Language standards as a cornerstone for business strategies Implications for the design of academic curricula Kara Warburton, City University of Hong Kong International Chair, ISO Technical Committee 37 Terminology and other language and content resources

The premise The foremost aim of international standardization is to facilitate the exchange of goods and services through the elimination of technical barriers to trade. To this end, standards are produced in all disciplines. Standards need to be implementable To be implementable, they need to be understandable Standards are usually domain-specific, which contains a lot of specialized terminology Therefore the terminology must be understandable ISO/TC 37 Terminology and other language and content resources

The premise Effective communication is essential for eliminating barriers to trade Standards for language can make communication more effective ISO/TC 37 Terminology and other language and content resources

Language industry and language resources The language industry includes translation and interpretation, authoring, content management, natural language processing (NLP), and so forth Language resources include terminologies, lexical resources, translation memories, authoring memories, annotated corpora, thesauri, ontologies, etc. ISO/TC 37 Terminology and other language and content resources

Documenting terminology in ISO standards According to the Directives, each standard: must document and normalize its terminology must use the normalized terminology consistently Why? Because if the key concepts in a standard are not fully understood, and if variable and inconsistent terms are used, then the standard is not implementable Terms are typically documented in a glossary section of the standard, called Section 3 – Terms and definitions ISO has over 260 technical committees (TCs), which have produced 18,500 standards

ISO/TC 37 Terminology and other language and content resources ISO/IEC Directives Part 2 – Rules for the structure and drafting of international standards The objective of documents published by ISO and IEC is to define clear and unambiguous provisions in order to facilitate international trade and communication. To achieve this objective, uniformity of terminology shall be maintained. Requirements for documenting terminology in ISO standards are laid out by ISO TC37: Terminological entries in standards Part 1: General requirements and examples of presentation ISO 704, Terminology Work - Principles and methods TC37 is one of only 9 horizontal committees in ISO

ISO/TC 37 Terminology and other language and content resources The requirements The standardization of terms and definitions is fundamental to all standardization activities. Provisions based on fundamental principles of ISO 704 All terms used in the body of a standard should be defined in the glossary One designation corresponds to one concept (a term should only be used with one meaning) One concept corresponds to one designation (a concept should be denoted by only one term) Terms shall be used consistently The TC shall establish a concept system

ISO/TC 37 Terminology and other language and content resources Standards do not always adhere to the requirements In just 7 standards, nearly 100 terms were never defined Standards cannot be effectively implemented if the concepts they use are not perfectly clear. Failure to define the key terms in a standard can lead to implementation errors that can have potentially serious consequences ranging from safety issues to unintended impediments to international trade.

ISO/TC 37 Terminology and other language and content resources Standards do not always adhere to the requirements In a 48 page standard about hockey helmets, the term headform was used 120 times, yet this term was never defined. In the same standard, the term face protector was used sometimes as a synonym for helmet, sometimes with its own unique meaning.

Without term definitions, phrases like the following are impossible to understand Whilst in operational mode, double functions of controls shall be avoided on such controls as for pan, vertical trim, field of view and other essential functions. ISO/TC 37 Terminology and other language and content resources

ISO TC37 standards for language resources Translation and interpretation services Computer-assisted translation and machine translation Software localization Terminology resources of all kinds Language policies Annotation of corpora File formats Exchange formats Language codes Classification systems

ISO/TC 37 Terminology and other language and content resources Applications of TC37 standards e-Government, e-health, e-business Leveraging content for reuse Content management systems All kinds of natural language processing systems Classification systems for products/services

ISO/TC 37 Terminology and other language and content resources How language standards support business Safeguard investment Enable interoperability of resources Reduce costs Increase productivity

ISO/TC 37 Terminology and other language and content resources Incorporating language standards in academic curricula Any program that touches upon international trade and economic development should include a component about standards A key criteria for standards in any industry is language standards, particularly terminology standards

ISO/TC 37 Terminology and other language and content resources Curricula incorporating a component on language standards should include: Linguistic requirements to address diverse linguistic communities The importance of developing international standards that are implementable on a national level The need to translate and adapt international standards to local environments, and the processes and challenges involved The importance of standardized terminology in all standardization projects

ISO/TC 37 Terminology and other language and content resources Thank you!