Infoterm takes care of the secretariat of ISO/TC 37 on behalf of the Austrian Standards Institute (ON).

Its scope reads: Standardization of principles, methods and applications relating to terminology and other language and content resources in the contexts of multilingual communication and cultural diversity.

Information about the technical work of the committee: www.iso.org/tc37.

The objective of ISO/TC 37 is to prepare standards specifying principles and methods for the preparation and management of terminology, language and other content resources (at the level of concepts) within the framework of standardization and related activities.  Its technical work results in International Standards (and Technical Reports), which cover terminological principles and methods as well as various aspects of computer-assisted terminography.  However, ISO/TC 37 is not responsible for the co-ordination of the terminology standardizing activities of other ISO/TCs.

ISO/TC 37’s mission is to provide standards and guidelines to standardization experts, language professionals in all institutions and organizations creating and handling terminology, language and other content resources (including ISO itself, other international organizations, national standards bodies, national government services, companies, non-governmental organizations, etc.) in order to enable them to prepare high-quality language resources and tools for a wide variety of applications in professional and scholarly information and communication, education, industry, trade, etc.

Standardization of the principles and methods of terminology

At the beginning of the 20th century, the scope of terminology standardization activities necessitated the formulation of principles and methods for terminology work.

ISO Bulletin January 1999

The Technical Committee ISA/TC 37 "Terminology" of the International Federation of the National Standardizing Associations (ISA) was founded in 1936 by the International Federation of the National Standardizing Associations (ISA) on the initiative of the Austrian engineer Eugen Wüster. It worked until 1939. In 1951 ISO/TC 37 "Terminology (principles and coordination)" of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) was founded. It started to operate in 1952. In February 2001, TC 37 was renamed in "Terminology and other language resources" and widened its scope accordingly. As from 2005 the title has been extended towards "Terminology and other language and content resources" in order to address new developments in the field.

After World War II, work was continued by the Technical Committee ISO/TC 37, "Terminology (principles and coordination)" of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). This Technical Committee, founded in 1952, aimed at the standardization of methods for creating, compiling and coordinating terminologies.

In recent years, the focus of ISO/TC 37's activities has shifted towards applied methods, especially computer-assisted ones, and to their application within standardization and similar activities. Active links exist to a large number of international and transnational organizations and institutions, as well as to other ISO/TCs, and to Technical Committees belonging to the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) and the European Committee for Standardization (CEN).

On 18 August 2000 at the Plenary meeting of ISO/TC 37 in London, it was decided to open up the scope of TC 37 to respond to the necessities of the language industry. This decision was confirmed by a large majority of TC 37 members in January 2001. In August 2001, it was decided to establish a further SC 4, Language resource management. The new title since 2005 is "Terminology and other language and content resources".

Read more on the history of terminology standardization and ISO/TC 37 in “50 years ISO/TC 37”