The TOTh Conference 2013 took place from the 4th to the 7th June in Chambèry, presenting both theoretical and practical developments in two interdisciplinary sciences: Terminology and Ontology.
Terminology plays a key role in specialised communication. Ontology offers new perspectives in the creation of new methods and tools that assist terminologists in defining conceptual systems and in managing terminology.
On the other hand, terminology establishes the theoretical and methodological principles useful for ontology to distinguish between text and formal conceptualisation. Therefore, this conference is a platform where people working with languages, terminology, knowledge engineering and other associate disciplines are able to exchange ideas and new perspectives on various topics.
On the 4th and 5th June, a training titled Ontologies for Terminologies was conducted by Rute Costa, Professor at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, and Cristophe Roche, Professor at the Université de Savoie. It started with the linguistic dimension of terminology and its principles, explained by Rute Costa. This was followed by Christophe Roche´s presentation on the creation of ontologies with a terminological purpose.
From the combination of both conceptual and linguistic semiotic systems comprised in terminology, comes ontoterminology. According to the presentation given by Christophe Roche this is a new approach that “captures and represents knowledge acquired from experts” and where “concepts (formally defined) in expert knowledge become the starting point in terminological analysis”. An important part of the training session was devoted to practical work in building ontologies using software environments
“It was very interesting to learn about the ontologies approach as it offers a different perspective on terminology work. In translation-oriented terminology, the starting point is a text and the end result will also be a text. In between, a conceptual analysis is absolutely necessary; it is, however, often partly neglected due to time and resource constraints. In ontoterminology, the conceptual analysis is the starting point and main focus, an approach which everybody in translation-oriented terminology can learn from”, said Katarina Hyllienmark, IATE coordinator at TermCoord who attended this training.
The Conference took place on the 6th and 7th June and started with an opening speach given by François Rastier, Research Director at the CNRS (The French National Centre for Scientific Research), on Ontologies et Dé-ontologie. The programme included a debate conducted by Loïc Depecker on concept and language, questioning why one should return to Ferdinand de Saussure’s principles when doing terminology. The last item on the schedule was the TOTh 2013 Workshop on verbal and non-verbal designation in terminology, held by Susanne Lervad, from the Danish National Research Foundation’s Center for Textile Research.
After six years of TOTh Conferences, this event has proven to be a success bringing together professionals and experts from different fields interested in an exchange between two disciplines that share common approaches.
Article written by Diana Pereira, trainee at TermCoord