6 Terminology Planning
- Language Planning: Management of linguistic innovation
- Corpus planning: script, alphabet, pronunciation, spelling, grammar, lexical material, word formation patterns
- Status planning: socio-political aspects of the prestige of the language in question
- Acquisition planning: knowledge transfer (teaching, mass communication, popularization of scientific knowledge)
- Socio-economic dimensions, cooperation with other countries, language regions, coordinated development, globalized markets
- Terminology Planning: Management of terminological innovation
- not only part of all areas of language planning
- but also part of science and technology planning, communication planning
- new theories, new technologies need new terminologies
- Towards a comprehensive model of terminology planning
- Terminology Standardization
- international level: ISO, IEC, ITU, etc.
- in many subject fields
- methodology: ISO/TC 37
- e.g. ISO 704 Terminology - principles
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Terminology Harmonization
- e.g. in the field of environment
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Scientific Nomenclatures
- medicine, biology, chemistry, physics
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Implications of Terminology Planning
Impacts on usage in professional discourse
Acceptability of newly coined terms
Criteria for selection, evaluation
principles of clarity
unequivocality, precision, motivation
principles of economy
brevity, simple structure
principles of productivity (derivation etc.)
Aesthetic principles
Decisions to be made when coining new terms
from which language (decision tree with weights assigned to each alternative -> term dossiers
1. The lexical heritage of the own language (recombining elements)
2. Lexical resources of other languages
(borrowing, calque, etc.)
Role of translators and interpreters in terminology planning
Aims and Purposes of Technical Communication
Recommended Further Reading