Terminology has started to explore unbeaten paths since Wüster, and has nowadays grown into a multi-faceted science, which seems to have reached adulthood, thanks to integrating multiple contributions not only from different linguistic schools, including computer, corpus, variational, socio-cognitive and socio-communicative linguistics, and frame-based semantics, but also from engineering and formal language developers. In this ever changing and diverse context, Terminology offers a wide range of opportunities ranging from standardized and prescriptive to prototype and user-based approaches. At this point of its road map, Terminology can nowadays claim to offer user-based and user-oriented, hence user-friendly, approaches to terminological phenomenona, when searching, extracting and analysing relevant terminology in online corpora, when building term bases that contribute to efficient communication among domain experts in languages for special purposes, or even when proposing terms and definitions formed on the basis of a generally agreed consensus in international standard bodies.

Terminology is now ready to advance further, thanks to the integration of meaning description taking into account dynamic natural language phenomena, and of consensus-based terminology management in order to help experts communicate in their domain-specific languages. In this Handbook of Terminology (HoT), the symbiosis of Terminology with Linguistics allows a mature and multi-dimensional reflection on terminological phenomena, which will eventually generate future applications which have not been tested yet in natural language. 

The HoT aims at disseminating knowledge about terminology (management) and at providing easy access to a large range of topics, traditions, best practices, and methods to a broad audience: students, researchers, professionals and lecturers in Terminology, scholars and experts from other disciplines (among which linguistics, life sciences, metrology, chemistry, law studies, machine engineering, and actually any expert domain). In addition, the HoT addresses any of those with a professional or personal interest in (multilingual) terminology, translation, interpreting, localization, editing, etc., such as communication specialists, translators, scientists, editors, public servants, brand managers, engineers, (intercultural) organization specialists, and experts in any field.

Moreover, the HoT offers added value, in that it is the first handbook with this scope in Terminology which has both a print edition (also available as a PDF e-book) and an online version. The advantages of an online version are obvious: it is more flexible and accessible, and in addition, the entries can be regularly revised and updated. The HoT is variously searchable: by article, by author, by subject. The HoT obviously is linked to the Handbook of Translation Studies, not in the least because of its interdisciplinary approaches, but also because of the inevitable intertwining between translation and terminology.

All chapters are written by specialists in the different subfields and are peer-reviewed.

Last but not least, the usability, accessibility and flexibility of the HoT depend on the commitment of people who agree that Terminology does matter. All users are therefore invited to share their feedback.

Translations in other languages

The HoT is published in English and we plan translations in Chinese and Arabic of all the articles.

Suggestions

The Editors of the Handbook of Terminology Online appreciate your help in pointing out gaps, inadequacies, misspellings and the like in the online chapters. The Editors can best be reached by email: [email protected] & [email protected]

Thank you very much for helping us build a key reference work for the field of Terminology.