The role of democracy in a translation problem emerges as an issue in this paper, in which the author discusses a consensual attempt to standardize English translations of Norwegian administrative and institutional terms from the perspective of a lesser-used language. The author describes some of the thinking which led to the publication of two major bilingual Norwegian-English dictionaries in the 1980s in what was, at that time, a terminological vacuum. Against a background of university classes which avoided the problems of administrative and institutional terminology, the author starts by outlining the need for a standardized set of terms in which the need for consistency is primary. The translation of such terms is important if non-Norwegian speakers are to be able to understand and communicate about important aspects of Norwegian society. It is this perceived need which gave rise to the ADNOM project (the Norwegian Project for Multilingual Administrative Nomenclature) in 1982.