in 3 (30%) of women worldwide have been subjected to either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime. Violence against women is preventable, and this multilingual glossary aims at helping with the fight against it by providing related terminology.

Gender Identity

Gender identity is each person’s internal and individual experience of gender. It is a person’s sense of being a woman, a man, both, neither, or anywhere along the gender spectrum. A person’s gender identity may be the same as or different from their birth-assigned sex. It is a very current topic as people going through gender identity issues are fiercely demanding their rights.

YOURTERM JURI

YourTerm JURI aims to collect relevant terminology in the field of justice and legal terminology. It will serve as a valuable resource for the harmonisation of international terminology, as well as a reliable source of country-specific information on legal and normative systems.

The project on juridical and legal terminology has several sub-projects:

Migration and Refugees

Migration phenomena are reshaping the social, economic and cultural geography of many nations worldwide. This sub-project includes useful terminology dealing with refugees and migration-related issues.

Global Terrorism

Terrorism is one of the most delicate issues of our societies. As terrorist violence increases and becomes more and more diversified, multilingual glossaries on this topic may provide further support in dealing with it.

Disarmament Treaties

Disarmament International Treaties aim at reducing and eliminating the number of weapons in the armed forces of a country. This terminology material analyses the principles of international law and international agreements on weapons of mass destruction that are conveyed by technical and specialised terminology.

Intellectual Property

The creations of the mind, such as inventions, literary and artistic works, symbols and images used in commerce, are covered by the umbrella term “Intellectual Property”, which aims at fostering an environment in which creativity and innovation can flourish. Considering its high value in today’s increasingly knowledge-based economy, companies are diligent when it comes to identifying and protecting intellectual property. Explore this terminology glossary, providing linguistic support for this specific domain.

Competition Law

Competition law is the body of legislation intended to prevent market distortion caused by anti-competitive practices on the part of businesses. In the United States, Canada and the European Union, competition law is also known as Antitrust law.

Conspiracy Theories

Conspiracy theories are explanations for an event or situation that invoke a conspiracy. In the political field conspiracy theories are numerous, coming from opposite political parties, and they have the power of involving and convincing common people and the theories become more and more spread around.

YOURTERM MARE

Fisheries and Maritime

YourTerm MARE is a project on the domains of fishing and maritime terminology. It is carried out in cooperation with EU agencies (EFCAEMSA and CdT), UN organisations (IMO and FAO), and several international universities.

The following sub-projects are currently active:

Maritime Safety & Ships Construction

Maritime terminology covers the areas of maritime safety and ship construction with key terminology work concerning naval and port operations such as ship types, components, equipment, tugging, etc.

Fish Names & Commercial Species

This sub-project includes the current usage of commercial and scientific names of fish species in EU, Member State law and the international marketplace.

YOURTERM EDU

Education & Education Systems

YourTerm EDU is a terminology project on education and education systems. It aims at creating multilingual glossaries which will enable people from different schooling systems and backgrounds to reach mutual understanding of each country’s standards and concepts in this field.

By classifying relevant terminology, this project contributes to clarify and harmonise the communication among different communities and societies in  the diversified and constantly changing scenario of international and intercultural education.

The following sub-projects are currently active:

Education Systems

Each country has specific education and schooling systems: although it is not always possible to compare them, this sub-project aims to classify them and give functional equivalents in several languages.

General Education

The broad field of education includes terminology from many different domains. This sub-project collects relevant terminology about educational stardards and organisation, teaching methodologies and learning techniques, and other general terms.

Intercultural Education

Interculturality is the key of contemporary education. In this project, terms exploring intercultural education are presented.

New Technologies in Higher Education

This glossary aims to inform readers about the latest developments in the application of digital technologies in higher education learning, training, research and management.

YOURTERM FOOD

Promote the high quality EU food through linguistic consciousness

YourTerm FOOD is a terminology project aiming at creating multilingual glossaries about the food industry and gastronomy fields and promoting gastronomy as an essential part of our European heritage and education.

This project is necessary to promote the high quality European food that is deeply linked to its local traditions and different landscapes. It is essential to raise the awareness and knowledge of citizens on food in the European Union attract interest on an international level.

This domain currently counts five sub-projects:

European Cuisine and Gastronomy

The European Cuisine and Gastronomy is rooted in the history of the continent. Its long traditions evolved throughout the years and the many techniques and dishes, which have been included in the art of cooking are the ideal theme for understanding the correct asset of the food pyramid.

Food Safety

Food Safety is one of the main topic at stake, which is strictly connected with health. Every citizen has the right to know how the food they eat is produced, processed, packaged, labelled and sold. Therefore, this sub-project will describe how food safety policies are implemented, what are the effective control systems and the compliance with EU standards.

Food Service and Food Processing

The unprecedented rise of new eating habits determined by a multitude of factors – especially cultural, religious, economic, environmental, social, and political ones – has led to the emergence of new concepts in need for designation. This, coupled with the increasing demand for foods with little or no history of consumption and/or production within the European Union, asks for the development of terminological resources that would promote broader knowledge and denominative stability, and thus help ensure consumer protection.

Novel Food and New Eating Habits

The unprecedented rise of new eating habits determined by a multitude of factors – especially cultural, religious, economic, environmental, social, and political ones – has led to the emergence of new concepts in need for designation. This, coupled with the increasing demand for foods with little or no history of consumption and/or production within the European Union, asks for the development of terminological resources that would promote broader knowledge and denominative stability, and thus help ensure consumer protection.

Vitiviniculture

The wine market is characterized by intense worldwide commercial exchanges. The documentation of the multilingual terminology of the vitiviniculture domain is indispensable in order to guarantee the inter-linguistic terminological consistency in the processes of production, sale, export and/or import of this commercial product.

YOURTERM TECH

Get to the heart of the EU digital development

YourTerm TECH will provide terminology, as well as useful knowledge, in the complex IT and Social Media fields. Due to the ongoing technological development of our society,  this project will be a useful resource to promote consistency and correct use of new practices, tools and discoveries which need to be quickly named.

The importance of this project is that technology and social media are the key to keeping the European Institutions and to carrying out the work which affects the lives of millions of European citizens.

The TECH project covers the following sub-projects:

Smart Cities

A smart city is a technologically modern urban area that uses different types of electronic methods, voice activation methods and sensors to collect specific data. Information gained from that data are used to manage assets, resources and services efficiently; in return, that data is used to improve the operations across the city.

Audiovisual Terminology

This subproject will give you an insight on the wide audiovisual field, focusing in particular on filmaking, subtitling, dubbing and voiceover.

Digital Humanities (DH)

Digital humanities (DH) is an area of scholarly activity at the intersection of computing or digital technologies and the disciplines of the humanities. It includes the systematic use of digital resources in the humanities, as well as the analysis of their application.

Natural Language Processing (NLP)

Natural Language Processing is a field of Artificial Intelligence that enables computers to analyse and understand human language, both written and spoken, so that a user can have natural conversations with a computer.

Technical communication

TelecommunicationComputer and programming

Information technologies is a rapidly developing field and comprises telecommunications systems, mobile technologies, computer systems and networks, programming and development, data management. This is a field that is equally necessary for individual users, as well as big companies. Gela Khundadze has a technical background and he is one of the compilers of the English-Russian-Georgian Online Technical Dictionary, developed by our lexicographic team (https://techdict.ge/). Lists of telecommunications, computer and programming terminology are generated from the above-mentioned dictionary. Each term is checked in IATE and other relevant sources and sometimes revised and updated according to the latest information

YOURTERM FIN

Get to the heart of economics and finance through terminology

The main objective of YourTerm FIN is to create multilingual glossaries on the domain of economics and finance, and to promote the harmonisation of economic terminology.

Economy plays a major role in our everyday life; it is essential not only for individuals, but also for societies, governments, enterprises and institutions. In nowadays’ changing and globalized world, it is paramount to have a clear and precise terminology, which responds to the linguistic needs arising from the constant global economic exchanges.

By classifying relevant terminology, FIN projects contribute to clarify and harmonise the communication among different communities and societies in the diversified and constantly changing economic and financial scenario.

The FIN project has sub-projects:

Sustainable Finance

Sustainable finance refers to any form of financial service integrating environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria into the business or investment decisions for the lasting benefit of both clients and society at large.

Covid 19 economic crisis

INDIVIDUAL PARTICIPANTS