THE MULTI-DIMENSIONAL CHARACTER OF TERMINOLOGY

Abstract

Terminology has a twofold meaning: 1. it is the discipline concerned with the principles and methods governing the study of concepts and their designations (terms, names, symbols) in any subject field, and the job of collecting, processing, and managing relevant data, and 2. the set of terms belonging to the special language of an individual subject field. In its study of concepts and their representations in special languages, terminology is multidisciplinary, since it borrows its fundamental tools and concepts from a number of disciplines (e.g. logic, ontology, linguistics, information science and other specific fields) and adapts them appropriately in order to cover particularities in its own area. Linguistic aspects of term formation are of major interest to terminologists, terminographers and subject field specialists, but also to translators, interpreters and technical writers; especially when translators happen to work with less widely used languages such as Greek, where the lack of adequately developed reference tools such as specialized dictionaries and glossaries very often compels them to become neologists.