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Subject:Re: Terminology and you From:Tony Roder <TONY -at- SLACVM -dot- BITNET> Date:Thu, 20 May 1993 13:43:00 -0800
In-Reply-To: TECHWR-L -at- OSUVM1 -- 05/20/93 13:05
..............
Do the terms that your engineers or developers use to describe
phenomena, components, products or processes seem to be proliferating at
your job at an increasing rate? Further, do you find that poor
terminology decisions at the research or development end of the business
torture *you* when it comes time to provide documentation? Do words
used imprecisely and interchangably by your R&D folks come back to bite
you, peppering your doc with ambiguity that increasingly seems to be out
of your control? (I hope not, but suspect the contrary.)
.................
I wonder if others on this list have a terminology story to tell. This
is a pet concern of mine, and I'd be fascinated by any and all stories
listmembers would care to contribute. Object orientation and GUI's have
provided many thorny issues for us, terminologically speaking. What
about you?
..............
It is also a serious ('pet' does not even begin to express it) concern to
translators, who find what they perceive to be the same function, operation,
or feature identified with several terms, and who have to decide -- with
minimal information most of the time -- whether to use a single term for
all of them or whether they refer to different features which generally
do not have equivalent words in the foreign language.