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

Effects of social evolution on terminology policy in South Tyrol

Abstract This paper illustrates the challenges of terminology policy in the legal domain in South Tyrol, Italy, i.e. within a minority community whose language (German) is an official language in other countries. In this context terminology planning becomes necessary mainly in relation to legal and administrative concepts, due to the system-bound nature of legal language. The method applied in South Tyrol is micro-comparison with other German-speaking legal systems. Based on South Tyrol's example, we show how changes in society have affected approaches, methods and tools for terminology planning and practical terminology work. South Tyrol's autonomy model is often considered a best practice for the resolution of ethnic conflict. Its long-lasting experience in terminology planning may equally serve as a model for minority language communities that have only recently been granted extensive language rights

Terminološki rad u pravnom području za lokalne manjine: primjer njemačkoga u Južnom Tirolu

The paper outlines the challenges of doing legal terminology work in Italian and German to support the development of a local-only minority language (South Tyrolean German) and to foster communication with other German-speaking countries. The target groups of terminology – legal experts, language mediators and the public – have different needs and expectations that were addressed in the Information System for Legal Terminology bistro by exploiting specific terminological data categories, by seeking a compromise when drafting definitions and by implementing technical functions.Ovaj rad ocrtava izazove rada na pravnoj terminologiji na talijanskom i njemačkom jeziku kako bi se podržao razvoj lokalnoga manjinskog jezika (južnotirolskoga njemačkog jezika) i istodobno potaknula komunikacija s drugim zemljama njemačkoga govornog područja. Ciljne terminološke skupine, odnosno pravni stručnjaci, jezični posrednici i javnost, imaju različite potrebe i očekivanja na koja se u Informacijskom sustavu za pravno nazivlje bistro odgovorilo upotrebom specifičnih terminoloških kategorija podataka, pronalaženjem kompromisa u pisanju definicija te primjenom tehničkih funkcija u bistro

High order direct Arbitrary-Lagrangian-Eulerian schemes on moving Voronoi meshes with topology changes

We present a new family of very high order accurate direct Arbitrary-Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) Finite Volume (FV) and Discontinuous Galerkin (DG) schemes for the solution of nonlinear hyperbolic PDE systems on moving 2D Voronoi meshes that are regenerated at each time step and which explicitly allow topology changes in time. The Voronoi tessellations are obtained from a set of generator points that move with the local fluid velocity. We employ an AREPO-type approach, which rapidly rebuilds a new high quality mesh rearranging the element shapes and neighbors in order to guarantee a robust mesh evolution even for vortex flows and very long simulation times. The old and new Voronoi elements associated to the same generator are connected to construct closed space--time control volumes, whose bottom and top faces may be polygons with a different number of sides. We also incorporate degenerate space--time sliver elements, needed to fill the space--time holes that arise because of topology changes. The final ALE FV-DG scheme is obtained by a redesign of the fully discrete direct ALE schemes of Boscheri and Dumbser, extended here to moving Voronoi meshes and space--time sliver elements. Our new numerical scheme is based on the integration over arbitrary shaped closed space--time control volumes combined with a fully-discrete space--time conservation formulation of the governing PDE system. In this way the discrete solution is conservative and satisfies the GCL by construction. Numerical convergence studies as well as a large set of benchmarks for hydrodynamics and magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) demonstrate the accuracy and robustness of the proposed method. Our numerical results clearly show that the new combination of very high order schemes with regenerated meshes with topology changes lead to substantial improvements compared to direct ALE methods on conforming meshes

Multilingual Legal Terminology on the Jibiki Platform: The LexALP Project

International audienceThis paper presents the particular use of "Jibiki" (Papillon's web server develop- ment platform) for the LexALP1 project. LexALP's goal is to harmonise the ter- minology on spatial planning and sustain- able development used within the Alpine Convention2, so that the member states are able to cooperate and communicate efficiently in the four official languages (French, German, Italian and Slovene). To this purpose, LexALP uses the Jibiki plat- form to build a term bank for the con- trastive analysis of the specialised termi- nology used in six different national legal systems and four different languages. In this paper we present how a generic plat- form like Jibiki can cope with a new kind of dictionary

Business Communication in South Tyrol: Study on Multilingual Knowledge Management Strategies in SMEs Located in a Language Contact Region

La ricerca sulla comunicazione e gestione multilingue della conoscenza in azienda si è sinora concentrata sulle multinazionali o PMI in fase di globalizzazione. La presente ricerca riguarda invece le PMI in zone storicamente multilingui al fine di studiare se l’abitudine all’uso di lingue diverse sul mercato locale possa rappresentare un vantaggio competitivo. La tesi illustra una ricerca multimetodo condotta nel 2012-2013 in Alto Adige/Südtirol. Il dataset consiste in 443 risposte valide a un questionario online e 23 interviste con manager e imprenditori locali. Le domande miravano a capire come le aziende altoatesine affrontino la sfida del multilinguismo, con particolare attenzione ai seguenti ambiti: comunicazione multilingue, documentazione, traduzione e terminologia. I risultati delineano un quadro generale delle strategie di multilinguismo applicate in Alto Adige, sottolineandone punti di forza e punti deboli. Nonostante la presenza di personale multilingue infatti il potenziale vantaggio competitivo che ne deriva non è sfruttato appieno: le aziende si rivolgono ai mercati in cui si parla la loro stessa lingua (le imprese a conduzione italiana al mercato nazionale, quelle di lingua tedesca ad Austria e Germania). La comunicazione interna è multilingue solo nei casi in sia imprescindibile. Le “traduzioni fai-da-te” offrono l’illusione di gestire lingue diverse, ma il livello qualitativo rimane limitato. I testi sono sovente tradotti da personale interno privo di competenze specifiche. Anche nella cooperazione con i traduttori esterni si evidenza la mancata capacità di ottenere il massimo profitto dagli investimenti. La tesi propone delle raccomandazioni pratiche volte a ottimizzare i processi attuali e massimizzare la resa delle risorse disponibili per superare la sfida della gestione e comunicazione multilingue. Le raccomandazioni non richiedono investimenti economici di rilievo e sono facilmente trasferibili anche ad altre regioni multilingui/di confine, come ad altre PMI che impiegano personale plurilingue. Possono dunque risultare utili per un elevato numero di imprese.Research in multilingual business communication and knowledge management so far has mainly focused on large international companies or on SMEs facing globalisation, while this research centres on SMEs in historically multilingual regions. The aim is to to assess whether the long-term habit of communicating in more than one language on the local market gives these SMEs a competitive advantage. The dissertation bases on a mixed-method study performed in 2012-2013 in Italian-German bilingual South Tyrol (Alto Adige/Südtirol). The dataset consists of 443 valid responses to an online questionnaire and 23 qualitative interviews with local CEOs. Questions aimed at understanding how the South Tyrolean businesses cope with the challenges of multilingualism, focusing particularly on: multilingual communication, documentation, translation and terminology. The results sketch a general picture of multilingual habits in South Tyrol and pinpoint common weaknesses. Notwithstanding the availability of bilingual and multilingual staff, the ensuing potential is not fully exploited: companies tend to address same-language markets (i.e. Italian-speaking companies target the national market while German-speaking companies address neighbouring Austria and Germany). Internal communication is monolingual whenever possible. “DIY in-house translations” offer the illusion of coping with several languages, but quality is poor. Most texts are translated by internal staff with no specific competences. The cooperation with external translators also lacks the necessary insights to optimise the cost-benefit relationship. Based on these results, the dissertation proposes a set of simple and practical recommendations for South Tyrolean companies that build on optimising current workflows and better exploiting existing resources, thus helping to master the challenge of multilingual knowledge management and international communication. Most recommendations do not require financial investments and can easily be transferred to other multilingual (border) regions or to SMEs employing multilingual staff. Therefore, the recommendations can be helpful for a wide range of companies

BUDUJĄC MOSTY MIĘDZY TEORIĄ I PRAKTYKĄ: ROZWÓJ TERMINOLOGII W RAMACH PRAWA I ADMINISTRACJI

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the workflow for the elaboration of multilingual terminology in the legal and administrative domain. Next to giving a short overview over each single step in the workflow, we focus on two important aspects that make multilingual terminology work in the legal domain so challenging and partly different from multilingual terminology work in other domains: the micro-comparative approach and the strong involvement of domain experts. Finally, we discuss a series of practical aspects that distinguish work in the legal domain from terminology work in other domains and partly even clash against some of the requirements set by general terminology theory and practice.Celem artykułu jest zilustrowanie rozwoju terminologii multilingwalnej w ramachdziedziny prawa i administracji. Przedstawione są kolejne kroki tego procesu ze szczególnym uwzględnieniem tych aspektów, które powodują, że praca z terminami multilingwalnymi stanowi poważne wyzwanie i różni się od multilingwalnej terminologii stosowanej w innych dziedzinach. Ponadto omówione są praktyczne aspekty wynikające z tych różnic

Chapter La terminologia della salute e sicurezza sul lavoro in tedesco per l’Alto Adige

The paper deals with the German language terminology of occupational health and safety (OHS) in South Tyrol, Italy, where the minority language has official status next to the national language. The South Tyrolean German legal language is developed along two main lines, i.e. through secondary term formation based on translations of Italian terms or by adopting terms already established in the German-speaking countries. The examples given in the paper show the presence of terminological gaps in South Tyrolean German, the influence of Italian, the delicate relation with the legal terminology of the foreign German-speaking legal systems and the difficulty of disseminating an unambiguous terminology in the domain of OHS at local level. The final part explains the currently adopted development and dissemination strategies

COMUNICAZIONE ISTITUZIONALE INCLUSIVA IN ALTO ADIGE: ESPERIENZE E QUESTIONI APERTE

La Provincia autonoma di Bolzano ha un’esperienza ultradecennale nella redazione inclusiva di testi normativi e amministrativi nelle tre lingue ufficiali italiano, tedesco e ladino. Il contributo ripercorre la nascita nel 2010 di una legge volta alla parificazione di uomo e donna anche a livello linguistico e la creazione di direttive per il linguaggio di genere nei testi dell’Amministrazione provinciale. Affronta inoltre le questioni aperte a livello redazionale, traduttivo e terminologico. L’equivalenza delle diverse versioni linguistiche di una norma può essere messa in dubbio dall’impiego di diverse strategie di visibilizzazione o neutralizzazione del genere. A livello terminologico è necessario un supporto per chi scrive e traduce testi, ma diversi fattori pongono sfide teoriche e pratiche di non facile risoluzione, tra cui l’astrattezza dei termini giuridici, la mancanza di attestazione e di consuetudine nell’uso di alcuni agentivi femminili e i dubbi sulla loro corretta gestione metodologica in una risorsa terminologica.   Inclusive institutional communication in South Tyrol: experiences and open questions The Autonomous Province of Bozen/Bolzano has over a decade of experience in drafting inclusive legislation and administrative texts in its three official languages Italian, German and Ladin. The paper reports on a law from 2010 aiming at achieving equality among men and women also at the linguistic level and on the ensuing guidelines for inclusive language. The paper also deals with open questions concerning text drafting, translation and terminology. The equivalence of the different language versions of a law can be questioned if different strategies for inclusive writing (viz. binary vs non-binary terms) are used. At the level of terminology, writers and translators need support, but several factors pose theoretical and practical challenges that are not easy to overcome. These include the abstract nature of legal terms, the lack of examples of use and the scarce diffusion of certain female agentives as well as doubts about their correct processing from within a terminological resource.