A glossary of election terms: let’s get to know some words before voting!

These coming days are crucial for certain countries in the European Union such as France or Greece. Many people will be voting in the next few days and deciding the future of their countries. For this reason, it is useful to know some terms related to elections that politicians and commentators are using in current discourse.

JIAMCATT 2012

DG TRAD is hosting the 2012 JIAMCATT Conference. This International Annual Meeting on Computer-assisted Translation and Terminology takes place this week, from 25 to 27 April, in Luxembourg. It brings together delegates from some 70 international organisations and addresses issues such as terminological resources, machine translation and toolboxes for translators. Besides the presentations in the morning there are also workshops and interinstitutional meetings where terminology on a language level is being discussed.

The Head of Termcoord, Rodolfo Maslias, focused his presentation on Inter-institutional Communication and Information sharing on Terminology.

View JIAMCATT’s programme.

Polish Seminar on Terminology for three European Institutions

The inter-institutional meeting of Terminology and Law-Linguistics – organised on the initiative of the Polish Unit for the European Parliament, Commission and Council – took place yesterday with huge success.

It was the 17th meeting and the Terminology Coordination Unit of the European Parliament represented by our Head of Unit, Rodolfo Maslias, participated with a presentation about the general nature of terminology and the specific work of the unit.

The IATE term of the week

Every week TermCoord selects a new term from the European Terminology Databank “IATE”, which is related to relevant political and international issues occurring during the week. 

This week we have selected the term “forensic psychologist” with the reference to the trail of Anders Breivik, “the Norway Gunman” (the article on BBC News).

Definition: Psychologist working in the judicial/penal fields; his/her work may involve providing psychological expertise to courts, assessing and treating individuals with mental health problems, hostage negotiation, advising prison management, police and social services, etc.

‘Generation Y’ – what does it mean?

This expression first appeared in August 1993, in the editorial of ‘The Ad Age’, a magazine from the world of marketing and media. It described the teenagers of the day, whom they considered to be separate from “Generation X”.

1982 is generally considered the birth year of this generation but there are differences between countries concerning this date and term. For example, inChina, Generation Y does not exist because the rapid change in that country since 1970 has resulted in the classification of generations by decade. While in most of the developed world, a person born in 1985 and a person born in 1990 are considered part of the same generation, in China, those born in the 70s are called the “post-70s” generation, those born in the 80s the “post-80s” generation, and those born in the 90s the “post-90s” generation.

The IATE term of the week

Every week TermCoord selects a new term from the European Terminology Databank “IATE”, which is related to relevant political and international issues occurring during the week. 

This week we have selected the term “cease-fire” with the reference to the current situation in the Syrian Arab Republic. (Read article from BBC News)

One hundred years of the Titanic disaster

On the 14th April, 1912 an iceberg broke the dreams of many people wanting to reach the American coast.

It was supposed to be the largest moveable, man-made object in the world but finally the ship sank in the middle of theNorth Atlantic.