iate

IATE stands for Inter-Active Terminology for Europe, a centralized, multilingual terminology database used by European Union institutions to standardize terms across official translations. It serves as the EU's primary terminology reference, drawing on older term banks and integrating new acquisitions to cover official policy domains.

The initiative consolidates earlier term repositories such as Eurodicautom and other national terminological databases. It was developed and is maintained by the European Commission's Directorate-General for Translation (DG Translation) in coordination with other EU institutions. The database includes terms and phrases in all official EU languages, presently numbering in the millions, across numerous policy areas.

IATE provides terms with definitions, contextual usage notes, part of speech, domain tags, and language-specific equivalents. Entries may include examples, synonyms, and cross-references. The interface supports searching by language, term, or concept, and allows browsing by domain or language pair. It is integrated with EU translation workflows and terminology management systems to support consistent translation in documentation, legislation, and web content.

The resource is publicly accessible via the IATE website and is also used internally by EU translators. Updates are produced through ongoing terminology work and governance processes to reflect policy changes and new terms.

IATE is central to multilingual communication in the EU, enabling consistent terminology across 24 official languages and facilitating accurate translation, drafting of legislation, public information, and research.