Terminology and documentation*

1. Terminology and documentation* Object of the study of terminology: analysis and description of the units representing specialized knowledge in specialized discourse Object of the study of documentation: organize the information found in documents and conveyed by means of terminological units (TU) * GROUP IULATERM Barcelona : IULA. Pompeu Fabra University

2. Terminology and documentation In theory and in practice, terminology and documentation are interrelated: Terminological work cannotbecarried out withoutdocumentation At least part of the documentary work cannotbecarried out withoutterminology Terminologyisthereforenecessaryfordocumentary work and documents are the basisforanyterminological work.

3. Terminology Basicelementsofterminological work: allterminologicalprojects are founded on practicalprofessionalneeds they are expectedtoanswertheseprofessionalneeds they are expectedtobeadequateto the communicative situation whichisdefined on parameterssuchasprofessionalactivity, domain and specifictopic, sociolinguisticcontext, languagefunction or specificaddressees

4. Documentation Documentation is necessary to terminology: it makes the description of terms possible, because terminological units are fundamental elements of the oral and written discourse produced by specialists; it helps develop a theory of “terms” in context

5. Documentation Terminological units convey the concepts of a certain special field interrelate and transfer knowledge under certain circumstances and for certain communication purposes Communication takes place through oral and written discourse This discourse conforms texts (documents) that are the object of documentation

6. Documentation Terms appear in specialized communication when specialists have to name a concept of their discipline Terminologists retrieve from the documents the units they will integrate in dictionaries to be consulted by specialists and other users specialized texts are the natural habitat of these terms Documentation is the source of terminographical work

7. Stagesofdocumentation preparation stage: necessary source of information to acquire the cognitive competence terminological work to begin with selection and analysis of the specialized documentation works supplying this information: specialized works, lexicographic collections, encyclopedias or atlases.

8. Stagesofdocumentation stage 1: detection, delimitation and extraction of terms from documents in this phase, documents (texts) are the only testimonial source which can vouch for the use of the terms in the special subject field and for their grammatical and semantic features Documents allow to evaluate the frequency with which the term appears in its context of use.

9. Stagesofdocumentation Taking documents as a parameter, units are selected and confronted, certain forms are rejected being too general, other forms may be rejected because they belong to different subject areas terms are analyzed and compilation of terminological records is carried out terminological records gather , for each term, a series of linguistic and pragmatic data

10. Terminologyasrepresentationofspecializedknowledge Specialized texts convey specialized content through technical terms Each terminological unit corresponds to a cognitive node in a special field the whole of these nodes linked to one another by specific relations constitutes the conceptual representation of that special field Therefore, specialized reality can be represented through terminology