Terminology Management

Whenever terminologies need to be treated in a systematic way, such as to ensure clear and reliable communication or to establish consistent conventions for terminology use in an organization, terminology management provides the methods and tools to create, maintain and use terminological data most efficiently and effectively.

In a narrow sense, Terminology Management only means terminology work using a terminology management system for a given purpose.

In a broader sense, Terminology Management also comprises strategic aspects of Terminology Planning often in conjunction with corporate language and corporate identity of an organization.

Generally speaking Terminology Management is based on a number of assumptions relating to science theory and cognitive sciences:

Human thinking is fundamentally conceptual and constantly processes information on objects, the way they are perceived, and on the representations of these perceptions. The time-honoured “semantic triangle” tries to come to grips with these mental processes:

» objects →“things” of the real world, such as organisms, creatures, events, processes, natural phenomena, etc. or →conceived objects » concepts →mental abstractions corresponding to objects » representations verbal and non-verbal conventional symbols such as →terms or other kinds of designations for denoting concepts →definitions or other kinds of explanations for describing concepts →non-verbal representations, such as graphical symbols, pictures, diagrams, sounds, motions, etc.