Multilingual natural sciences & technology term list for Grade 4 to 6

Abstract

NATURAL SCIENCES AND TECHNOLOGY – CURRICULUM 2005 The National Language Service (NLS) of the Department of Arts and Culture and its stakeholders are taking some bold steps towards the development and modernisation of all the official languages of South Africa. They include the development of technical vocabularies in all the indigenous languages for effective communication among the people of South Africa. Terminology is essential to communication in technical fields and domains of specialised activity, and the most effective way of creating awareness about terminology is to introduce it at school level. This publication is essentially a multilingual list containing the source language terms in English with equivalents in the other five official target languages. The primary school Natural Sciences and Technology term list for Curriculum 2005 has been completed on the Multiterm database by a team from the Terminology Coordination Section of the National Language Service. The list is based on the learning material for Grades 4 to 6 initially obtained from the Your Pal Study Skills and the Brainline electronic study guide for science and technology. Terms were identified, excerpted and documented. The team identified the terms that required definitions. Several reputable and online dictionaries were used to aid the writing of these definitions. The meaning of the terms as set out in the definitions formed the basis according to which collaborators found or coined equivalents in the target languages. The NLS contacted the Gauteng Educational Union to check for the comprehensiveness of the data corpus. The NLS was referred to the Chief Author of the Natural Sciences and Technology 2005 Curriculum. Advice was sought for the validation and evaluation of the relevance and register of the contents. The response received was very favourable. A number of additional technological terms were furnished with example definitions, and were then incorporated in the terminological data corpus together with other comments. As the Natural Sciences and Technology learning areas in the curriculum are intertwined at this level of education, the Chief Author advised that a single list including the terms in both these learning areas would be of greater use than two separate lists. For this reason Natural Sciences and Technology have been incorporated into a single database. The target users of the dictionary are educators and learners for Grades 4 to 6. The indirect beneficiaries are the Departments of Education at national and provincial level and other educational institutions, developers of learner support materials, curriculum implementers, authors and examiners. The source text comprises some 2 896 term records, approximately 90% of which were defined to facilitate the secondary term-creation process handled by the collaborators. The collaborators were also tasked to work on the project. They formed terminology working groups for the various target languages. Each of the groups consisted of a chairperson, coordinator and secretary, as well as several members with special expertise. These expert members of the committees included subject specialists who were also mother tongue speakers of the languages concerned, lexicographers, linguists and members of the National Language Bodies (NLBs). In the secondary term-creation phase the source text was taken to the collaborators for them to supply target language equivalents. The final step was to take the terms to the terminology technical committees of the NLBs for verification. The concepts covered in the term list range from atoms to elephants, natural phenomena such as air, ventilation, water, evaporation, magnetism, lightning and tornados to different forms of energy, from potential to nuclear, from chemistry and electronics to air pollution, the ozone layer and outer space. The compilers of this product do not claim that it is comprehensive or entirely without errors and scope for improvement. Feedback, especially on the layout, the accuracy of the equivalents and the comprehensiveness of the dictionary, will be welcomed. The compilers of this corpus hope that it will make a difference to mother-tongue education in classrooms throughout the country. September 2005 Johannesburg