Terminologier

Terminologier, or terminology collections, are organized sets of terms and definitions used within a domain or across domains. They function as reference resources for professionals, educators, translators, and information systems, and are maintained to reflect current usage and concepts.

The main goals are to improve clarity and consistency, reduce ambiguity, and support accurate communication, knowledge management, and information retrieval. Terminologies can be monolingual, bilingual, or multilingual and are frequently stored in term bases or glossaries that accompany technical documentation, databases, and software tools.

Core concepts include terms, concepts, preferred terms, synonyms, definitions, scope notes, and usage notes. Important processes are term extraction or mining, term selection, definition writing, disambiguation, and validation by domain experts, followed by ongoing maintenance and governance. Relationships between terms often include broader/narrower terms, related terms, and domain-specific classifications such as taxonomies or ontologies.

Structures and formats vary, but common outputs are glossaries, term banks, and ontologies. Data models such as TBX (TermBase eXchange) and SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System) are used for interoperability and exchange between systems.

Standards and best practices guide terminology work. ISO 704 covers principles and methods of terminology work, while other standards address data modeling, exchange, and multilingual terminology management.

Applications span science, engineering, law, medicine, IT, and localization. Challenges include polysemy and context dependence, language variation, resource demands for creation and upkeep, and keeping terminology aligned across languages and domains. The field increasingly relies on collaborative workflows and automated tools to support terminology extraction, management, and retrieval.