There is no doubt that Eugen Wüster was a prominent terminologist and a researcher who revolutionised the field of terminology. Cabré (2003) argues that Wüster was a fierce proponent of unambiguous professional communication who, based on his terminographic experience in compiling The Machine Tool dictionary, founded his terminology theory. Throughout his life and works Wüster raised a variety of terminology related issues.
First of all, he was committed to standardising terminology to overcome the issue of ambiguity in technical languages in order to reach efficient tools of communication. Additionally, he highlighted the importance of standardised terminology and tried to convince the users of technical languages of this concept. And, of course, he tried his best to establish terminology as a potential field for practical purposes giving it the status of an independent science, Cabré (ibid) states.
Consequently, to achieve these objectives, Cabré (ibid) argues that Wüster relied on three main tasks:
- Terms need to be described and recorded through developed standardised international principles.
- General principles of terminology have to be created. He looked at this as a branch of linguistics that later became an independent and autonomous area of study.
- The sponsorship of an international centre known as Infoterm by the Unesco whose aim was mainly the collection, dissemination and coordination of information about terminology.
Wüster’s book, Cabré (ibid) argues, was aiming to highlight the clear distinction between terminology and linguistics. He was seeking to found an independent discipline with the goal of establishment of commonly known concepts at the international level either through a linguistic or a non-linguistic system rather than treating terms as units of natural language. In other words, it aims to look at the concept as a universal entity no matter what the cultural differences are and yet the diversity of languages is the only element that makes a variation.
Thiry (2000) in this sense says:
Le problème de l’équivalence est donc d’importance est requiert une théorie solide aux fins de résoudre les cas les plus divers que peuvent poser les situations concrètes.
Wüster, accordingly, sees that both technicians and scientists should similarly characterise a field of study so that the arisen differences would reflect the different languages or how sometimes they designate the same thing differently. Yet, both divergences according to him are said to disrupt professional communication and he consequently was determined to defend a single language for scientific and technical communication, explains Cabré (ibid).
All in all, Wüster’s goal was not to develop a theory of the complex variety and plurality of terminology but rather focuses on what terminology should be and mainly the idea of standardisation to guarantee an unambiguous plurilingual communication, Cabré (ibid) concludes.
References:
Cabré Castellví, M. (2003), ‘Theories of terminology: Their description, prescription and explanation’, Terminology, John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam, vol 9:2. pp. 164-199.
Thiry, B. (2000), ‘Equivalence bilingue en traduction et en terminologie juridique: qu’est ce que traduire en droit’, tradulex, tradulex. Retrieved. 7th June 2015, Source: from http://www.tradulex.com/Actes2000/Thiry.pdf
Written by Yacine Chemssi
Terminology Study Visitor at TermCoord
Student at the University of Luxembourg