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Chapter 8 Terminology managers

  • Kara Warburton
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Handbook of the Language Industry
This chapter is in the book Handbook of the Language Industry

Abstract

This chapter describes the roles, responsibilities, skills and opportunities of terminologists working in production settings, here referred to as Terminology Managers. We maintain that corpus-based theories of Terminology, which have emerged in the past few decades, are more relevant for working terminologists than the traditional theory frequently credited for defining the discipline. Nonetheless, several principles inherited from traditional theory, especially concept orientation, remain crucial for achieving the goals of a terminology management initiative. On the other hand, we propose that what is considered a “term” in these settings should be based on functional, rather than purely semantic criteria, and therefore what Terminology Managers actually manage is more akin to “microcontent” than to “terminology”. We describe some modern approaches and requirements, and briefly cover tools, particularly terminology management systems, which are used to create and manage a termbase, and term extraction tools, which are used to identify terms in corpora.

Abstract

This chapter describes the roles, responsibilities, skills and opportunities of terminologists working in production settings, here referred to as Terminology Managers. We maintain that corpus-based theories of Terminology, which have emerged in the past few decades, are more relevant for working terminologists than the traditional theory frequently credited for defining the discipline. Nonetheless, several principles inherited from traditional theory, especially concept orientation, remain crucial for achieving the goals of a terminology management initiative. On the other hand, we propose that what is considered a “term” in these settings should be based on functional, rather than purely semantic criteria, and therefore what Terminology Managers actually manage is more akin to “microcontent” than to “terminology”. We describe some modern approaches and requirements, and briefly cover tools, particularly terminology management systems, which are used to create and manage a termbase, and term extraction tools, which are used to identify terms in corpora.

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