Entries of Latin American Organisations in IATE, the European Union's Terminology Database

Abstract

The labour market for translators and interpreters has lengthened considerably over the last decades. During translation process, the terminological preparation of texts is essential, and for this purpose, the most useful and appropriate tools are the online available terminology databases. The terminology database, by definition, is a set of electronically stored data, which has been prepared following an onomasiological approach. It contains the terms of one or more domains, and terms are accompanied by their definitions in one or more languages. The data published in the databases, which have been prepared by linguists in collaboration with the experts of the relevant domains, can serve as reference works not only for translators and interpreters, but also for professionals and researchers. IATE (Interactive Terminology for Europe) is the central terminology database of the Translation Service of the European Commission, and it contains terms, abbreviations, acronyms and phraseology in the official languages of the European Union. The aim of this study is to analyze five IATE entries that represent Latin American organizations (Latin American Parliament, Andean Community, Mercosur, Latin American Economic System and Inter-American Development Bank) from the point of view of the visualised terminographic data (e.g. term, definition, references, context, reliability, domain). After the classification of translation tools paying particular attention to terminology databases (their characteristics, the ISO standards that describe their properties, the categories of data included, and the features that differentiate them from online dictionaries), the data categories of the five terminological entries will be analysed.