Terminologien

Terminologien, or terminologies, denote the structured sets of terms used to describe concepts within a specific domain, such as medicine, engineering, or law. In practice, the term covers both the terms themselves and the definitions, usage rules, and relationships that accompany them. The German plural Terminologien is often used in discussions of terminology work and knowledge organization.

A terminology differs from a general vocabulary by its top-down approach: terms are selected to reflect concepts and to support precise communication, consistency, and interoperability. A typical terminology entry includes a term, a definition, a language variant, preferred usage, domain scope, and cross-references to related terms, synonyms, or broader/narrower terms. Terminology management also addresses disambiguation, preferred spellings, and guidelines for new term formation.

Development and maintenance involves term extraction from source texts, validation by subject-matter experts, normalization, and approval processes. Multilingual terminologies require translation and alignment across languages, often using glossaries, thesauri, or ontologies as aids. Archiving and versioning are important as domains evolve.

Applications and standards: Terminologies underpin technical writing, translations, data standardization, and information retrieval. They support indexing, search precision, and automated classification. Standards such as ISO 704 and ISO 1087 provide definitions and methods for terminology work, including concepts, terms, and relationships. Modern tools include terminology management systems and collaborative glossaries, which help organizations maintain consistency across documents and products.