More than a tool:

The interinstitutional terminology database IATE

Dieter Rummel

Translation Centre for the Bodies of the European Union

IATE = “Inter Active Terminology for Europe”

Objective: the creation of an interactive terminology database system that allows the consultation, the creation and the joint management of terminological data;

Project partners: European Commission, Council, Parliament, Court of Auditors, Economic and Social Committee/Committee of the Regions, Court of Justice, Translation Centre, European Investment Bank, European Central Bank;

The development phase started in January 2000;

IATE has been operational since summer 2004.

IATE was opened to the public on 28 June 2007 Commissioner Orban and Vice-President of the European Parliament, Miguel Ángel Martínez Martínez

2000 – 2004◦ Project overseen by the Interinstitutional Committee for Translation ◦ Top level group: Expert Group (Institutions, Agencies, Member States)◦ Steering Committee (Institutions, Agencies, chaired by DG ENTR)◦ Several technical work groups (data structure, workflow, implementation support)◦ Implementation managed by the Translation Centre

Since 2004◦ An interinstitutional work group oversees the requests for improvements and reports to the

Interinstitutional Coordinating Committee on Translation◦ Annual costs for hosting and staff are shared by the project partners according to a

distribution key that is based on number of staff and freelance budget.◦ The Centre chairs the interinstitutional IATE Management Group and hosts IATE Support

and Development Team that carries out corrective and evolutive maintenance

Several separate databases, using different technologies Different data structures, different meta data (domain

classification, reliability codes etc.) Different working methods and little practical interinstitutional

cooperation Doubts as to the usefulness of a common database Strong wish of the partner to stick to their traditional working

methods

Incorporation of all existing terminology databases into single new inter-institutional database

Adoption of fully interactive creation of terminology Reorganisation of terminology activity and reinforcement of staffing

where necessary Integration of terminology tools, including tools designed to support

terminology activities, into translation and office automation environment

Deployment of new ergonomic and user-friendly interfaces Co-operative infrastructure for data management rational recovery of

existing data

EurodicautomCOM

TISCouncil

EuterpeParliament

Others

IATE merged all existing terminology collections of the EU’s translation services into a single database

Several user friendly interfaces were implemented to cater for the needs of translators, terminologists and other EU staff.

Language Independent Information

Term 1 Term 2 Term 1

Language 1EN

Language 2FR

E.g. domain, domain note, origin, problem language, cross reference ...

E.g. definition, comment...

E.g. term, term type, context, grammatical information...

IATE Database

IATE in a Nutshell (2): Main Features

• On-line search

• On-line data editing

• Validation system

• Communication mechanisms

• User management

• Statistics

• All institutional IATE users can – in principle - add terminology to the database

• They can update each others terminology

• IATE provides a validation mechanism to ensure that all new terminology and all modifications are reviewed

• The process takes into consideration the language competencies of the people involved

• Problem of this approach: validation bottle neck

IATE in Figures

• Plus terms in about 100 non-EU languages

• About 250 term added per day

bg - Bulgarian 24742 it - Italian 705941

cs - Czech 33068 la - Latin 64688

da - Danish 605007 lt - Lithuanian 45471

de - German 1039484 lv - Latvian 27635

el - Greek 524478 mt - Maltese 25261

en - English 1419555 nl - Dutch 696306

es - Spanish 617883 pl - Polish 49256

et - Estonian 32315 pt - Portuguese 532996

fi - Finnish 328462 ro - Romanian 25217

fr - French 1357121 sk - Slovak 30951

ga - Irish 42191 sl - Slovenian 33004

hu - Hungarian 38960 sv - Swedish 315539

http://iate.europa.euIntern

Publish

Add

Modify

Validate

IATE Public receives about 200.000 queries per day The public site has about 250.000 unique users It is used in over 180 countries 24/7

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The IATE working group has organised the practical cooperation between the IATE project partners by…

• Regular interinstitutional meetings (ca. 6 per year);

• Creation of a network of contact points for terminological questions in each participating service per language;

• Defining “writing rules” for the creation of new terminology;

• Creation of a “Best Practice” guide establishing general principles for the work with IATE.

Usefulness of a term for multilingual drafting, translation and interpreting in the EU context

Reliability of the proposed term. Relevance of the proposed term. Information fed into IATE must have an added value over and above

what can be found in documentary databases or on the Internet. Responsibility of each service to apply the guidelines.

One common database with a common data structure and harmonised meta data

Working methods still differ but based on common guidelines and best practices

Stable interinstitutional cooperation in a joint Management Group and networks

The usefulness of a common database is undisputed. Strong wish of the partners to further increase cooperation

You can access IATE Public under:

iate.europa.eu

Any questions