BIK Terminology

Solving the terminology puzzle, one posting at a time

Is “cloud” a technical term (yet)?

by

We have jargon, we have words, we have phrases…we have terms. Can words become terms? How would that happen? And has “the cloud” arrived as a technical concept yet?

Cloud, as a word, is part of our everyday vocabulary. With the summer over, it’ll again be part of our daily lives in the Pacific Northwest for the next eight months. On the right is a good definition from the Merriam Webster Learner’s Dictionary. The Learner’s Dictionary is not concerned with technical language, as it is compiled for non-native speakers. So, the definition doesn’t allude to the fact that clouds, in a related sense, are also part of the field of meteorology and therefore part of a language for special purposes (LSP).

When common everyday words are used in technical communication and with specialized meaning, they have become terms through a process called terminologization. Is cloud, as in cloud computing, there yet? Or is it still in this murky area where marketing babel meets technical communication? It certainly was initially.

Here is a great blog on when cloud was used for the first time. Author John M. Willis asked his Twitter followers Who Coined The Phrase Cloud Computing? and could then trace back the first occurrences to May of 1997 and a patent application for “cloud computing” by NetCentric; then to a 1999 NYT article that referred to a Microsoft “cloud of computers”, and finally to a speech by Google’s Eric Schmidt who Willis says he would pick as the moment when the cloud metaphor became mainstream.

That was 2006, and “the cloud” may have become part of the tech world’s hype, but it wasn’t a technical term with a solid and clearly delineated definition. As Willis points out “cloud computing was a collection of related concepts that people recognized, but didn’t really have a good descriptor for, a definition in search of a term, you could say.”

Yes, we had the designator, but did we really have a clear definition? In my mind, everyone defined it differently. For a while, the idea of “the cloud” was batted around mostly by marketing and advertising folks whose job it is to use hip language and create positive connotations. When “the cloud” and other marketing jargon sound like dreams coming true to disposed audiences, they usually spell nightmare to terminologists. The path of a “cloud dream” into technical language is a difficult one. In 2008, I was part of a terminology taskforce within the Windows Server team who tried to nail down what cloud computing was. I believe the final definition wasn’t set when I left in May 2010.

An Azure architect evangelist (See You say Aaaazure, I say Azuuuure…) and I recently analyzed the conceptual area. Although he kept saying that some of the many companies in cloud computing these days “would also include x, y, or z,” x, y and z all turned out to not be “essential characteristics.” And we ended up with the following definition. It is based largely on the one published by Netlingo, but modified to meet more of the criteria of a terminological definition:

“A type of computing in which dynamic, scalable and virtual resources are provided over the Internet and which includes services that provide common business applications online and accessible from a Web browser, while the software and data are stored on servers.”

Wouldn’t it be great, if a terminologist could stand by to assist any time a new concept is being created somewhere? Then, we’d have nice definitions and well-formed terms and appellations right away. Since that is utopia, at least it helps to be aware that language is in flux, that marketing language might be deliberately nebulous, and that it might take time before a majority of experts have agreed on what something is and how it is different from other things around it. I think “the cloud” and “cloud computing” have been terminologized and arrived in technical language.

SHARE THIS:

Don’t use jargon!!

by

Or ‘I need to learn your jargon, so that we can understand each other’. What now? Can we use jargon or not? As so often: it depends.

I recently overheard my husband, Greg, who works with Microsoft partners interested in the MS cloud computing product, say to a partner: “I need to learn your jargon.” I nearly interrupted him to suggest that the partner send him an excerpt of the company’s terminology database. If they had one.

What do editors mean when they say “don’t use jargon”? There are two distinct concepts that are covered by the English term jargon:

  1. The specialized technical terminology characteristic of a particular subject.
  2. A characteristic language of a particular group (as among thieves).

Whether to use it or not is a matter of definition. The first meaning is really a synonym to the collection of terms or the technical terminology. Can you use that jargon? Well, what else would you use? The Microsoft partner who is in the medical software business probably flung acronyms like HIPPA and HIMSS around, and there is no way to avoid concepts like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, short HIPAA, if you are to figure out whether healthcare information can be stored in the cloud and how. Greg needs to bite the bullet. If the partner could quickly produce a list of the 20 most important terms and definitions for others to review, communication would happen faster and with fewer misunderstandings.

The second meaning is the one to stay away from, not only because the example suggests that thieves use jargon. The main problem is that it is a language that only a particular group can understand and that would exclude others. It is generally not the intent in technical communication to exclude someone from using a product or service. Since your customer base might be diverse, it is a good idea to have a clear persona in mind before developing a new product.

An example where a language mediator might go back and forth between jargon (meaning 1) and jargon (meaning 2) is medical interpretation. If a physician asks a patient about a “cardiac arrest” he chooses a technical medical term. The interpreter might chose to convey that with “heart attack” to the elderly farm worker from Latin America and therefore transfers what might have been meaningless jargon to the patient into the terminology with the right register.

SHARE THIS:

BIK Terminology

From the Blog

Follow Me