Stabilizing knowledge through standards - A perspective for the humanities

It is usual to consider that standards generate mixed feelings among scientists. They are often seen as not really reflecting the state of the art in a given domain and a hindrance to scientific creativity. Still, scientists should theoretically be at the best place to bring their expertise into standard developments, being even more neutral on issues that may typically be related to competing industrial interests. Even if it could be thought of as even more complex to think about developping standards in the humanities, we will show how this can be made feasible through the experience gained both within the Text Encoding Initiative consortium and the International Organisation for Standardisation. By taking the specific case of lexical resources, we will try to show how this brings about new ideas for designing future research infrastructures in the human and social sciences

Legal Terminology and Lesser Used Languages: The Case of Mòcheno

Since 2003 the Institute for Specialised Communication and Multilingualism of the European Academy of Bolzano (EURAC) offers education courses in legal terminology work, coupled with introductions in related/complementary disciplines, e.g. documentation, specialised translation and technical writing. Next to professional trainings, the Institute held also ad-hoc courses, such as a two-day course organised in 2008 for the Mòcheni, a Germanic minority living in the Italian Province of Trento. Since the passing of provincial law no. 6/2008, which foresees specific measures for the protection and promotion of local language minorities, the Mòcheno-speaking community has the right to use their language in all situations of social, economic and administrative life in both oral and written communications. Notwithstanding the recent compilation of a standard grammar, the Mòcheno language is not yet developed for the use in technical and specialised contexts. Indeed, the most urgent needs seem to exist in the translation of administrative terminology