Multilingual terminology for information communication technology

Abstract

TERM LIST FORINFORMATION COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY (ICT) In an ever changing industry of the ICT, the South African digital divide does not only refer to the technological haves and have-nots but also to the computer literacy status in South Africa. It is acknowledged that many ordinary South Africans are not able to access such technologies due to a lack of understanding the concepts in their own languages. This by necessity requires the development and modernisation of all the official languages in the ICT industry. To promote effective communication in these domains it is essential that terminology should be available for all the languages in these fields of knowledge. Information in these fields naturally contains specific concepts with their related terms which should be available to all South Africans in their own languages. With this in mind the Department of Communications (DoC) embarked on a project collecting and documenting terms in these fields to facilitate access for all South Africans to information in the relevant fields. The initial list contained 300 technical terms from the Telecommunications, Broadcasting, E-Commerce and Postal sectors. The DoC approached the National Language Service to assist them with this task. When the terminologists made an analysis of the nature of these terms, it was realised that a great number of the terms were very technical and some terms clearly had been collected from legal documents. It was then agreed that technical terms which are also used in general communication in these sectors would be handled first as a wider spectrum of users would benefit from the data collection. A 150 terms were identified and documented for the first experimental phase of the project. It was essential to define these terms since definitions assist collaborators to find and coin terms in the target languages. Several reputable and online dictionaries were used to aid the writing of the definitions. The DoC involved the SABC, South African Postal Services (SAPOS) and Telkom to assist in finalising the definitions. These institutions evaluated and validated the relevance and register of the contents. The NLS approached the collaborators to assist in the secondary term-creation phase by supplying target language equivalents. They formed terminology working groups for the various target languages. Each of the groups comprised a chairperson, coordinator and secretary, as well as several members with special expertise, lexicographers, linguists and members of the National Language Bodies (NLBs). These expert members of the committees were mother tongue speakers of the languages concerned. The final step was to take the terms to the terminology technical committees of the NLBs for verification. This list therefore serves to be a first attempt to promote communication in technical fields and domains of specialised activity in the ICT environment. The NLS would therefore like to invite comments and inputs to the list.