Bundessprachenamt Coronavirus Glossary

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The German Bundessprachenamt has published a multilingual glossary on Covid-19. At present, the glossary contains around 1600 terms in German with equivalents in English, French, Dutch, Polish, Russian, and Spanish. The addition of further terms is already being planned.

Screenshot Coronavirus Glossary Concept Map
Concept Map provided in the glossary for the term “Alltagsmaske”.

The glossary does not only concentrate on medical terminology, but also contains technical terms related to military medical services, civil-military cooperation, and border cooperation. The glossary aims to aid in standardising newly emerged Covid-related terminology, to provide translators with a specialised termbase, and to contribute to clear international cooperation. The terms in the glossary are available as an alphabetically ordered list in the source language German, but terms are additionally represented visually in a “Concept Map”, allowing users to see the conceptual connections between terms.

The glossary is freely accessible to members of the public on the Coreon platform. You can access it here. (Click on ‘Log in as guest’ if it prompts you to sign in.)

For more linguistic resources on the subject of Covid-19, the Terminology without Borders project on yourterm.org has a dedicated multilingual resources section which is regularly updated; you can find it here.