Part of the Translyta reference: the linguistic foundation of our translation pipeline. New here? Start at the overview.
Category
Standing
31 entries
Theory and schools
What the competing theories of terminology claim, who holds them, and the places where they contradict each other.
Cognitive approaches to terminology
Concepts as prototypes, and domains modelled as events before concepts.
Socioterminology
A term means what the community that circulates it makes it mean.
The Communicative Theory of Terminology
A term is a lexical unit that acquires terminological value in use.
The General Theory of Terminology
The Vienna programme that put the concept first and made univocity the goal.
The national schools
Four traditions, ordered by what terminology was for in each place.
Concepts and definitions
What a concept is made of, how concepts stand to one another, and how a definition is built and tested.
Characteristics, intension and extension
How to take a concept apart so it can be defined and matched across languages.
Concept systems and multidimensionality
What happens when two languages cut the same field along different lines.
Generic, partitive and associative relations
Whether an X is a kind of Y or a part of Y, and why the answer changes the term.
Objects, concepts and designations
A thing is not a concept, and a concept is not a term.
Onomasiology and semasiology
Starting from the concept and asking what it is called, rather than the reverse.
Writing terminological definitions
A definition delimits a concept in a system, and can be tested rather than admired.
Designation and term formation
How a concept comes to be named, by what mechanisms, and under what constraints.
How terms are built
Derivation, compounding, abbreviation and metaphor, and what each does to a pair.
Primary and secondary term formation
A translator is never present at the birth of a concept.
Principles for forming and judging terms
Seven criteria that a coined term should meet, and that pull against each other.
Proper names and institutional designations
A name in a specialized text is a status problem before it is a translation problem.
Term and word
A term is a designation inside a subject field, not a word with a technical air.
Terminologization and determinologization
Traffic across the register boundary, in both directions, over time.
Interlingual equivalence
What happens when a concept has to be designated again in a second language and a second system.
Anisomorphism and asymmetric mapping
A term pair is not a symmetric relation, and the direction decides the difficulty.
Assessing term equivalence
When a translator is permitted to use a target-system term at all.
Degrees of conceptual correspondence
Equivalence is a matter of degree, and the degrees have names.
Equal authenticity and autonomous concepts
No source text to be equivalent to, and every language version authentic.
Ranking the options when no equivalent exists
The discipline has produced competing rankings, and they contradict each other.
System-bound concepts and incongruity
Why legal terms resist equivalence structurally rather than incidentally.
Terminological false friends
The resemblance is the trap, and the damage has been measured.
Text type and the admissibility of an equivalent
The same equivalent can be correct in an article and a defect in a statute.
Status, variation and evidence
Which designation counts as the term, why several compete, and what evidence settles the question.
Causes of denominative variation
Why one concept ends up with four names, and why deprecating one rarely works.
Concept orientation and the term record
One concept, one entry, every designation under it, each with its own status.
Sources of term evidence
What kind of authority stands behind a term pair, and how often the kinds get confused.
Synonymy, polysemy and acceptability
Where a standardizing body ranks the designations competing for one concept.
Terminological phraseology
The conventional combinations a term occurs in, and what evidence fixes them.
Terminological variation
Whether one concept having several names is a defect, and who says so.