BIK Terminology

Solving the terminology puzzle, one posting at a time

Terminological Scatterlings*

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While it is hard to avoid soccer these days—not that I, who enjoyed the Sommermärchen (the fabulous atmosphere) in Germany four years ago, would want to—, it is not hard to link South Africa, soccer and terminology. So, let me leave corporate terminology management behind for this posting and talk a bit about South Africa from a language and terminology point-of-view.

Let’s start with South African English. If you visit this beautiful country, you will very likely notice that ’just now’ “denotes varying levels of urgency. Phoning someone ‘now now’ is sooner than ‘now’ or ‘just now’ but not as soon as ‘right now’” according to this short glossary of South Africanisms.

In their latest blog, ‘South African World Cup Draws Multilingual Audiences’, Common Sense Advisory talks about the language industry benefitting from the World Cup, which is not a surprise: Large international events always are. I fondly remember my time at the Atlanta Olympics with hundreds of other interpreters. I worked for overtired German journalists, who would normally get away without an interpreter, but long hours and the Southern accent incapacitated them. Back then, I had put together my own glossary of sports terminology. For the World Cup, we don’t need to: CLS Communication just released a multilingual World Cup dictionary in five European languages. I never knew that “Goal” is used in Swiss German. I am sure you’ll find other little surprises in the CLS Football Dictionary. Speaking of football, former Microsoft colleague and good friend, Licia Corbolante, points out cultural differences with regard to soccer in her Italian blog.

But the World Cup is just an event that lets us focus on South Africa. The country has had a rich multilingual history. With the end of apartheid came the recognition of eleven official languages: Afrikaans and English as well as the following nine indigenous languages: seSotho sa Lebowa, seSotho, seTswana, siSwati, Tshivenda, Xitsonga, isiNdebele, isiXhosa and isiZulu. We, in Europe and America, are used to other multilingual countries, like Canada, Switzerland or Belgium, leading multilingual topics. But the general level of understanding of terminology issues in South Africa makes the US look like a developing nation.

There are many governmental bodies who do terminology work. The organization charged with promoting language issues is the Pan South African Language Board:

“…PanSALB is a statutory body established to create conditions to develop and promote the equal use and enjoyment of all the official South African languages. It actively promotes an awareness of multilingualism as a national resource.” (http://www.pansalb.org.za/index.html).

The establishment of terminology is merely one of PanSALB’s many tasks and services. PanSALB members have also been actively involved in the creation of Microsoft terminology accessible on the Microsoft Language Portal in the following South African languages: Afrikaans, isiXhosa, isiZulu, seSotho sa Lebowa, and seTswana.

A look at the website for the TAMA (Terminology in Advanced Management Applications) conference in 2003 shows the multitude of terminology projects under way in South Africa: From the establishment of legal terminology in South African languages by organizations, such as the Centre for Legal Terminology in African Languages, to the work of the Terminology Subdirectorate of the National Language Service. And in time for the World Cup, the Department of Arts and Culture sponsored the publication of a Multilingual Soccer Terminology List.

Let me finish with a personal story: When I was in South Africa for TAMA in 2003, I had an exchange with a cab driver that really made me a terminologist. Ok, I had had the title “terminologist” since 1998, but I never told anyone. It was often too much trouble to explain what terminologists do. So, when the cab driver asked me what I had come to South Africa for, I told him that I was in Pretoria for a conference. “What subject area?” he kept prying. When I said terminology management, he responded, “oh, I have always been interested in semiotics.” Goooooooaal! Never after this conversation have I dumbed down what I really do.

*Borrowed from “Scatterlings of Africa” by Johnny Clegg

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What is a term?

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A few years ago, my director at the time asked this seemingly innocent question. It isn’t a conundrum only to sponsors of terminology projects: Content publishers, localizers and other users of a terminology database are wondering as well. And while the more senior terminologists, who have heard this question before, may roll their eyes, it isn’t one that will go away. Since there is no one solution to this puzzle, it deserves some analysis.

The correct, yet to the director meaningless answer could have been “a verbal designation […] of a general concept […] in a specific subject field” (ISO 1087-1). Terminologists may be happy with a clear, concise definition – that’s what we are all about. But a director? Very likely he was looking for something else.

The form that question may take for a content publisher is: What term needs to be added to the terminology database to support the localization team? Even terminologists ask each other: Does this “thing” go in or not? And while localizers at the end of the workflow may be less selective–after all, they need answers, and they need them fast -, they, too, may wonder: Can I add this terminology question to the database or not? So, what the director and everyone else is interested in is the scope of a corporate terminology database; the range of stuff that is entitled to an entry; the definition of the corporate terminology.

ISO 704, for example, says “a terminology shall include lexical units that are adequately defined in general language dictionaries only when these lexical units are used to designate concepts that form part of the concept system.” Definition by exclusion–that is not a bad start.

Let’s assume that a software company doesn’t publish poetry or fiction. Rather just about anything that comes up in the company material, e.g. user interface, documentation, websites, etc., is technical language, and many of the lexical units used are technical terms. Almost all of the technical terms that could be excluded according to the above recommendation from ISO 704 are needed to clarify relationships to other lexical units. Or to standardize target-language equivalents. Or to clarify meaning. So, while defining the scope by excluding things, we need to look further.

In terminology work, three types of designations are distinguished: symbols, appellations and terms (ISO 1087-1). A well-known symbol, at least back when localization was first taught, was the mailbox. (It was used often in localization classes, because it was highly culture-specific and had little meaning for many people outside the United States; in many applications, it has been replaced by the icon of an envelope since). A good example for an appellation is the name of an organization (e.g. Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB)) or country (e.g. Serbia). Appellations designate or stand for individual concepts, things that exist just once in the world. Terms, on the other hand, represent general concepts, e.g. beer bottle or virtualization).

If all corporate language is technical language and many of the designators would qualify for an entry in a terminology database, which terms, symbols or appellations should not be included? What tends to be excluded are:

  • Symbols (e.g. icons)
  • Longer text (e.g. error messages)
  • Fictitious names (e.g. company names used as examples in demo data)
  • Examples (e.g. example data used to explain the functionality in an ERP application)

Often, there are other databases that house, categorize and standardize symbols and even fictitious names. Otherwise, they could be included in a terminology database as well. Longer text units and examples simply don’t have a good return on investment: Error messages, boilerplate texts, etc. don’t need to be defined and are better stored in translation memories; examples may be very culture-specific and might need to be adjusted or are not worthwhile defining and standardizing in a database.

So, include anything with a return on investment and exclude what is stored elsewhere or doesn’t pay off. Pragmatic guidelines like these will at least keep a team of terminologists aligned. Do we need a more concrete rule in addition? Not in my opinion. There are other questions that need to be asked, but they are for another time.

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On Good Terms – blog post by Barbara I. Karsch

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After 12 years as corporate terminologist, I just left a full-time position at Microsoft. Over the years, I have encountered and solved many different terminological puzzles. In this blog, I’d like to share puzzles related to the individual pieces–the words and terms–the good, the bad and the ugly; to the tool they reside in, also known as a terminology management system; to the processes with which we move those puzzle pieces; and last but not least to the people who play the puzzle, their skills and challenges.

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