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LECTURE 8
TERMINOLOGY PLANNING

8.1 General principles of standartisation
8.2 Standartisation bodies.
8.3 Terminography and term record

Key terms: standartisation, standartisation bodies, IEC, ISO,
terminography, terminological record

8.1 General principles of standartisation
Ambiguous terminology based on polysemy, synonymy and
homonymy obviously presents obstacles to communication among
specialists and inevitably frustrates efforts to order thought. For
this reason as early as the 19th century, scientists and, at the
beginning of the 20th century, technicians, felt it was necessary to
regularize terminology in their respective areas and thus became
directly involved in the standardization process. The International
Organization for Standardization (ISO), which was created in 1947
to develop universal standards to improve communication and
cooperation among nations and to reduce the barriers to
commercial exchange on the international level, defines the term
standardization as follows: the process of formulating and
applying rules for an orderly approach to a specific activity for the
benefit and with the co-operation of all concerned, and in
particular for the promotion of optimum overall economy taking
due account of functional conditions and safety requirements.
The end result of standardization is a consensus decision
made by a representative commission. It is presented in a
document called a standard in which the aspects that have been
agreed upon are presented and the contexts in which it is to be
applied are specified. Standardization is used to reduce the several
different varieties of a product to a single one, in order to allow the
exchange of this product with the knowledge that it complies with

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