Historical Considerations on Terminological Work. Case Colombia
Keywords:
Terminological Work, Terminography, Specialized TerminologyAbstract
The present contribution is a brief critical description on how terminological work has been changing and adapting according to various factors. A factor such as the epistemological discussions among diverse approaches to terminology management, lexicography and terminography as close related terms to terminological work. Another important factor is the development of Information and Communication Technologies and its influence in methods and procedures in terminological work.
To bring up the discussion about methodological aspects in terminology management, it would be convenient and useful to make a brief mention to the development of two approaches to this issue. On one hand there is lexicography, in a general sense, it can be described as a set of linguistic product types enabling accurate communication in a specific subject field. On the other hand the lexicography for technical languages has developed to become specialized lexicography and later on to be terminography (Lauren/Myking/Picht 1998: 304). These two approaches describing methodological aspects in terminology management have paved the road to separate specialized lexicography from terminography, which has been also often times coined as terminological work for the sake of describing methods and procedures used by professionals in the different subject fields in preparing, designing, implementing and retrieving from terminological resources.
The development of computer-based systems applied to the terminography began to generate terms such as "computer-assisted terminography ", which, in the words of Arnzt, Picht and Mayer, can be defined as: "Is related to the theory of terminology and lexicography, which has procedures for the collection, preparation, classification and presentation of terminological data, and computer-assisted terminology work is defined as "[...] (systematic) preparation, management and the preparation of terminology in one or more languages from the bases of the methods developed in the theory of terminology and the computer-assisted terminography" (Arnzt/Picht/Mayer 2004: 229).
The term of terminology management is has been popular among experts in the field, since it has certain advantages over other terms, such as terminography or terminological work, without denying that the latter are also used in the medium (Wright/pudding, 1997: 2). One of these advantages is to cover substantially all of the activities that are under its scope, including terminology practices that have been going on for decades by engineers, chemists, biologists, etc. in their respective fields, including from the systematic collection of terminological data for its subsequent presentation in specialized dictionaries, terminology collections or databases, until the recovery of that information to improve processes in the translation or interpretation, or in technical communication. (Wright/Budin 1997: ibíd.).
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