BIK Terminology

Solving the terminology puzzle, one posting at a time

What I like about ISO 704

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The body of ISO 704 “Terminology work—Principles and methods” lists a bunch of important information for terminology work. But what stuck in my mind is actually the annexes, most of all Annex B.

In the current version 704:2009, Annex B is devoted to term-formation methods. In other words, it gives us the most important methods that we have available when creating new terms or appellations in English. It also notes what might be obvious to us, i.e. that these methods differ from language to language. For German, for example, we now have the new Terminologiearbeit – Best Practices which the German terminology association, DTT, published recently and which is more systematic about this topic than a standard might be.

Comprehensiveness need not be the goal of 704; awareness of these methods is more important. If half the content publishers, PMs, branding or marketing folks that I worked with in the IT world had read those five short pages, it would have done a world of good. Instead, I have heard colleagues mocking terminologists who, when coining new terms, pull out the Duden (the main German-German dictionary, similar to The Webster’s or Le Petit Robert) to apply one of these methods. She who laughs last, laughs best, though: New terms and appellations that are well-motivated—either rooted in existing language or deliberately different—last. Quickly invented garbage causes misunderstandings and costs money.

Annex B doesn’t claim to be comprehensive, but it lists the most important methods that can be used in term formation. Here are the three main methods and some examples:

  • The first one is the creation of completely new lexical entities (terms or appellations), also known as neoterms. One way of creating a neoterm is through compounding, where a new designation is formed of two or more elements, for example cloud computing.
  • Two methods that fall into the category of using existing forms are terminologization (see also How do I identify a term—terminologization) and transdisciplinary borrowing. An example of terminologization is cloud, where the everyday word cloud took on a very specific meaning in the context of computing, while the name of the computer virus Trojan horse was obviously borrowed from Greek mythology.
  • Translingual borrowing results in new terms and appellations that originate in another language. English climbing language, for example, is full of direct loans from a variety of other languages; just think of bergschrund, cairn or .

The above are just a few examples to give you an impression of what could be learned by reading Annex B. Incidentally, these are methods. They need to be applied correctly, not randomly. I can already hear it, “but I used transdisciplinary borrowing to come up with this [junk]”. No. Even if your orthopedist uses minimally-invasive arthroscopic surgery to fix your knee, you want him to be sure that you actually need surgery, right? If you need to coin English terms or appellations on a regular basis, Annex B of ISO 704 is worth your while. I also like Annex C. More about that some other time.

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Who has the last word?

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In most cases, terminology research leads to one obvious target terminology solution. But sometimes there are several options and many people are involved. How then do you make a decision? Who is the final authority? When a new target term is coined or a controversial term needs to be changed, stakeholders become extremely passionate about these questions (see also a recent discussion in the inkedIn Terminology group).

I believe it is simply the wrong approach to this puzzle. Even just asking the question about authority does not help negotiations. Instead, let’s look at the process: The target terminologist does the research, because that is what they are trained and paid for. Research means accessing and evaluating pertinent resources to find the answer to the terminological problem. Resources may be print and online dictionaries, books and technical magazines, websites and terminology portals, the product itself, related products and material, and, yes, subject matter experts (SMEs).

Target terminologists are the hub in the middle of a bunch of experts. Sometimes they turn out to be self-proclaimed experts or people who are simply passionate about their native language. But especially in localization environments, a terminologist is a generalist and must never work in isolation. A good terminology management system (TMS) supports the terminologist by allowing knowledge sharing by others, voting, etc.

After doing the research, after consulting experts, after weighing each term candidate carefully, the answer should be apparent to the terminologist as well as to stakeholders. Here are some of the aspects that must be taken into consideration:

  • Linguistic presentation—is the new term a well-motivated term? Again, the DTT/DIT Best Practice contains a well-structured list of criteria.
  • Budgetary concerns—does changing from an old to a new term completely blow some product group’s budget and will they therefore not go for the new suggestion?
  • Input by end-users—when the term replaces an existing term: do end-users simply not understand the old term or have a strong dislike for it?
  • Sociolinguistic aspects—how rooted is the old term already in common parlance?
  • And finally, in certain environments, political aspects—e.g. are enough stakeholders convinced to make the change so that it will actually be successful?

It goes without saying that in each situation the criteria need to be weighted differently. For Windows Vista, for example, the German term for “to download” was changed from downloaden to herunterladen. The budgetary impact was high due to the high occurrence of the term in Microsoft material. Who had the final authority on that one? Well, a user survey conducted by the German terminologist at CeBIT in Hannover revealed that many users, even techies attending the computer fair, did not like the Anglicism. The German terminologist made the case to product groups, and the change was implemented by mutual agreement.

So, why do I say that the answer “should” be apparent? The most obvious reason is that, just like everyone else, terminologists are human and make mistakes—another good reason to not work in isolation. Apart from that, here are other aspects that I have observed impacting the negotiation process in today’s virtual world:

  • Culture, gender and hierarchy: At J.D. Edwards, some handbooks were translated multiple times into Japanese. Each time a more high-ranking person in the Japanese subsidiary had a complaint, the books or certain portions of them might be retranslated. Similarly, there was “terminology du jour”—terms that changed based on the input of the subsidiary and with little guidance by the female Japanese terminologist. Gender and hierarchy have an impact on terminological decisions in certain cultures.
  • Outsourcing: An external target terminologist isn’t necessarily in the strongest position. Many may not have contact with the local market subsidiary, because there is none or it is not staffed to discuss terminology. The worst case is, though, when the linguist makes a perfectly sound suggestion, but the counter-suggestion from the subsidiary prevails because it came from the client or the perceived expert. Subsidiary PMs may have strong technical knowledge, but that does not mean that they are always completely clear a) about the concept, b) about the impact of a term change, or even c) whether the term works for the end user. It is a terminologist’s job to assess how valuable the input of an expert is.
  • Expertise and experience: Let’s face it—some terminologists don’t deserve to be called terminologists. Terms are small, if not the smallest unit of knowledge, and terminologists need to deal with dozens of them on a daily basis. Experts usually don’t get paid or have no time for terminology work. Therefore, communication better be efficient and fast. It takes tremendous skill to make a concise case and get to a solution smoothly and efficiently.

In my experience, the best designations result from the work of a team of equals who draw on each others’ strength. In many software scenarios, the ultimate SME does not even exist—terminology-management and subject-matter expertise is contributed by different parties to an online centralized terminology database managed by the terminologist for the respective language.

What is your experience—do too many cooks spoil the terminology database? Or does it take a village?

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Dog food anyone?

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Language is part of a company’s culture. Like other social groups, employees at a company develop a vernacular that allows them to communicate (efficiently) with each other, be specific enough, and maybe even have fun. Part of this language may be technical terms or jargon. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn’t.

When employees of Microsoft use a product that hasn’t been released yet, the product is referred to as dog food and the practice is called dog-fooding. Apparently, the expression eating your own dog food was coined in 1988,and it is still in use today.

According to the best practices for terminology work just published by Deutscher Terminologie-Tag e.V. and Deutsches Institut für Terminologie, well-motivated, transparent terms allow the recipient of the communication to understand the concept (the idea represented by the term) immediately and comprehensively

From a term formation standpoint, dog food is not a well-motivated term: food for dogs and software products don’t have anything obvious in common, and we have to look to Wikipedia to understand the etymology. It also violates a few other criteria for good terms:

  • There was no other dog- or food-related terminology in use for related concepts, as far as we can tell today (usage).
  • Dog food has another meaning, although one could argue that the context allows the recipient to uniquely identify what the sender refers to in his communication (uniqueness).
  • Lack of ability to derive words of another part of speech from it; the verb “to dog-food” cannot seriously be considered a well derived verb (derivation).

We can only speculate why dog food as a designator for an unreleased product has taken root anyway:

  • It is easy to pronounce and to remember.
  • It works for the casual atmosphere of an innovation-driven software environment.
  • It may have been suggested and propagated by high-ranking employees.

This last point is an interesting one. If these high-ranking individuals used the term and used it consistently and often, caused people to chuckle or to listen up, they have a very good chance of succeeding even with a poorly motivated term. Sociolinguistic aspects, e.g. who coins and disseminates a term, do play a role in term formation.

Very likely frequency and vigor of use were the two aspects that were lacking when in November 2009 Microsoft CIO, Tony Scott, tried to convince Microsoft employees to use ice cream (and ice-creaming) instead of dog food. His intentions of changing to a term that is actually associated with something that people like to eat were good. But it was far too late.

It is very difficult to eradicate even a poorly motivated term, if it has been around for a while, people are used to it, and it has a certain weirdness factor to it. Not that ice creaming wasn’t weird: In fact, back when I, as Microsoft terminologist, read the story, I was screaming, too.

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