Biomedical Term Extraction: NLP Techniques in Computational Medicine

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its branch Natural Language Processing (NLP) in particular are main contributors to recent advances in classifying documentation and extracting information from assorted fields, Medicine being one that has gathered a lot of attention due to the amount of information generated in public professional journals and other means of communication within the medical profession. The typical information extraction task from technical texts is performed via an automatic term recognition extractor. Automatic Term Recognition (ATR) from technical texts is applied for the identification of key concepts for information retrieval and, secondarily, for machine translation. Term recognition depends on the subject domain and the lexical patterns of a given language, in our case, Spanish, Arabic and Japanese. In this article, we present the methods and techniques for creating a biomedical corpus of validated terms, with several tools for optimal exploitation of the information therewith contained in said corpus. This paper also shows how these techniques and tools have been used in a prototype

Linguistics terminology and neologisms in Swahili : rules vs. practice

In this article we discuss the use of Swahili terminology in the field of linguistics. In particular, we are interested in finding out whether the rules laid out by scholars in the scientific literature for the creation of terminological neologisms in Swahili correspond with actual practice. In order to do this, three steps are taken. In Step 1 we undertake the semi-automatic extraction of linguistics terminology, by comparing occurrence frequencies in a special-purpose corpus consisting of ten recent Swahili language/linguistics textbooks, with their corresponding frequencies in a twenty-two-million-token general-language reference corpus of Swahili. In Step 2 we study the source languages and actual word formation processes of the terms and neologisms with the highest keyness values obtained during the previous step. This discussion is divided into several sections, one section per source language. In Step 3, the terms and neologisms that have been found are compared with their treatment (or absence thereof) in two existing reference works, a general dictionary and a linguistics terminology list. These three steps are preceded by brief introductions to (i) the Swahili language; (ii) its dictionaries and terminology lists; (iii) its metalexicographical, terminological and neologism studies; and (iv) our use of the term “neologism.” The three steps are followed by a discussion of our findings and a conclusion

The Problems of Translating Medical Terms from English into Arabic

Abstract This study tackles the problems of translating medical terms from English into Arabic a. It uses an evaluative approach to investigate and discuss the problems and intricacies of translating medical terms from English into Arabic. The purpose of the study is to display the difficulties of translating medical terms and how they were tackled by postgraduate students who are competent in medical translation and professional Arabic translators who work in the medical field. The study adopts a qualitative-quantitative approach. It focuses on different types of medical terms, excluding pharmacy-related terms. In order to find out and identify the real difficulties behind translating medical terms and how they could be approached by experienced translators, the researcher utilized a questionnaire test that included a set of English medical terms to be translated into Arabic by students who were doing a PhD in translation. The same questionnaire was also given to a group of professional Arabic translators. As medical terms are the key components of medical texts, the questionnaire included forty-five diversified English medical terms taken from different medical reports, namely National Health Service (NHS) leaflets and flyers and World Health Organization (WHO) reports for 2007 and 2008. The official Arabic translations of these documents were used to assess the translations given by the subjects in comparison to and contrast with some medical dictionaries and reliable medical websites. The population of the study included 54 postgraduate students (doing PhDs in Arabic translation) in Libyan (the researcher’s origin country) and UK universities and 12 Arabic translators working in UK hospitals and clinics. The results from the data analysis showed that the translation of the medical terms posed real difficulties and challenges for the students and inexperienced professional translators although the experienced professional translators found them comparatively straightforward. Hence, the result highlights the problems of translating medical terms from English into Arabic and the importance of training to work in the medical field as a translator. Also, the study concluded that literal translation, the heavy use of transliteration, inconsistency, the students’ lack of sufficient experience and practice in medical translation, and lack of up-to date English-Arabic medical dictionaries are factors that have given rise to problems in medical translation. Also, the study showed that almost no professional translators use CAT tools or MT to help them translate the medical terms

Lexical Borrowing (Taʿrib) in Arabic Computing Terminology: Issues and Strategies

Computing technology is evolving rapidly, which requires immediate terminology creation in the Arabic language to cope with such an evolution. Technical loanwords form a big part of modern Arabic terminology and they are spreading rapidly within the language. This research investigates the extent to which the Arabic neologization mechanism of taʿrīb (lexical borrowing) is used in computing terminology creation in comparison with the mechanisms of ishtiqāq (derivation), majāz (semantic extension) and tarkīb (compounding). In addition, it assesses the impact and importance of taʿrīb as a computing terminology creation mechanism in Arabic. This research is based on a corpus of specialised dictionaries and specialised literature. The aforementioned mechanisms are used to various degrees in Arabic in the creation of computing terminology, and are used interchangeably to produce equivalents of single foreign terms, which has caused confusion in the use of the language. The extent of the use of taʿrīb in computing terminology creation, and its impact on, and importance to Arabic as a computing terminology creation mechanism is determined based on two criteria. First, a comparison of the extent of use of the aforementioned mechanisms based on three selected corpora of dictionaries and magazines of Arabic technical computing terminology is presented. Second, an assessment of the lexicographical treatments of the computing terms coined by the aforementioned mechanisms is offered, with special consideration of the terms coined by taʿrīb as the main mechanism under discussion. The findings show that taʿrīb is by far the most used Arabic word formation mechanism in terms of computing terminology creation, followed by tarkīb, ishtiqāq and majāz. In addition, it has been concluded that taʿrīb clearly has a major impact on, and is of great importance to Arabic in computing terminology creation

TERMINOLOGICAL DICTIONARIES IN THE UZBEK LANGUAGE: ISSUES AND PRINCIPLES OF COMPILATION

This article discusses lexicography, terminography, and the principles of putting together Uzbek terminological dictionaries. It also goes over the basics of putting together terminological dictionaries. In the compilation of medical dictionaries, the philosophy of lexicography and the theoretical notions of their construction are explored.Keywords: lexicography, terminography, lexicography, lexical theory, lexical units, standardization, linguistic dictionaries, multilingual dictionaries, branch dictionaries, typology of dictionaries

The influence of English on the lexical expansion of Bahasa Malaysia

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:D38970/82 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Neologisms in Modern English: study of word-formation processes

http://tartu.ester.ee/record=b2654513~S1*es

The Hausa Lexicographic Tradition

Hausa, a major language of West Africa, is one of the most widely studied languages of Sub-Saharan Africa. It has a rich lexicographic tradition dating back some two centuries. Since the first major vocabulary published in 1843 up to the present time, almost 60 lexicographic works - dictionaries, vocabularies, glossaries - have been published, in a range of metalanguages, from English to Hausa itself. This article traces the historical development of the major studies according to their type and function as general reference works, specialized works, pedagogical works, and terminological works. For each work, there is a general discussion of its size, accuracy of the phonological, lexical, and grammatical information, and the adequacy of its definitions and illustrative material. A complete list of the lexicographic works is included