Terminological Variation in Source Texts and Translations: A Pilot Study

Denominative variation pertains to the ways in which a given unit of thought can be expressed. Applied to special language, terms are possible denominations of units of thought. On the basis of a joint pilot project between IULATERM of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra and the Centrum voor Vaktaal en Communicatie (CVC) of the Erasmushogeschool Brussel, we will discuss how we study denominative variation in specialised texts. This pilot project was set up in the framework of two Phd projects on variation and terminology. Both projects are based on the premise that denominative variation is functional. It has been argued in recent years that there are several motivations for the use of terminological variants in specialised discourse (see e.g. Freixa 2006; Bowker and Hawkins 2006). The project carried out at IULATERM aims to examine to what extent the choice for a given term is triggered by textual, communicative and cognitive contexts. The project carried out at CVC wants to examine to what extent the use of terminological variants is reflected in specialised translations. The aims of both these studies are present in the joint pilot project, which was set up in an attempt to share experience with respect to practical issues, such as general workflows, corpus design, methods of analysis, etc. Our discussion of the pilot project will mainly concentrate on the selection criteria of texts in our corpus as well as on our requirements for specific tools supporting the general workflow.