Mr. Christian, the world has already moved into a completely different, digital age, people and nations are gradually realizing this. The new era is gradually changing everything, technologies, approaches and, to some extent, the lifestyle of the modern world. What different demands has the digital age placed on terminology in particular?
First, we need more generic and harmonized approaches in terminology theory and methods, and their applications in policies (if possible complementary to other crucial policies of a country or language community); this also applies to the respective standards top-down from international standards (IS) to regional and national standards where IS should be adopted and adapted as necessary. Second and complementary to the above, it needs generic and harmonized approaches in major applications of terminology theory and methods, such as in
- The field of translation and interpreting and other language services; this also applies to the respective standards top-down from international standards (IS) to regional and national standards where IS may have to be adapted as necessary.
- The field of education comprising each level of schooling, studying and training, where microlearning objects (microLO) corresponding to high-quality terminological entries could support teachers/trainers and learners/trainees
- to acquire the basic conceptual knowledge of any subject (whether domain-related special languages or language-related teaching/training and learning)
- to keep on assisting them in all kinds of communicational tasks as look-up data (e.g., implemented in spelling checkers, etc.) in rest of their professional life.
- This also applies to the respective standards top-down from generic harmonized international standards (IS) to regional and national standards where IS must be adapted as necessary. The development of the respective data/content resources must largely be a bottom-up process driven by the respective teacher/trainer and learner/trainees’ communities.
- Computational terminography, where generic and harmonized standards (as a technical prerequisite of comprehensive data/content interoperability) must be adopted at other levels, while specialized technical applications may largely be language or domain/subject specific (such as letter symbols or graphical symbols)
- Data/content creation, where the development of generic and harmonized standards are still in their infancy. Crowd sourcing and other ICT-supported approaches should be adapted in such a way that not only high-quality data are produced in wide-spread cooperation, but also a comprehensive content interoperability of data/content is guaranteed within domain or applications as well as between languages.
- The above is already taking place in eApplications such as eBusiness/eCommerce/eTrade, eHealth, eBanking, etc. and will be absolutely necessary in future Internet of Things (IoT) with its applications in smart cities, smart transport, etc.
- The global ecosystem of standardization is an example where the above is gradually taking shape.
To sum up, it will need an ecosystem of terminology standardization – similar to the emerging standardization ecosystem – to back up terminological activities and make them more efficient and effective. This all also needs political and societal as well as industry support. So far terminologist only in few countries/regions succeeded to enjoy such support. We have to continue to strive for it at all levels: international, regional and national.
Georgia became a member of Infoterm, and for that we thank, first of all, former head of the center, Ms. Albina Auksoriute, during which Georgia was accepted into Infoterm and you personally, because you support Georgian terminologists so much. What would you say about Georgian terminological work?
Georgian terminologists – similar to terminologists in many other countries – are highly committed and doing tremendous efforts. I am not yet familiar enough about terminology activities in Georgia to know details. On the one hand, there is the “late development effect” which allows late-comers to learn from the experiences (including wrong approaches) of forerunners and leapfrog other communities. On the other hand, it needs the highly committed experts striving for their case to convince decision makers in policies and administration, industry and society, the mass media etc. In the 1990s, Infoterm organized a workshop on “argumentation strategies” for terminology. I am pleased to inform you that after several years of conferences, seminars and workshops this initial endeavor materialized in the form of the DTT publication “Terminology Work. Best practices 2.0” which is a great work to practically inform terminologists very concisely about the basics of terminology work and how to “market” the value of it in various circumstances. DTT Handbook “Best Practices 2.0” in English – Deutscher Terminologie-Tag e.V. (dttev.org)
Our main difficulty is non-agreed work, i.e. absence of terminological policy, that is why we were advised to translate the GUIDELINES FOR TERMINOLOGY POLICIES Thanks to you, the Georgian translation of this important guide is already on the website http://www.infoterm.info/publications/ and everyone can read it. What do you think is the most important thing to stop parallel and chaotic terminological work?
In all aspects which I mentioned in reply to your question 1 it needs cooperation, cooperation, cooperation! While industry has largely understood that after a good idea or the invention of one person or a small group of people, implementation in practice up to large scale production needs an increasing degree of cooperation, academia in many fields is still concentrating on individual efforts. One of the results – sorry to say – is the emergence of lots of data graveyards most of them not maintained nor even maintainable due to the lack of generic approaches. It looks as if you are on a good track to open perspectives looking also to cooperation within Georgia as well as at international level. I am involved in an Austria-Mongolia project for establishing a terminology infrastructure in Mongolia, the results of which will be made available to the public world-wide. You and your colleagues as well as Georgian terminologists are invited to participate in forthcoming conferences or other activities.
Georgia is not yet a member of the European Union, but your help, advice, participation in conferences, to some extent, allows us to work according to European terminology standards. Thank you so much for this friendship and support. A terminology policy guide with your foreword is published already.
Lia Karosanidze
Head of Dept. of Translating Dictionaries and Scientific Terminology at TSU Arnold Chikobava Institute of Linguistics
Head of Vukol Beridze Association for Terminology of Georgia