ТК СНТТ: Збірник 2008 / Christian Galinski

наукових праць учасників X Міжнародної наукової конференції

«Проблеми української термінології СловоСвіт 2008»

Ґалінскі Х. Content interoperability of multilingual content resources / Христіян Ґалінскі // Проблеми української термінології : міжнар. наук. конф., 30 версн. − 2 жовт. 2008 р. : зб. наук. пр. ‒ Л., 2008. ‒ С. 13–30.

Взаємодійність контенту багатомовних контентних ресурсів

Роль стандартів ІСО/ТК 37 у глобальній семантичній взаємодійності

Більшість користувачів зацікавлена не в програмному чи технічному інструментарії, а в контенті. Існує багато видів наповнення, зокрема спеціалізований контент (який репрезентує галузеві знання і таким чином чинну термінологію). Термінологія в більшості випадків убудована чи поєднана з іншими типами контенту (переважно спеціалізованими текстами), яка, однак, зростає в інших типах структурованого контенту на рівні сеемантики. Щоб побудувати дешевий структурний контент, потрібні нові методи його створення (відповідно до керування процесом): веб-базовані, розподілені, спільні створення структурованого контенту. У принципі, усі елементи контенту (які в перспективі всестороннього менеджменту є або будуть базуватися на підході метаданих і на принципах та вимогах моделювання уніфікованих даних) будуть підготовані так, щоб задовільняти такі вимоги:

одноджерельність à вільна багаторазовість;

розділення контентних ресурсів à (мережне розподілене) спільне виготовлення контенту;

загальна доступність à разом з доступністю для осіб з особливими потребами.

Це додає (у додатку й доповненні до інших видів взаємодійності) новий вимір – взаємодійність контенту як фундаментальна вимога для досягнення семантичної всесвітньої павутини. ISO/TC[1] 37 «Термінологія й інші мовні й контентні ресурси» поступово впроваджується в цю галузь, приносячи досвід моделювання термінологічних даних й інших мовних ресурсів з погляду «контенту», як його бачать галузеві експерти, який є доповняльним до підходів інформаційних і комунікаційних технологій.

Для цього потрібно позбутися таких «класичних» інформаційних вад, як

- неповне відображення й забезпечення якості,

- неповноту з одного боку й величезну надмірність даних з другого боку,

не враховувати для спеціального застосування важку інформаційну проблему: «недоступно в цьому місці, у цей час і в потрібній формі» .

Most users are not interested in the (hardware and software) tools, but in content. There are many kinds of content, including specialized content (representing domain specific knowledge in some way or other – including terminology). Terminology is in most cases embedded in or combined with other kinds of content (mostly specialized texts) – increasingly, however, with other kinds of structured content at the level of lexical semantics. In order to make the development of structured content less expensive (because of its labour-intensiveness), we need new methods of content creation (and the respective workflow management): web-based, distributed, cooperative creation of structured content. In principle all content items (which under a comprehensive content management perspective are or should be based on a metadata approach and on unified data modelling principles and requirements) should be prepared and maintained in such a way that they fulfil the requirements of

universal accessibility à incl. access by persons with special needs (also called eInclusion).

This adds (in addition and complementary to other kinds of interoperability) a new dimension: content interoperability – as fundamental requirement for achieving the aims of the semantic web. ISO/TC[2] 37 ”Terminology and other language and content resources” is gradually moving into this area, bringing in its competence and experience with the data modelling of terminological data and other language resources (LRs) from the point of view of ‘content’ as seen by domain experts, which is complementary to the point of view of the ICT[3] approaches.

- lack of comprehensiveness on the one hand, and tremendous redundancy of data on the other hand,

not to mention the time-honoured (or rather onerous) information problem of “not available at the place, at the time and in the form required” for a specific use.

1. Definitions

However, from a human semantic point of view, this is insufficient – especially with respect to structured content. Under a mobile content (mContent) perspective, today, structured content – including terminology – is from the outset:

and should be prepared in such a way that it meets multi-channel and universal accessibility (i.e. eInclusion) requirements. The latter particularly comprises the requirements of people with special needs. Un-surprisingly this would also make content highly ‘personalizable’.

Content should also be prepared in such a way that it is re-usable in all kinds of applications, especially the e-...s, such as:

Sociolinguistics distinguishes between general purpose language (GPL – or common language in the generic sense) and special purpose language (SPL – or specialised language in the generic sense). One of the main characteristics of SPL is its high share of terminological units, which are indispensable for

In this context we speak of the specialised languages (SPLs) of the various subject-field/domain expert communities, who agree on their linguistic conventions (mostly geared towards the written form of their respective SPL) not necessarily always in conformance with GPL conventions. Furthermore, quite some SPLs comprise – at least in their written form – many (and many different types of) non-linguistic representations, which also belong to structured content (see ANNEX 1).

The European Interoperability Framework (EIF – for pan-European eGovernment services) defines interoperability as “the ability of communication technology (ICT) systems and of the business processes they support to exchange data and enable sharing of information and knowledge.” (EIF 2004: 3) This definition on the one hand is biased towards technical interoperability, while on the other hand falls short with respect to content interoperability. The document does, however, quite adequately give an insight into the whole complexity of interoperability by identifying technical, organizational and semantic interoperability, to which at decision making level:

could be added. But semantic interoperability is largely seen from a computer science point of view.

Content interoperability goes a step further than content integration and the above-mentioned semantic interoperability – covering (in the linguistic meaning) syntactic, conceptual and pragmatic interoperability. It responds to the emergence of mobility/ubiquity and distributed as well as federated content resources. Content interoperability naturally refers to data and data structures in integrated (and possibly nevertheless heterogeneous) systems – but even more so to distributed (and possibly heterogeneous) content repositories under the fundamental requirements of content management:

Single source or single sourcing (derived from single source publishing) allows the same content item – stored and maintained only once – to be used in different documents or in various formats for all kinds of applications, while resource sharing enables users and creators of content items to avoid duplication of work through collaborative processes.

From a technical point-of-view, data processing techniques, syntax (technically speaking) and semantics (technically speaking) of content require (especially software related) technical methodology standards. From the point-of-view of inter-human communication, content interoperability requires methodology standards not only for all kinds of structured content (at the level of lexical semantics), but also for:

ISO/TC 37 “Terminology and other language and content resources” gradually extended its scope of methodology standardization concerned with content interoperability over the last years, because increasingly terminological data

- is embedded in or combined with other kinds of structured content in the form of texts, speech, graphics, audio-video and multimedia; and

- occurs as knowledge-rich terminology, such as in collections of encyclopedic knowledge items (e.g. Wikipedia) or in knowledge/content management;

and comprises also all sorts of popularized terminology. Therefore, the experience with:

- data quality, copyright, and policies/strategies related to terminological data and applications,

seem to imply that language-independent terminological methods with respect to multilingual terminologies also apply to:

- general purpose language entities/units (i.e. words, collocations, morphemes …),

2. Structured content – content items at the level of lexical semantics

To a large degree eContent – especially domain-specific content – takes the form of structured textual data (i.e. alphanumeric data of a textual nature), which, from a formal point of view, is composed of language resources (LRs – which comprise text corpora, speech corpora, grammar models, lexicographical and terminological data).

Concepts in terminology are corresponding to (material and immaterial) objects in the real world (which comprises also human society and culture). Concepts are mental constructs functioning as ‘first order representation’, whereas the corresponding terms (or other kinds of concept representation) have the role of ‘second order representations’. Concepts have the function to condense information and to provide a certain order for the ‘things’ around us. This order in its totality is in a constant state of change, depending on knowledge change and also on the point of view taken by the observer. This order at any given point in time not only works at the level of concepts, but has implications on higher levels of scientific-technical theory building.

Under the aspect of semantic interoperability, which is indispensable, if present eContent and future mContent (comprising multilingual content in eBusiness, eLearning, eGovernment, eHealth and other e…s) shall really be utilized efficiently and effectively (taking into account content management), one soon recognises that there are different types of ‘mental constructs’, which can be called concepts in a wider sense. In terminology itself there are different types of terminologies (based on different sub-types of concepts), which can be subsumed under the respective concept systems such as:

In addition there are conceptual units, which can be called terminology phraseology, which often serve as a pre-stage in the terminologization of linguistic units to become terms (representing a distinct concept). Vice versa there are terminological units, which are de-terminologized and become lexical units of the general purpose language (GPL).

In general GPL, too, there are different types of ‘mental constructs’ usually called meaning. There are words and their morphological components, as well as collocations etc. There is a natural process of terminologization of GPL units into terminology as well as ‘de-terminologization’ of terminological units into GPL usage. Brain research proves that there is no clear borderline between scientific-technical categorizing and classifying thinking and GPL communication, where meanings of words and utterances show a high degree of ambiguity. But exactly because of the constant switching between different types of meaning and ‘parallel processing’ at different planes the human brain is highly productive in coping with any communicative situation as well in developing new knowledge. It shall not be forgotten that communication here comprises also all sorts of non-verbal communication, which are quite decisive for the success of the communication efforts.

Given this immense volume of specialized information (i.e. scientific-technical or professional information), one or more meta-levels of condensation are necessary: for instance also documentation languages (i.e. indexing and retrieval languages) like classification schemes and thesauri. They are needed for several purposes, among others:

If there are many such documentation languages for different purposes, one further meta-level becomes necessary: umbrella classification schemes. For the sake of managing such documentation languages the respective metadata, datamodels and metamodels have to be defined.

In product description and classification (PDC) more ‘object-related’ data are needed for each product (which can also be a service). Some types of products’ designations still belong to the traditional domain of terminology. But what about series, models (and sub-models) and components as well as (mass-produced or individually produced) products? Here names of products or identifiers or barcodes can become synonyms. Some of the additional data to distinguish series, models, components, individual products, names (of makers, distributors …), etc. can be used as attributes, others as ‘traditional’ properties and characteristics. The relatively new field ontology in data modelling is trying to find solutions to structure this mass of information. However, ultimately only such methodological approaches are viable, which produce results that are ‘reproducible’ under same or similar conditions.

A simple overview on terminology usage thus shows a terrific variation (not to call it a mess) in naming and defining elements such as class, attribute, property, characteristic, dictionary, etc. This calls for a clarification of basic concepts in eBusiness etc. in order to make content fully interoperable (including re-usability, single sourcing and resource-sharing under an extended content management perspective) across all kinds of applications. If terminology belonging to same or similar ‘objects’ remains as fuzzy as it often is today, the various expert communities for metadata approaches, ontology, eLearning, content management, documentation, and last but not least terminology cannot communicate properly with each other. They would conceive competing and even contradicting methodological approaches in order to cope with their respective problems. The very basic requirements of content management (in its broadest meaning), such as single-sourcing (in order to achieve optimal re-usability) and resource-sharing (in order to save human efforts in content development) could not be met.

Within the framework of the Workshop CEN/ISSS/eCAT[4] “Multilingual electronic catalogues and product classification” an attempt has been made to clarify some or most of the conflicting terms concerning product description and classification so that communication across subject-fields becomes possible and terminologists can find their role in formulating basic principles and requirements for multilingual content development.

3. Methodology standardization of e/mContent related aspects

As already stated, all eContent items/units (which under a comprehensive content management perspective are or should be based on a metadata approach and on unified data modelling principles and requirements) in principle should be prepared and maintained in such a way that they fulfil the requirements of single-sourcing (resulting in uninhibited re-usability) and resource-sharing (as a basis for [net-based distributed] cooperative content development).

For the sake of a comprehensive re-usability (under a broad content management perspective) we will need more content methodology standards than exist today. Such methodology standards can be sub-divided into:

o Standardisation of workflow methodology (incl. that for net-based distributed cooperative content development and maintenance);

By using web-based distributed cooperative working methods on the basis of methodology standards, some of which do not yet exist, content development will become much less expensive in the future than today – through extensive web-based cooperation on the basis of standards. To achieve this goal technical methodology standardization experts and content methodology standardization experts will closely cooperate.

In the field of terminology standardization ISO/TC 37SC 1, SC 2 and SC 3 take care of the standardization of terminological principles and methods as well as of certain terminological applications. The individual terminologies – as far as they are needed for the work of other TCs in ISO, IEC[5] and other standards bodies – are standardized by the respective vertical TCs. LR related principles, methods and certain applications are standardized by ISO/TC 37/SC 4 “Language resource management”; which was established in close cooperation with ELRA[6]. So there is a quite comprehensive framework for standardization activities in the field of terminology and other language resources in place.

ISO/TC 37 as a whole today has the competence and experience to intensify its engagement especially with respect to content interoperability, and closely collaborate with other ISO committees in this field. If the semantic web (in the generic sense) is to serve as the global content infrastructure for eBusiness, eLearning, eHealth, eGovernment, eHealth, and other e…s, and if it shall be efficient and effective, rules and procedures as well as organizational frameworks must be provided to guarantee or at least support different kinds of interoperability:

and also within the world of standards (which also needs further development and harmonization).

4. ISO/TC 37 “Terminology and other language and content resources”

Over the years ISO/TC 37 had developed expertise for methodology standards for science and technology related content in textual form as well as for the multilinguality and cultural diversity aspects of content management. This had some impact on harmonizing activities at international and European level, which are summarized in the document ISO/TC 37 N 496 and were endorsed by ISO/TC 37, CEN/ISSS/CDFG and CEN/ISSS itself (s. ISO/TC 37 N 496). Hereafter the Management Group (MoU/MG) of the “ISO/ IEC/ ITU/ UN-ECE Memorandum of Understanding concerning standardization in the field of eBusiness” endorsed the two documents and decided to keep ISO/TC 37 related topics, such as:

in the field of eBusiness on the list of issues of primary concern to the MoU/MG.

For similar reasons ISO/TC 37 is also represented in workshops of the European Standardization Committee’s Information Society Standardization System (CEN/ISSS), such as:

The activities of these workshops result in CEN Workshop Agreements (CWA – somehow similar to ISO’s PAS – Publicly Available Specifications) and are promising with respect to identifying horizontal topics related to terminology (in terms of methodology), multilinguality, and cultural diversity, which could be taken up as a starting point for new working items (NWIs) in ISO/TC 37.

Given this development ISO/TC 37 was re-named in 2004 into “Terminology and other language and content resources” and decided on adapting its operational structure hence. Today its scope reads: “Standardization of principles, methods and applications relating to terminology and other language and content resources in the contexts of multilingual communication and cultural diversity“. Its objective is “to prepare standards specifying principles and methods for the preparation and management of terminology, language and other content resources (at the level of concepts) within the framework of standardization and related activities. Its technical work results in International Standards (and Technical Reports), which cover terminological principles and methods as well as various aspects of computer-assisted terminography. However, ISO/TC 37 is not responsible for the co-ordination of the terminology standardizing activities of other ISO/TCs.”

ISO/TC 37’s mission is “to provide standards and guidelines to standardization experts, language professionals in all institutions and organizations creating and handling terminology, language and other content resources (including ISO itself, other international organizations, national standards bodies, national government services, companies, non-governmental organizations, etc.) in order to enable them to prepare high-quality language resources and tools for a wide variety of applications in professional and scholarly information and communication, education, industry, trade, etc.” Part of ISO/TC 37’s vision is that worldwide use of ISO/TC 37 standards will help

ISO/TC 37 now can boast of 27 P-Members and 33 O-Members. It is in international liaison with 34 organizations and in internal liaison with 26 technical bodies of ISO, IEC and CEN. 19 Standards are published and 26 working items are in progress. This can only be considered a huge progress compared to earlier years. The secretariat of ISO/TC 37 has been operated since 1971 by Infoterm, the International Information Centre, on behalf of the Austrian Standards Institute (ON). It will be transferred to China at the end of 2008.

ISO/TC 37/SC 1 started operation in 1980 (called “Principles of terminology”) in order to take care of the basic standards of ISO/TC 37, namely those related to terminology theory and methodology – including the vocabulary of terminology. Today its scope reads: “Standardization of principles and methods related to terminology, language resources, terminology policies and to knowledge organization in the mono- and multilingual context of the information society”. The secretariat of ISO/TC 37 is operated by CNIS, the China National Institute of Standardization, on behalf of the Standardization Administration of China (SAC).

The objective of ISO/TC 37/SC 1 is “to prepare standards laying down the basic principles for preparing, updating and harmonizing terminologies and other language and content resources on the one hand, and to standardize principles and methods related to terminology policies and knowledge organization in the multilingual information society”. Its mission is to provide standardization experts of national and international standards bodies and language professionals in international organizations, national government services, companies, non-governmental organizations, etc. with relevant standards and guidelines to assist them

- in creating high-quality terminologies and other language and content resources, and

ISO 1087-1:2000 Terminology work – Vocabulary – Part 1: Theory and application

ISO/PWI 1087-1 Terminology work – Vocabulary – Part 1: Theory and application

4.2. ISO/TC 37/SC 2 “Terminographical and lexicographical working methods”

ISO/TC 37/SC 2 started operation in 1983 (called “Layout of vocabularies”) in order to take care of standards of ISO/TC 37 related to terminography and other applications. Today its scope reads: “Standardization of terminographical and lexicographical working methods, procedures, coding systems, workflows, and cultural diversity management, as well as related certification schemes”. The secretariat of ISO/TC 37/SC 2 is operated by Public Works and Government Services of Canada (PWGSC) on behalf of the Standards Council of Canada (SCC).

The objective of ISO/TC 37/SC 2 is to prepare practice-oriented standards for terminology work, terminography, lexicography, and reference coding. ISO/TC 37/SC 2 will pursue this objective by:

- identifying and targeting the client audience, and making the standards available on the market;

Its mission is “to provide practical advice concerning terminological and lexicographical working methods, procedures, coding systems, workflows, and cultural diversity management, as well as related certification schemes through the publication of standards and the use of Internet in order to meet the needs of its client audience”.

ISO 639-1:2002 Codes for the representation of names of languages – Part 1: Alpha-2 code

ISO 639-2:1998 Codes for the representation of names of languages – Part 2: Alpha-3 code

ISO 639-3:2007 Codes for the representation of names of languages – Part 3: Alpha-3 code for comprehensive coverage of languages

ISO 639-5:2008 Codes for the representation of names of languages– Part 5: Alpha-3 code for language families and groups

ISO 1951:2007 Lexicographical symbols and typographical conventions for use in terminography

ISO 12199:2000 Alphabetical ordering of multilingual terminological and lexicographical data represented in the Latin alphabet

ISO/DIS 639-4 Codes for the representation of names of languages – Part 4: Implementation guidelines and general principles for language coding

ISO/DIS 639-6 Codes for the representation of names of languages – Part 6: Alpha-4 representation for comprehensive coverage of language variants

ISO/DIS 10241-1 Terminological entries in standards – Part 1: General requirements

ISO/DIS 10241-2 Terminological entries in standards – Part 2: Localization of international terminology standards

ISO/DIS 23185 Assessment and benchmarking of terminological resources – General concepts, principles and requirements

ISO/NMIP Technical specification on parameters to be considered when starting a translation project

4.3. ISO/TC 37/SC 3 “Systems to management terminology, knowledge and content”

ISO/TC 37/SC 3 started operation in 1985 (called “Computational aids in terminology”) in order to take care of standards of ISO/TC 37 concerning computerized terminography and other computer-applications. Today its scope reads: “Standardization of specifications and modelling principles for systems to manage terminology, knowledge and content with respect to semantic interoperability”. The Secretariat of ISO/TC 37/SC 3 is held by the German Institute for Standardization (DIN).

The objective of ISO/TC 37/SC 3 is “to develop standards for the sake of semantic interoperability comprising specifications of terminology, language and content management, which cover data modelling, markup, data exchange, and evaluation of terminology management and knowledge ordering tools”. Its target groups are providers and users of terminology, language resource, content and knowledge management, including software companies active in this field. The scientific community catering to those services belongs also to these target groups, as well as educational institutions.

ISO 1087-2:2000 Terminology work – Vocabulary – Part 2: Computer applications

ISO 12200:1999 Computer applications in terminology – Machine-readable terminology interchange format (MARTIF) – Negotiated interchange

ISO 16642:2003 Computer applications in terminology – Terminological markup framework (TMF)

ISO/PWI TR 12618 Computational aids in terminology – Design, implementation and use of terminology management systems

ISO/CD 12620-1 Computer applications in terminology – Data categories – Part 1: Model for description and procedures for maintenance of data category registries for language resources

ISO/CD 12620-2 Computer applications in terminology – Data categories – Part 2: Terminological data categories

ISO/PWI 22274 Basic principles and requirements for multilingual product classification

ISO/TC 37/SC 4 was established in 2002 in cooperation with the European Language Resource Association (ELRA) after several years of negotiation. Its scope reads: “Standardization of specifications for computer-assisted language resource management”. The secretariat of ISO/TC 37/SC 4 is operated by KORTERM, the Terminology Research Center for Language and Knowledge Engineering, on behalf of the Korean Agency for Technology and Standards (KATS).

The objective of ISO/TC 37/SC 4 is “to prepare standards by specifying principles and methods for creating, coding, processing and managing language resources, such as written corpora, lexical corpora, speech corpora, dictionary compiling and classification schemes. These standards will also cover the information produced by natural language processing components in these various domains. Standards produced by ISO/TC 37/SC 4 particularly address the needs of industry and international trade as well as the global economy regarding multilingual information retrieval, cross-cultural technical communication and information management”. Its goal is also to ensure that new developments in language engineering, knowledge management and information engineering satisfy the norms of international standardization by

- developing standards and related documents to maximize the applicability of language resources,

- enhancing the application of recognized methods and tools in language resources.

ISO 24610-1:2006 Language resource management – Feature structures – Part 1: Feature structure representation (FSR)

ISO/NWIP 24610-2 Language resource management – Feature structures – Part 2: Feature systems declaration (FSD)

ISO/WD 24611 Language resource management – Morphosyntactic annotation framework (MAF)

ISO/WD 24612 Language resource management – Linguistic annotation framework (LAF)

ISO/AWI 24614-1 Language resource management – Word Segmentation of Written Texts for Mono-lingual and Multi-lingual Information Processing – Part 1: General principles and methods

ISO/AWI 24614-2 Language resource management – Word Segmentation of Written Texts for Mono-lingual and Multi-lingual Information Processing – Part 2: Word segmentation for Chinese, Japanese and Korean

ISO/NWIP 24615 Language resource management – Syntactic Annotation Framework (SynAF)

5. Future issues

The results of this eContent related unification, standardization and harmonization efforts need to be regularly and constantly updated/maintained according to developments in science and technology, and even more so to the expectations of the user side. Furthermore, in the age of the Semantic Web computers increasingly have to communicate in seemingly natural language, which – contrary to true natural language – has to be more or less unambiguous. The further developing information and knowledge society, therefore, will need many (federated) repositories of

- certain types of content items/units (data dictionaries [type 2: containing values/instances]), such as authority data, attributes, values, proper names (of persons, organizations, etc.), terminological data, etc.

- certain data elements, metadata/data categories, ... (data dictionaries [type 1: containing metadata])

- data structures, data models, XML schemas, interchange formats, metamodels, etc.

supplementing existing ones (see ANNEX 2). This will require a systematic approach to the establishment of

• maintenance agencies – whenever there is a need for a high degree of authority and high stability over time

• registration authorities – securing a high degree of consistency over time and more or less strict registration rules

• registries for (the repositories of) codes, words (and word elements, terms, term elements, etc.) and for attributes, values, etc.

which have to take care of these repositories in a distributed, but well coordinated way. This calls for a policy of the standardization system, how to deal with such maintenance agencies, registration authorities and data registries.

Given the need for many more (and different types of) maintenance agencies, registration authorities and registries, it needs a coherent framework for

- the objectives of standardized and non-standardized updating/maintenance procedures,

- the work methodology as well as workflow management methods to be used in the updating/maintenance process,

Such a policy for a distributed, but well coordinated framework for registries/repositories of all kinds of content items today only exists in a rudimentary form. The development may well end up in a network of distributed (federated) MAs, RAs and registries becoming the backbone of the content infrastructures of the semantic web. Given the requirement for coherence of the objects taken care of in these MAs, RAs and repositories, the standards bodies not only will find new opportunities for standardization activities, but also have the societal responsibility to take the lead.

In addition to technology and methodology there are legal issues concerning the content of the above-mentioned MAs, RAs and Registries, which need to be solved. According to ISO/TC 37 standards a terminological entry consists of one (or more) entry term(s) (or abbreviation, symbol, etc.) and a definition. The term is representing the underlying concept in a short ‘symbolic’ form, whereas the definition is representing the characteristics of the concept in a ‘descriptive’ form. If terminology is about representing concepts, then non-linguistic representations – be it graphical or other symbols or be it complex formulas or other kinds of non-linguistic representation of the characteristics of the concept in question – can equally represent concepts (and have to be acknowledged side by side with terms). In fact as a result of technological development, the ways and means of concept representation is increasing, also increasing the share of non-linguistic representations of concepts (and other kind of knowledge). There are also other kinds of IPRs on non-linguistic representations than on terms and definitions being textual data.

Words (even multi-word terms) cannot fall under copyright (with exceptions, such as certain rights on names). The minimum constituent element of a text, which can come under copyright is a sentence (generally speaking). This is a ‘formal’ assessment. The main question of copyright and IPRs in general is, however, whether the idea which is expressed is original, whether it constitutes a work. But the definition in a terminological entry usually only reveals, what is state-of-the-art of scientific-technical development (i.e. which is correct [not true) – and therefore common knowledge – at a given stage of development). So it cannot be ‘original’, even if experts have spent a lot of time on the formulation of the terminological entry. In any case the use of individual entries falls under fair use, especially if one cites and acknowledges them properly. The copyright statement in dictionaries (and other printed works) does not conform to law, if they try to impose stricter provisions than the law itself. (Only if there is a well specified bilateral contract between two parties, stricter provisions can be implemented in compliance with civil law).

There is on the other hand the EU Directive for the protection of databases (or substantial parts hereof). If one extracts a substantial number of entries from a dictionary one should try to obtain the written permission of the publisher. Scientific/academic ethics should ‘morally’ prohibit to deprecate definitions in order to circumvent copyright, but strict enforcement of (this not really enforceable) copyright would inevitably lead to this undesired consequence. In addition one could well argue that the proper citation of the source would result in publicity for the book or database thus increasing its commercial value.

Similar considerations have to be made with respect to the contents of all kinds of MAs, RAs and Registries (for all kinds of registries/repositories).

Given the complexity of the semantic interoperability requirements to be observed already today, experts from various quarters, such as

- terminology and other language resources (incl. the multilinguality and multimodality aspects);

- internationalisation and localisation (incl. cultural diversity and psychological aspects);

should take the initiative and prepare fundamental basic standards cutting across all application fields with respect to multilinguality, multimodality, cultural diversity and related issues (covering also to some extent general cultural diversity, psychological and accessibility aspects). The application specific communities have to develop standards with the basic principles and requirements of the respective application field. New professional profiles for content development will have to be conceived and implemented at educational institutions to provide the market with content developers able to cooperate with system designers in developing also the most appropriate data models and metamodels (hopefully) conforming to international standards.

The standards bodies not only will find new opportunities for standardization activities (and new business opportunities through related services), but also have the societal responsibility to develop a network of distributed (federated) MAs, RAs and registries becoming the backbone of the content infrastructures of the semantic web in order to secure the consistency and coherence of all ‘objects’ (i.e. content items and other objects) taken care of in these MAs, RAs and Registries all across the semantic web. ISO/TC 37 standards in combination with the metadata approach (and the respective JTC 1/SC 32/WG 2 standards) as well as the registries/repositories of all kinds of metadata and structured content in general will be one of the cornerstones of future content interoperability.

Are we finally drawing nearer to sustainable solutions to those ‘classical’ information problems, such as

- lack of comprehensiveness of information on the one hand, and tremendous redundancy of data on the other hand,

not to mention to the time-honored (or rather onerous) information problem of “not available at the place, at the time and in the form required” for a specific use?

ANNEX 1 – Linguistic and non-linguistic representation of knowledge at concept level

In the field of terminology over the years a certain clarification concerning concept representations was achieved (as shown by the concept system “concept representations” below, which is in line with the findings of epistemology):

- term (mono-word terms, multi-word terms [incl. also terms looking like phrasemes])

2. descriptive representation (which can be (1) intensional or extensional and (2) logic, partitive or other)

2.1. linguistic descriptive representation (determination, explanation and other)

- determination* (strict, concise and precise, viz. fully ‘systemic’ – i.e. no missing elements, no redundances)

- partitive determination (which can be partitive and intensional, or partitive and extensional)

- explanation (comprising redundances and/or missing elements, but still referring to the concept system in question)

- logic explanation (which again can be logic and intensional, or logic and extensional)

- partitive explanation (which also can be partitive and intensional, or partitive and extensional)

- other kind of linguistic descriptive representation (e.g. defining context etc.)

2.2. non-linguistic {descriptive} representation (which can also be (1) ‘intensional’ or ‘extensional’, and (2) strictly ‘systemic’ or less ‘systemic’ similar to determination and explanation)

(*‘determination’ according to Webster: in logic, the act of defining a notion [=concept] by adding differentia [=characteristics], and thus rendering it more definite. This corresponds also to similar use in physics <determination of nitrogen in the atmosphere> and in natural history <determination [=classification] determining the species of minerals, plants etc. to which they belong>)

A number of International Standards developed by ISO or IEC technical committees require, with a view to their updating or implementation, a competent body which has the requisite infrastructure for ensuring the effective use of these international agreements. These bodies are designated by ISO and/or IEC to serve as maintenance agencies (MAs) or registration authorities (RAs). For each of the standards concerned detailed information can be obtained through the respective secretariats listed below [from www.iso.org].

Maintenance Agencies:

ISO 3166-1:1997 Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions – Part 1: Country codes

ISO 3166-2:1998 Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions – Part 2: Country subdivision code

ISO 3166-3:1999 Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions – Part 3: Code for formerly used names of countries
Maintenance Agency: ISO Central Secretariat

ISO 4217:2001 Codes for the representation of currencies and funds
Maintenance Agency: British Standards Institution

NOTE: Endorsement of document: United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), Trade Facilitation, Trade Data Elements Directory (TDED), volume 1.
Maintenance Agency: ISO Central Secretariat

ISO 11076:2000 Aerospace – Aircraft de-icing/anti-icing methods with fluids

ISO/TS 13499:2003 Road vehicles – Multimedia data exchange format for impact tests

Registration Authorities:

ISO 4:1997 Information and documentation – Rules for the abbreviation of title words and titles of publications

ISO 639-1:2002 Codes for the representation of names of languages – Part 1: Alpha-2 code

ISO 639-2:1998 Codes for the representation of names of languages – Part 2: Alpha-3 code

ISO 2108:1992 Information and documentation – International standard book numbering (ISBN)

ISO/IEC 2375:2003 Information technology – Procedure for registration of escape sequences and coded character sets

NOTE: The International Register contains graphic and control character sets developed in accordance with ISO/IEC 646 and ISO 2022 assigned escape sequences, and registered following the procedures given in ISO 2375.

ISO 3297:1998 Information and documentation – International standard serial number (ISSN)

ISO 3779:1983 Road vehicles – Vehicle identification number (VIN) – Content and structure

ISO 3901:2001 Information and documentation – International Standard Recording Code (ISRC)

ISO 4100:1980 Road vehicles – World parts manufacturer identifier (WPMI) code

ISO 4343:2000 Industrial automation systems – Numerical control of machines – NC processor output – Post processor commands

ISO 6166:2001 Securities and related financial instruments – International securities identification numbering system (ISIN)

ISO/IEC 6523-1:1998 Information technology – Structure for the identification of organizations and organization parts – Part 1: Identification of organization identification schemes

ISO/IEC 6523-2:1998 Information technology – Structure for the identification of organizations and organization parts – Part 2: Registration of organization identification schemes
Registration Authority: British Standards Institution

ISO/IEC 7350:1991 Information technology – Registration of repertoires of graphic characters from ISO/IEC 10367

ISO/IEC 7812-1:2000 Identification cards – Identification of issuers – Part 1: Numbering system

ISO/IEC 7812-2:2000 Identification cards – Identification of issuers – Part 2: Application and registration procedures

Registration Authority: Standards Department Banking Professions Group/ Standards Administration American Bankers' Association

ISO/IEC 7816-5:1994 Identification cards – Integrated circuit(s) cards with contacts – Part 5: Numbering system and registration procedure for application identifiers

ISO/IEC 7942-1:1994 Information technology – Computer graphics and image processing – Graphical Kernel System (GKS) – Part 1: Functional description

ISO/IEC 7942-2:1997 Information technology – Computer graphics and image processing – Graphical Kernel System (GKS) – Part 2: NDC metafile

ISO/IEC 7942-3:1999 Information technology – Computer graphics and image processing – Graphical Kernel System (GKS) – Part 3: Audit trail

ISO/IEC 7942-4:1998 Information technology – Computer graphics and image processing – Graphical Kernel System (GKS) – Part 4: Picture part archive

Registration Authority: National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency/Joint Interoperability Test command

ISO 8583-2:1998 Financial transaction card originated messages – Interchange message specifications – Part 2: Application and registration procedures for Institution Identification Codes (IIC)

ISO 8583-3:2003 Financial transaction card originated messages – Interchange message specifications – Part 3: Maintenance procedures for messages, data elements and code values

ISO/IEC 8632-1:1999 Information technology – Computer graphics – Metafile for the storage and transfer of picture description information – Part 1: Functional specification

ISO/IEC 8632-3:1999 Information technology – Computer graphics – Metafile for the storage and transfer of picture description information – Part 3: Binary encoding

ISO/IEC 8632-4:1999 Information technology – Computer graphics – Metafile for the storage and transfer of picture description information – Part 4: Clear text encoding

Registration Authority: National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency/Joint Interoperability Test command

ISO 8651-1:1988 Information processing systems – Computer graphics – Graphical Kernel System (GKS) language bindings – Part 1: FORTRAN

ISO 8651-2:1988 Information processing systems – Computer graphics – Graphical Kernel System (GKS) language bindings – Part 2: Pascal

ISO 8651-3:1988 Information processing systems – Computer graphics – Graphical Kernel System (GKS) language bindings – Part 3: Ada

ISO/IEC 8651-4:1995 Information technology – Computer graphics – Graphical Kernel System (GKS) language bindings – Part 4: C

Registration Authority: National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency/Joint Interoperability Test command

ISO/IEC 8802-3:2000 Information technology – Telecommunications and information exchange between systems – Local and metropolitan area networks – Specific requirements – Part 3: Carrier sense multiple access with collision detection (CSMA/CD) access method and physical layer specifications

ISO/IEC 8802-5:1998 Information technology – Telecommunications and information exchange between systems – Local and metropolitan area networks – Specific requirements – Part 5: Token ring access method and physical layer specifications

ISO/IEC 8802-6:1994 Information technology – Telecommunications and information exchange between systems – Local and metropolitan area networks – Specific requirements – Part 6: Distributed Queue Dual Bus (DQDB) access method and physical layer specifications
Registration Authority: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.

ISO 8805:1988 Information processing systems – Computer graphics – Graphical Kernel System for Three Dimensions (GKS-3D) functional description

Registration Authority: National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency/Joint Interoperability Test command

ISO/IEC 8806-4:1991 Information technology – Computer graphics – Graphical Kernel System for Three Dimensions (GKS-3D) language bindings – Part 4: C

Registration Authority: National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency/Joint Interoperability Test command

ISO/IEC 8824-1:2002 Information technology – Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1): Specification of basic notation

ISO/IEC 9070:1991 Information technology – SGML support facilities – Registration procedures for public text owner identifiers

ISO 9141:1989 Road vehicles – Diagnostic systems – Requirements for interchange of digital information

ISO/IEC 9281-1:1990 Information technology – Picture coding methods – Part 1: Identification

ISO 9362:1994 Banking – Banking telecommunication messages – Bank identifier codes

ISO/IEC 9592-1:1997 Information technology – Computer graphics and image processing – Programmer's Hierarchical Interactive Graphics System (PHIGS) – Part 1: Functional description

ISO/IEC 9592-2:1997 Information technology – Computer graphics and image processing – Programmer's Hierarchical Interactive Graphics System (PHIGS) – Part 2: Archive file format

ISO/IEC 9592-3:1997 Information technology – Computer graphics and image processing – Programmer's Hierarchical Interactive Graphics System (PHIGS) – Part 3: Specification for clear-text encoding of archive file
Registration Authority: National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency/Joint Interoperability Test command

ISO/IEC 9593-1:1990 Information processing systems – Computer graphics – Programmer's Hierarchical Interactive Graphics System (PHIGS) language bindings – Part 1: FORTRAN

ISO/IEC 9593-3:1990 Information technology – Computer graphics – Programmer's Hierarchical Interactive Graphics System (PHIGS) language bindings – Part 3: ADA

ISO/IEC 9593-4:1991 Information technology – Computer graphics – Programmer's Hierarchical Interactive Graphics System (PHIGS) language bindings – Part 4: C

Registration Authority: National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency/Joint Interoperability Test command

ISO/IEC 9636-1:1991 Information technology – Computer graphics – Interfacing techniques for dialogues with graphical devices (CGI) – Functional specification – Part 1: Overview, profiles, and conformance

ISO/IEC 9636-2:1991 Information technology – Computer graphics – Interfacing techniques for dialogues with graphical devices (CGI) – Functional specification – Part 2: Control

ISO/IEC 9636-3:1991 Information technology – Computer graphics – Interfacing techniques for dialogues with graphical devices (CGI) – Functional specification – Part 3: Output

ISO/IEC 9636-4:1991 Information technology – Computer graphics – Interfacing techniques for dialogues with graphical devices (CGI) – Functional specification – Part 4: Segments

ISO/IEC 9636-5:1991 Information technology – Computer graphics – Interfacing techniques for dialogues with graphical devices (CGI) – Functional specification – Part 5: Input and echoing

ISO/IEC 9636-6:1991 Information technology – Computer graphics – Interfacing techniques for dialogues with graphical devices (CGI) – Functional specification – Part 6: Raster
Registration Authority: National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency/Joint Interoperability Test command

ISO/IEC 9834-7:1998 Information technology – Open Systems Interconnection – Procedures for the operation of OSI Registration Authorities: Assignnment of international names for use in specific contexts

ISO 9897:1997 Freight containers – Container equipment data exchange (CEDEX) – General communication codes
Registration Authority: International Container Bureau

ISO/IEC 9973:1994 Information technology – Computer graphics and image processing – Procedures for registration of graphical items
Registration Authority: National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency/Joint Interoperability Test command

ISO/IEC 9979:1999 Information technology – Security techniques – Procedures for the registration of cryptographic algorithms
Registration Authority: Royal Holloway College/University of London

ISO/IEC 10036:1996 Information technology – Font information interchange – Procedures for registration of font-related identifiers
Registration Authority: Centre for Global Communications/International University of Japan

ISO 10160:1997 Information and documentation – Open Systems Interconnection – Interlibrary Loan Application Service Definition
Registration Authority: National Library of Canada

ISO 10161-1:1997 Information and documentation – Open Systems Interconnection – Interlibrary Loan Application Protocol Specification – Part 1: Protocol specification
Registration Authority: National Library of Canada

ISO 10383:2003 Securities and related financial instruments – Codes for exchanges and market identification (MIC)
Registration Authority: Bank Identifier Code Register/Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication

ISO 10444:1994 Information and documentation – International standard technical report number (ISRN)
Registration Authority: Fachinformationszentrum (FIZ)

ISO 10486:1992 Passenger cars – Car radio identification number (CRIN)
Registration Authority: Normenausschuss Kraftfahrzeuge (FAKRA) im DIN

ISO/IEC 10641:1993 Information technology – Computer graphics and image processing – Conformance testing of implementations of graphics standards
Registration Authority: National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency/Joint Interoperability Test command

ISO 10957:1993 Information and documentation – International standard music number (ISMN)
Registration Authority: DIN Deutsches Institut für Normung

ISO 10962:2001 Securities and related financial instruments – Classification of Financial Instruments (CFI code)
Registration Authority: Association of National Numbering Agencies, c/o Euroclear France

ISO/IEC 11576:1994 Information technology – Procedure for the registration of algorithms for the lossless compression of data
Registration Authority: ECMA

ISO/IEC 13522-4:1996 Information technology – Coding of multimedia and hypermedia information – Part 4: MHEG registration procedure
Registration Authority: Association française de normalisation

ISO 13764:1996 Space data and information transfer systems – Standard formatted data units – Control authority procedures
Registration Authority: Code MT/National Aeronautics & Space Administration Headquarters

ISO/IEC 13800:1996 Information technology – Procedure for the registration of identifiers and attributes for volume and file structure
Registration Authority: ECMA

ISO/IEC 13818-1:2000 Information technology – Generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information: Systems
Registration Authority: Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers

ISO/IEC 14496-1:2001 Information technology – Coding of audio-visual objects – Part 1: Systems
Registration Authority: International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers

ISO 15022-1:1999 Securities – Scheme for messages (Data Field Dictionary) – Part 1: Data field and message design rules and guidelines

ISO 15022-2:1999 Securities – Scheme for messages (Data Field Dictionary) – Part 2: Maintenance of the Data Field Dictionary and Catalogue of Messages
Registration Authority: Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication

ISO/IEC 15292:2001 Information technology - Security techniques - Protection Profile registration procedures
Registration Authority: Association française de normalisation

ISO 15706:2002 Information and documentation – International Standard Audiovisual Number (ISAN)
Registration Authority: ISAN International Agency

ISO 15707:2001 Information and documentation – International Standard Musical Work Code (ISWC)
Registration Authority: International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers

ISO/IEC 15897:1999 Information technology – Procedures for registration of cultural elements
Registration Authority: The Danish UNIX-systems User Group (DKUUG)

ISO 15924:2004 Information and documentation – Codes for the representation of names of scripts
Registration Authority: Unicode Consortium

ISO 18245:2003 Retail financial services – Merchant category codes
Registration Authority: Mrs. Cynthia L. Fuller, Accredited Standards Committee X9, Incorporated (Financial Industry Standards)

ISO/IEC 21000-3:2003 Information technology – Multimedia framework (MPEG-21) – Part 3: Digital Item Identification
Registration Authority: International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers

ISO 23950:1998 Information and documentation – Information retrieval (Z39.50) – Application service definition and protocol specification
Registration Authority: The Library of Congress/Network Development and MARC Standards Office

1. Budin, G.; Melby, A.K. Accessibility of multilingual terminology resources – Current problems and prospects for the future. Gavrilidou, M. et al. (Eds.): Second International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation – LREC 2000, Proceedings Volume II. Athens: National Technical University of Athens Press, S. 837–844. 2. European Information & Communications Technology Industry Association (EICTA) [ed.]. EICTA interoperability white paper. Brussels: EICTA, 2004. 3. Galinski, Christian; Semantic interoperability and language resources: Content development under the aspect of global semantic interoperability, in Maria A. Wimmer [ed.], E-Government 2005: Knowledge Transfer und Status. Tagungsband zu den e|Gov Days und Eastern European e|Gov Days 2005 des Forums e|Government in Wien und Budapest, Wien: Österreichische Computer Gesellschaft, 2005 (OCG Schriftenreihe Band 187). 4. Galinski, C.; Goebel, J. W. Guide to Terminology Agreements. Vienna: TermNet, 1996. 5. Galinski, C. New ideas on how to support terminology standardisation projects. In: eDITion (2007) 1 p. 7–9. 6. Hjulstad, H. Standards as databases. Submission on behalf of ISO/TC 37 to ISO/TMB/AHG “Standards as databases” of 2006-06-09. 7. IDA (Interchange of Data between Administrations) Community Programme [ed]. European Interoperability Framework for Pan-European E-Government Services. European Communities, 2004. 8. Interoperable Delivery of European eGovernment Services to public Administrations, Businesses and Citizens (IDABC) [ed.]. IDABC content interoperability strategy. Working paper. European Communities, 2005. 9. ISO/TC 37 [ed.]. Semantic Interoperability and the need for a coherent policy for a framework of distributed, coordinated repositories for all kinds of content items on a world-wide scale. 2004 (ISO/TC 37 N496 – endorsed by ISO/TC 37, CEN/ISSS/CDSF and CEN/ISSS and in 2006 by the MoU/MG – Management Group of the ITU-ISO-IEC-UN/ECE Memorandum of Understanding concerning eBusiness standardization – as document MoU/MG/05 N0221). 10. SO/TC 37 [ed.]. 50 Years ISO/TC 37 “Terminology and other language resources” – A history of 65 years of standardization of terminological principles and methods (ISO/TC 37 N 499). 11. ISO/TC 37 [ed.]. (Draft) Business plan of ISO/TC 37 ‘Terminology and other language resources’ for 2008–2009. 12. Raupach, I. Galinski, C. Business models as a means of IPR protection of structured content – Taking terminological data as an example. SCHAFFERT, S.; SURE, Y.; REITBAUER, A. (eds.). Semantic Systems - From Visions to Applications. Proceedings of the SEMANTICS 2006. Vienna: OCG, 2006 (OCG Schriftenreihe 212). 13. Schmitz, K.-D.; Galinski, C. Data modelling: from terminology to other kinds of structured content. (in print).

[1] Technical Committee of ISO, the International Organization for Standardization

[2] Technical Committee of ISO, the International Organization for Standardization

[3] Information and communication technology

[4] Workshop of the Information Society Standardization System of the European Committee for Standardization

[5] International Electrotechnical Commission

[6] European Language Resource Association