INTERNATIONAL INFORMATION CENTRE FOR TERMINOLOGY
 

Standardization and Terminology Standardization

Standards make an enormous and positive contribution to most aspects of our lives. They contribute to the three dimensions of sustainable development – economic, environmental and social. Standards ensure desirable characteristics of products and services, such as quality, environmental impact, user friendliness, safety, reliability, efficiency and interchangeability – and at an economical cost. Today’s technical standards largely refer to methods, such as management, documentation, translation and localization, terminology work etc.

Since the accessibility of structured content of all kinds via the Internet, more and more content is standardized together with its data structures and metadata. Given its enormous increase, reliability and quality of content is becoming a major concern. This gives rise to the application of standards-based certification methods and schemes also to structured content, its creation and maintenance as well as to the tools used for handling content.

In the age of “content-driven ICT” a new megatrend in standardization is on its way. Given the enormous increase of structured content, reliability and quality of content is becoming a major concern. Therefore, international standards dealing with certification methods and schemes are also applied to

· the methods and processes of content creation and maintenance,

· the tools used for content creation and maintenance,

· content interoperability.

Ultimately, they also apply to the quality of content itself. Terminology in its double role as representation of domain knowledge at concept level and as a means to access domain-specific information and knowledge.  See Access to Information and Knowledge 

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 again into two distinct – yet complementary – types of standardizing activities:

Under the requirements of global content integration and interoperability both types today are also applied to lexicographical data, appellations (i.e. proper names of all kinds) and other kinds of structured content.

Last update: 2013-04-28

 
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