Terminology: what's in a word?
We might consider terminology as a part of our day-to-day work as translators and interpreters, as a piece of the puzzle that helps us do our jobs. However, it can also be a job profile in its own rights. In November last year, I attended the Translating Europe Forum, and the head of the Terminology Coordination Unit at the European Parliament, Rodolfo Maslias, gave a presentation on the work his unit does and, more generally, on the profile of terminologists. This made me think about the importance of this discipline and the tasks terminologists carry out.
Terminology is crucial for ensuring consistency, accuracy, and it can also help increase productivity. This field has been gradually developing and gaining recognition and the industry even has quality standards, such as ISO 704:2009 (Terminology work -- Principles and methods) or ISO 12616:2002 (Translation-oriented terminography). Large organisations and public institutions have their own internals standards and benchmarks when it comes to terminology and terminology management. This is why they also have teams dealing specifically with terminology. Terminology is indispensable in technical, specialised fields and in large organisations that produce a high amount of documentation that needs to be consistent.
What is the added value of this?
Dedicated terminologists manage and update terminology databases, by creating new entries, cleaning and updating the existing ones, creating new definitions, or assisting translators with terminological queries. Aside from this, they also communicate with experts in the field they are dealing with, to clarify aspects of their work, and they constantly have to assess the reliability of sources, prioritise information, and make choices that will ultimately affect the final translation product. By creating termbases, they identify problematic expressions and provide translators with solutions, to ensure consistency not only throughout the translation, but also with previous translations. Forward planning is also part and parcel of the work terminologists carry out: by preparing termbases and database entries for future projects, they strike pre-emptively, they anticipate the future needs and difficulties translators will face, and provide solutions.
Of course, terminology needs to be streamlined. In fact, as part of my job, I have also assisted the terminology team in my unit by creating and updating terminological entries in IATE and performing searches. This has helped me better understand the terminological database we employ and to develop search techniques that have improved my searches during the translation process. I personally believe that in order to be a good translator, you must have the thorough, curious eye of a terminologist, but also the stamina to carry on searching for that one obscure term that somehow does not seem to exist and is impossible to find!
Interested in terminology?
DG TRAD, at the European Parliament, and the CdT (Translation Centre for the Bodies of the EU) both offer traineeships in terminology. You can find out more about the experience of former DG TRAD trainees here. If you are interested in studying terminology, there are several MA degrees focusing specifically on terminology, and the DG TRAD Terminology Coordination Unit offers a comprehensive list of these universities here.
