Review of "Handbook of Terminology" (2015)

See
discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/294089510
Review of "Handbook of Terminology" (2015)
Article · February 2016
CITATIONS READS
0 214
1 author:
Bruno Oliveira Maroneze

UFGD - Universidade Federal da Grande Dourados
19 PUBLICATIONS 3 CITATIONS
SEE PROFILE
Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:
História do vocabulário científico em língua portuguesa View project
All content following this page was uploaded by Bruno Oliveira Maroneze on 12 February 2016.
The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

12/02/2016 LINGUIST List 27.811: Review: Cog Sci; Lexicography; Socioling; Text/Corpus Ling; Translation: Kockaert, Steurs (2015)
LINGUIST List 27.811
Fri Feb 12 2016
Review: Cog Sci; Lexicography; Socioling; Text/Corpus Ling; Translation: Kockaert, Steurs
(2015)
Editor for this issue: Sara Couture <sara linguistlist.org>
Date: 21-Sep-2015
From: Bruno Maroneze <maronezebruno yahoo.com.br>
Subject: Handbook of Terminology
E-mail this message to a friend
Discuss this message
Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/26/26-1923.html
EDITOR: Hendrik J. Kockaert

EDITOR: Frieda Steurs
TITLE: Handbook of Terminology
SUBTITLE: Volume 1
SERIES TITLE: Handbook of Terminology 1
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2015
REVIEWER: Bruno O. Maroneze, Universidade Federal da Grande Dourados
Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry
SUMMARY
This Handbook of Terminology, edited by H. Kockaert and F. Steurs, intends to cover a broad range of topics within
the field of Terminology, a domain closely related to Linguistics (especially Lexicology), but which has independent
origins and its own methodologies (see Cabré, 1993). Its 25 chapters are divided into six different parts, preceded by
an introduction and a foreword. Each chapter is written by a different author (mostly academics, but also authors
working in environments other than universities, like terminology management institutions) and has a short abstract
and keywords list at the beginning.
The introduction, written by the two editors, states the purposes of the volume and also announces the subject of the
second volume, which is terminology management in the context of language communities and the global computing
environment. The text closes by presenting short descriptions of the following chapters.
https://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27811.html 1/6
The foreword is written by Dirk Geeraerts, currently one of the most important scholars in the field of lexical studies.
His text emphasizes the links between Terminology and Linguistics, stating that the disciplines had different origins
and went through different paths, especially because Terminology was “lexically oriented rather than focusing on
syntax, with an applied and language-specific rather than universal and theoretical perspective, and based on a
theoretical framework that largely derived from structuralist lexicology” (p. xvii). But nowadays, the growing interest in
the lexicon has been an opportunity for both fields to “narrow the gap” and, as a result, Terminology studies may now
incorporate the new descriptive models of the lexicon from Linguistics. Geeraerts also emphasizes the importance of
the digital revolution for the recent developments in Terminology, especially in three aspects: “the abundant availability
of digital texts”, forcing terminologists to work together with corpus linguists; the digital form in which terminographical
products may now be presented; and the fact that specialized language becomes less specialized because of the
massive access to specialized texts.
Part I is entitled “Fundamentals for term base development”. The first contribution, by Pius ten Hacken, is “Terms and
specialized vocabulary: taming the prototypes”. The author opposes the traditional terminological definition (based on
necessary and sufficient conditions of a concept) to the idea that concepts are based on prototypes. An important
distinction established by ten Hacken is that of terms and specialized vocabulary (which he bases on Temmerman,
2000). For him, a word found in a specialized context constitutes a term only when it is attributed a terminological
definition, which happens mainly in two contexts: that of legal disputes and that of scientific claims. Otherwise, there is
no need of terminological definitions and the concepts may be described based on the notion of prototype. This
approach seems slightly different from other contributions in the same volume, such as Depecker’s.
The second chapter is entitled “Frames as a framework for terminology”, by Pamela Faber. She presents Frame-
Based Terminology (FBT), an approach which brings contributions from Cognitive Linguistics (especially Frame
Semantics) and other recent models. FBT is divided into three micro-theories: (1) a semantic micro-theory, drawing on
concepts from the Generative Lexicon theory; (2) a syntactic micro-theory, based on events and on verb predicate
classes (Aktionsarten); and (3) a pragmatic micro-theory, which addresses specialized communication.
Loïc Depecker’s contribution is entitled “How to build terminology science?” and addresses the problem of building a
language for terminology work, the “terms of terminology”, so to speak. He emphasizes the distinction between “sign”
and “term”, saying that terminology science deals with the relation between a term (which is a linguistic sign), a
concept and an object. Depecker also clarifies notions such as “technicity”, “specialized language”, “special” (as in
“language for special purpose”), and explains some of the decisions that were taken in the elaboration of ISO norms
on Terminology.
The next contribution, by Kyo Kageura, is entitled “Terminology and lexicography”. The author begins by stating the
three meanings of the word “Terminology”: (1) “the set of practices and methods used for the collection, description
and presentation of terms” (p. 45); (2) the theory that explains the relationship between concepts and terms; (3) “A
vocabulary of a special subject field” (p. 45). He continues with the definitions and characteristics of terms,
distinguishing them from ordinary words (Section 2), and discusses the theoretical and practical status of the
terminology understood as a set of terms (section 3). In Section 4, the author establishes a distinction between
terminology and linguistics, on one side, and between terminology and epistemology, on the other, and finishes the
article (Section 5) by differentiating terminography and lexicography. It becomes clear that, for the author, terminology
and linguistics are two clearly separate (though related) domains, a claim that is not consensual.
The chapter “Intensional definitions” is signed by three authors: Georg Löckinger, Hendrik J. Kockaert and Gerhard
Budin. It focuses on practical issues with definitions, preceded by a short theoretical section. The authors mention that
this kind of definition has a history traceable back to Aristotle and present many practical examples. Of great practical
and didactic interest are the “Rules for writing and assessing intensional definitions” (Section 5), also very rich in
examples, which render the text easier to understand. At the end of the chapter, the authors present the Unified
Modeling Language (UML), a modeling language suited to represent intentional definitions, especially in computational
settings.
The next chapter, “Enumerations count”, by Henrik Nilsson, makes an interesting counterpoint to the previous one, by
focusing on extensional and partitive definitions. Beginning by establishing a difference between “enumerations in
definitions” and “enumerations as definitions), the author proposes a very thorough typology of definitions in which
there is some element of enumeration. The chapter ends with some prescriptive remarks as to whether enumerations
should be used as definitions and in which cases one cannot avoid using enumerations. More discussion of this
subject appears in the “evaluation” section, below.
The chapter “Associative relations and instrumentality in causality” is written by Paul Sambre and Cornelia Wermuth.
The chapter presents a description of the associative relations of instrument, cause and time in titles of medicine
articles. It is different from previous chapters in that it has a more descriptive, rather than prescriptive, goal, and it
presents a fully linguistic semantic analysis, rather than establishing a clear difference between terminology and
linguistics. In fact, it could be considered an analysis of scientific texts, more than of terms. It is theoretically dense and
relies heavily on cognitive linguistic concepts, such as cognitive grammar and frame semantics.
The chapter “Ontological definition”, by Christophe Roche, deals with the subject of ontology, understood as a
description of concepts and its relationships. The author clearly distinguishes between concepts (units of knowledge)
and meanings (linguistic dimensions of the concepts) and, therefore, between term definition (the description of the
linguistic meaning) and thing definition (the description of the object), with a third concept, name definition (a link
between term and concept), in-between. The article also deals with artificial languages best suited to represent
concepts. It is worth noting that the chapter has a great number of footnotes, which somewhat compromise the ease of
reading.
In “Domain specificity”, Claudia Santos and Rute Costa present the results of research that focused on the
methodology for term extraction and knowledge representation. They discuss the dichotomy between semasiology
and onomasiology, arguing that both have their role in terminology theory and practice, especially in extracting
terminological data. They also stress the importance of working with a team of specialists in the domain.
The last contribution of the first part is entitled “Getting to the core of a terminological project”, by Claudia Dobrina. It is
a very practice-oriented chapter, that first presents a typology of terminological projects and then describes two
examples of projects in a very didactic way, aiming at people who intend to work in this field.
This last contribution prepares the second part of the book (“Methods and Technology”), with articles focusing on
methodological matters. “Automatic Term Extraction”, by Kris Heylen and Dirk De Hertog, describe many diverse
methods of term extraction by computer, like statistical and linguistic approaches. The second article, “Terminology
tools”, by Frieda Steurs, Ken De Wachter and Evy De Malsche, is a review of five very important terminology software
programs, commonly used for knowledge management, document management and translation work.
In “Concept modeling vs. data modeling in practice”, Bodil Nistrup Madsen and Hanne Erdman Thomsen describe how
the clarification of concepts is done by means of terminological data modeling. They describe terminological ontologies
and the Unified Modeling Language (UML, also mentioned in other chapters). The chapter ends with two concrete
examples of concept modeling.
The last chapter of the second part is “Machine translation, translation memory and terminology management”, by
Peter Reynolds. He describes the use of terminology resources in machine translation and translation memory
technologies, as well as presents a survey with translators on how they use these resources.
The third part has the title “Management and quality assurance (QA)”, and contains six papers on commercial and
industrial applications of terminology. The first one is “Terminology work and crowdsourcing”, by Barbara Inge Karsch,
a very interesting paper on the possibilities that the new concept of crowdsourcing can open to terminological work.
The author describes which terminology tasks could be more suited to a crowdsourcing and which should be made by
an individual terminologist.
The next chapter, “Terminology and translation”, by Lynne Bowker, is the second one in the book that deals
specifically with the subject of terminology applied to translation. The author describes many situations in which
translators may use terminology resources and also those in which they need to create theirs; this would be a main
difference between term banks (produced by terminologists) and term bases (produced by translators). Another
important aspect is that of training translators in terminology, in face of the new available technologies.
Another very interesting chapter on terminology and the “business world” is “Managing terminology concepts”, by
Silvia Cerrella Bauer. The author explains how terminology management can be done in enterprises and organizations
in general, with very useful thoughts for the terminologist who is not accustomed to the business administration world.
In “Terminology management within a translation quality assurance process”, Monika Popiolek explains how
terminology work can be integrated into QA (Quality Assurance) models for translation processes, including guidelines
and computer tools to help these tasks.
Kara Warburton, in her chapter “Managing terminology in commercial contexts”, has an approach which is slightly
different from the other chapters in this third part. The author proposes to rethink which terminology concepts should
be revised in order for Terminology theory be useful in commercial environments.
The last chapter of the third part, by Alan K. Melby, presents TBX, a XML-based terminology exchange format. The
title of the chapter is “TBX: A terminology exchange format for the translation and localization industry”. The author
first presents which would be the most important characteristics of such a format and describes some previous
attempts; he then makes an evaluation of TBX based on those parameters and concludes by presenting the format’s
current status and possible future refinements.
Part IV of the book has the title “Case studies”, containing two chapters. The first one, “Using frame semantics to build
a bilingual lexical resource on legal terminology”, by Janine Pimentel, is a description of JuriDiCo, an online resource
of legal terminology in a bilingual (English-Portuguese) setting. The article focuses on the study of verbs, a word class
that is very important in legal terminology, and, for that, frame semantics proves to be a very useful theoretical
support.
The second article in this part is entitled “Terminology and localization”, by Klaus-Dirk Schmitz. The author focuses on
software localization and the importance of terminology for this subject. He describes criteria for creating a new term
or selecting a preferred term, as well as some other issues on terminology management for localization.
Part V is on “Language and terminology: Planning and policy” and contains two chapters: “Language policy and
terminology in South Africa”, by Bassey E. Antia, and “Language policies and terminology policies in Canada”, by
Nelida Chan. Both chapters present the sociolinguistic situation of each country (South Africa and Canada) and
describe the importance of terminology within language policies. In the South African case, the author shows an
implementation of a terminological data base in some minority languages. In the Canadian case, Nelida Chan
describes policies that are very specific to each province, focusing on English and French, but also including minority
languages like Inuit.
The sixth and last part, “Terminology and interculturality”, contains only one chapter, “The social and organizational
context of terminology work”, by Anja Drame. After first presenting the importance and reasons for investing in
Terminology (both social and economic) and of terminology policies, the author introduces the concept of
stakeholders, “individuals who are in a position to influence and be influenced by corporate decisions” (p. 515), who
could be customers, employees, government, the media, among others. Stakeholders must be taken into account in
any terminology management project, because they may provide support and also be the target groups. The author
then focuses on showing how stakeholders may be integrated in terminology projects.
EVALUATION
Volume 1 of The Handbook of Terminology is certainly a very useful book for terminologists and other professionals
who deal with this subject. It contains a good variety of subjects and a strong focus on practical matters.
It should be noted, however, that some absences could be pointed at. First of all, it is clear that purely descriptive
(linguistics-based) terminology is not a major concern for the editors; diachronic terminology, which has been an
important subject in descriptive approaches (and is a main area of interest for this reviewer) could also be remarked as
an important absence (Dury; Picton, 2009 may be mentioned here).
It is also worth remarking that many theoretical chapters in Part I present a view that is not shared by many
researchers in the field, especially by terminologists working on more linguistics-based approaches (including this
reviewer). For example, Depecker’s chapter presents a clear separation between terminology science and linguistics:
“terminology science and terminology work deal with two elements other than those commonly used in linguistics” (p.
36). This could be contrasted with the following quote from Cabré: “Para mí, los términos no son unidades distintas a
las unidades del léxico, sino unidades del léxico que adquieren características específicas en su uso discursivo.” [To
me, terms are not units distinct from lexical units, but lexical units which acquire specific traits in their use in discourse]
(Krieger; Santiago; Cabré, 2013).
This strong “separatist” view can also be noted, for instance, in the chapter on intensional definitions (by Löckinger,
Kockaert and Budin). Here, the authors present some shortcomings of this kind of definition (p. 67), but there is one
aspect that is never mentioned: the now famous criticism to Aristotelian concepts made by prototype theory (for
instance, Geeraerts, 2006). Although one can disagree with prototype theory, it is worth noting that it has often been
applied to terminology theory (as in the first chapter, by ten Hacken).
Prototype theory could also be remembered in the chapter on extensional definitions. On pages 97-98, Nilsson
mentions the difficulty of finding an intensional definition for the concept of “narcotic drug”, although it is not so difficult
“to answer the question if a certain substance is a narcotic drug” (p. 98). Here, understanding the concept of “narcotic
drug” as a prototype-based concept would help us to explain why it is so difficult to find a set of common defining traits
for it, even if one recognizes, by prototypicality effects, what should or should not be considered a narcotic drug.
Having noted that the theoretical perspectives of the book do not always represent consensus in the field, one should
praise the great emphasis on practical matters, which are not often seen in academic terminology works. Parts II, III
and IV, together with the last chapter of Part I (which maybe would be better placed in Part II), present a rich variety of
practical subjects, dealing with fields highly diverse from linguistics, like business, commerce and management. This
emphasis on practice, in the view of this reviewer, is the greatest contribution of this book, because it helps
terminologists (especially those with academic, theoretical background) to also be inserted in terminology works
outside academic circles.
REFERENCES
CABRÉ, Maria Teresa. 1993. La Terminología. Teoría, Metodología, Aplicaciones. Barcelona: Editorial
Antártida/Empúries.
DURY, Pascaline & PICTON, Amélie. 2009. Terminologie et diachronie: vers une réconciliation théorique et
méthodologique? Revue française de linguistique appliquée. XIV. 31-41.
GEERAERTS, Dirk. 2006. Prospects and problems of prototype theory. In: GEERAERTS, Dirk (ed.). Cognitive
Linguistics: basic readings. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 141-65.
KRIEGER, Maria da Graça; SANTIAGO, Márcio Sales; CABRÉ, Maria Teresa. 2013. Terminologia em foco: uma
entrevista comentada com Maria Teresa Cabré [Terminology in focus: an annotated interview with Maria Teresa
Cabré]. Calidoscópio 11/3. 328-332.
http://revistas.unisinos.br/index.php/calidoscopio/article/view/cld.2013.113.11/3771 (22 Sept. 2015)
TEMMERMAN, Rita. 2000. Towards new ways of terminology description: the sociocognitive approach. Amsterdam:
John Benjamins.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Bruno O. Maroneze completed his Ph.D. in the University of Sao Paulo in 2011. His Ph.D. thesis focuses on Brazilian
Portuguese neologisms formed by suffixation. His main research interests are on Lexicology, specifically word
formation, neologisms and diachronic studies of the lexicon. He is currently teaching in the Faculty of Communication,
Arts and Letters of the Universidade Federal da Grande Dourados, MS, Brazil.
Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue
Page Updated: 12-Feb-2016
About LINGUIST | Contact Us
While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents.
View publication stats

Review of "Handbook of Terminology" (2015)

Hochgeladen von

Dokumentinformationen

Copyright

Verfügbare Formate

Dieses Dokument teilen

Dokument teilen oder einbetten

Freigabeoptionen

Stufen Sie dieses Dokument als nützlich ein?

Sind diese Inhalte unangemessen?

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

Review of "Handbook of Terminology" (2015)

Hochgeladen von

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

See