Multilingual parliamentary/political terminology list

Abstract

PARLIAMENTARY/POLITICAL TERMINOLOGY LIST In doing translations Parliament’s language practitioners are normally guided by in-house editorial policies and uniformity guidelines. As is the case in all subject fields and domains of specialised activity, terminology is essential for promoting technical communication and achieving a high level of accuracy in the product. Owing to ever-present deadlines and administrative constraints, Parliament’s translators do not have time for the luxury of collecting and compiling comprehensive terminology lists in any given field. Their circumstances force the translators to practice ad hoc (basically text-driven) terminology management. Yet they fully acknowledge the fact that terminology is essential for achieving consistency and quality in their work. The national Parliament’s translators therefore initiated a parliamentary terms project in collaboration with the Western Cape and Eastern Cape provincial legislatures. The first collection of terminological data, Isigama sesiXhosa Esixhaphakileyo Kwiintetho Zasepalamente: Parliamentary Terminology: First Volume was published in 2003. This publication was the culmination of a series of terminology meetings where isiXhosa term equivalents were discussed. Terms were then assessed and ratified by the isiXhosa National Language Body. An agreement was reached between the National Language Service (NLS) and the compilers to expand this corpus to include other target languages. The terminological corpus comprises 479 term records. Most of the headwords for these records were defined in order to facilitate the secondary term-creation process, which was handled by the collaborators. The terms were collected from the following sources: • Hansard reports (parliamentary debates); • parliamentary proceedings (speeches, motions, notices of motions); • parliamentary papers (order papers, minutes, announcements, tablings and committee reports); and • legislation (Acts, Bills, government notices, proclamations and Gazettes). The terms were identified, excerpted and documented. The team identified the terms that required definitions and even translated some of them. The definitions facilitated the coining of isiXhosa equivalents, as the meaning of the terms as set out in the definitions formed the basis according to which the collaborators found or coined equivalents in the target languages. The NLS took the project further by including the other official languages. The terminologists of the Terminology Coordination Section (TCS) of the NLS worked very hard to adapt the terms according to terminographical principles. A closer analysis of the terms revealed that the list comprised both parliamentary and political terms. When this was brought to the attention of the compilers of the Isigama SesiXhosa Esixhaphakileyo Kwiintetho Zasepalamente: Parliamentary Terminology: First Volume it was agreed that the title of the list should be changed to Parliamentary/Political Terminology List. This publication is essentially a multilingual list containing the source language terms in English with equivalents in the 10 other official languages. The terminologists of the TCS edited the definitions and terms according to a set methodology. The National Language Policy clearly sets out the equality of all official languages and the importance of the active promotion of multilingualism. It is also in the interests of the South African Government to provide services to citizens in the languages they understand, as outlined in the National Language Policy Framework. The NLS and stakeholders embarked on the enlarged terminology project in order to ensure that multilingualism was possible in this field. The Parliamentary/Political Terminology List will promote multilingualism in Parliament and elsewhere, and will facilitate effective communication between parliamentarians, politicians, national and provincial language offices, provincial legislatures and Hansard offices. The Parliamentary/Political Terminology List was completed on the Multiterm database by a team from theTCS. The TCS used collaborators to assist them in providing equivalents for the English source language terms in the target languages. Each collaborating group consisted of a chairperson, coordinator, secretary, lexicographers, linguists, members of the National Language Bodies (NLBs) and additional members with special expertise. During the secondary term-creation phase, the source text was taken to the collaborators to supply target language equivalents. The final step was to take the terms to the terminology technical committees of the NLBs for verification. The compilers of this publication have produced the very first collection of relevant terms in the field of parliamentary proceedings and political activities that is in all the official languages. However, the compilers acknowledge that it might be useful to expand the collection, and any suggestions in this regard will be welcomed. September 2005 Johannesburg