This text is an abbreviated and edited translation of an original article written by Sirpa Suhonen and Seija Suonuuti. The original article was published in Terminfo 2/2023 in December 2023.
Kati Helenius
Professor Georg Löckinger holds a Master’s degree and a PhD in Translation studies. He is a professor of Technical communication at the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, has worked as terminologist in various settings, and is currently the chair of two standardization committees in Austria.
This text is an abbreviated and edited translation of an original article written by Riina Muurila. The original article was published in Terminfo 1/2023 in May 2023.
Susanne Lervad & Christian Gaubert
THREAD is a dynamic and innovative collaboration of diverse partners with the aim of supporting agencies aiming to achieve life-changing results for women who are forging new lives in Denmark. Susanne Lervad presents the Thread project at CTR by discussing a case study. THREAD is a 3-year Innovation Fund Project aiming to create a network model for refugee women in Denmark in the domain of textile and design.
Maja Lončar
A common language is a necessary prerequisite for effective communication. Considering the fact that most specialised knowledge has been documented and published on natural languages, proper terminology is a necessary prerequisite for the effective transfer of knowledge. Roche (2012) writes that “terminology as a scientific discipline is crucial if we consider that its primary aim is to understand the world, describe the objects that populate it and find the right words to talk about them”. As such, terminology plays a major role in ensuring legal certainty. There is no doubt that terminology databases are the best places to store detailed descriptions of legal terminology.
Bodil Nistrup Madsen & Hanne Erdman Thomsen
Concept clarification is vital for the successful development of IT systems and yet this stage is often neglected. Developing a terminological ontology as a basis for the development of a data model gives a solid foundation for the data modelling phases. This paper shows how we at Copenhagen Business School (CBS) integrate terminological concept modelling as a first step in data modelling. First, we introduce terminological concept modelling with terminological ontologies, i.e. concept systems enriched with characteristics modelled as feature specifications. This enables a formal account of the inheritance of characteristics and allows us to introduce a number of principles and constraints which render terminological concept modelling more coherent than earlier approaches.
The DanTermBank project team
In Denmark, we have online dictionaries where you can look up words and phrases of modern and older Danish language – but only non-technical language. There is thus a need for a public Danish national term bank for technical terms – a terminology and knowledge base. This is what the DanTermBank project is aiming at. The first stage is to build the foundation for such a term bank. Currently we are building the tools that can automatically harvest, organize and display technical terms in any subject matter you can think of.
Úna Bhreathnach
Term planning is the way in which terms develop or are developed, are made available and are put into use in a language community. When, in 2005, I became editorial manager of a new project to develop a National Terminology Database for Irish, Focal.ie1 (www.focal.ie), I developed a practical interest in the way terminology work is planned (or, often, just allowed to develop) for a language. The importance of addressing all aspects of terminology planning – and not just the provision of lists of terms, in the hope that they will be accepted and used – became especially clear to me. It cannot be assumed that, without strategic thought and planning, terminology will be developed and accepted into use in a way which is beneficial and which contributes strategically to the development of a language.
Trude Bukve
The internationalization of higher education in Norway has led to students having to adapt to an increasing use of English both in textbooks and the actual teaching. Previous research indicates that learning effects and memory decrease significantly when learning is done in a language other than one’s mother tongue. Guldbrandsen et al. (2002) proved in their research that medical doctors from Scandinavia scored significantly better in memory tasks when presented with scientific papers in their own language than when reading the same articles in English. Also, Hertzberg (1996) proves that students’ learning effect is better when they use Norwegian textbooks.
Marta Małachowicz
My interest in terminology developed while I was a student at the Department of Applied Linguistics at Warsaw University, Poland. After discovering that there are places called national terminology centres in the Nordic Countries, I wished to visit such a centre one day to get acquainted with its activities, projects and certain aspects of in-house work. My wish came true last year when I had the possibility to visit the Swedish Centre for Terminology (TNC) in Stockholm. This visit broadened my perspective on terminology work in many aspects, especially in practical dimension. I considered it a very valuable experience and wanted to continue discovering the principles of practical terminology work in the Nordic Countries, this time in Finland – the country that has a different language situation than Sweden because it has two official languages.
