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Today there are two very marked attitudes present in the
world in relation to standardization: that of Western European
countries and North America, and that of the countries that until
recently formed the Eastern Bloc, hereinafter Eastern Europe.
In the opinion of the former, standardization is more like the
expression of a voluntary decision rather than a prescriptive
imposition. Therefore, the decisions always have to be based on
the consensus of the representative bodies, and before a standard is
considered definitive it must be used in specialized contexts for a
period of time in order to verify its suitability. In this view
standards are usually directed at bodies, rather than at individuals,
and they usually take the form of recommendations. In the case of
noncompliance, sanctions are not imposed because the bodies
themselves have decided to standardize a product or process for
operational purposes. In Eastern European countries, in contrast,
standards were until recently considered enforceable. Their
requirements had to be complied with, and noncompliance was
penalized. This philosophy can be explained by the language
situation characterizing these countries: their multilingualism
makes teaching scientific and technical subjects and
communication in special subject fields very difficult.

1.2±Standardization bodies
At present standardization takes place on three different
levels: international, national, and regional. In international
standardization, there are two wide-ranging international bodies
that for historical reasons wield the greatest authority: the IEC and
the ISO.
The history of terminology standardization proper – if one
excludes earlier attempts in the field of metrology – started in the
International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), which was
founded in London in 1906 following a recommendation passed at
the International Electrical Congress, held in St. Louis, USA, on
15 September 1904, to the extent that: “…steps should be taken to

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