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There is a terminology component in virtually all standardization and harmonization activities. You cannot regulate matters, if key concepts are not defined – i.e. if they are open to different interpretations or misunderstanding. Therefore, terminology standardization emerged as a distinct type of standardization.
Terminology standardization can be subdivided into two distinct – yet complementary – types of standardizing activities:
- Standardization of terminologies
- Standardization of terminological principles and methods
Standardization of terminologies
Nearly every technical body in standardization must standardize its terminology. At international level alone possibly more than 200 technical committees are standardizing their terminologies. Considering that there are often more than hundred technical committees each in standards bodies at regional (e.g. CEN, the European Committee for Standardization) and national levels, there may well be more than 3000 committees standardizing terminology world-wide.
In addition, thousands of organizations beyond standardization are unifying their terminology on a larger or smaller scale. Some of these organizations are highly authoritative in their domain. Often they form networks of similar organizations at international, regional and national levels.
Furthermore, many international, regional or national authorities harmonize terminologies, either in order to clarify certain matters of legal impact or when existing unified or standardized terminologies contradict each other.
Standardization of terminological principles and methods
There are some quite authoritative international organizations, such as IUPAC, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, which have developed specific terminological principles and methods.
In general, most institutions and organizations of authoritative nature in the field of terminology follow the standardized principles and methods of ISO/TC 37, which in 2005 extended its scope to “Terminology and other language and content resources” to reflect the requirements of today’s globalization and localization in our multilingual information society. As terminologies are more often than not combined with or embedded in other kinds of content, ISO/TC 37 covers basic principles, requirements and methods applied
- for the management of terminology and as well as language resources (in language technology) and content resources of structured content (in content management)
- in applications, which involve terminology and other language resources as well as content resources, such as translation, localization, etc.
- in systems supporting such applications.
Increasingly, the standards of ISO/TC 37 have an impact on the work of other technical committees working in the fields of eCommerce, eGovernment, eHealth, eLearning etc. Naturally, the work of these committees also affects the content of the standards of ISO/TC 37 “Terminology and other language and content resources”.
See ISO/TC 37
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