What it is
One object with three faces. Cabré describes the terminological unit as a polyhedron whose faces are cognitive, linguistic and communicative, which is to say the concept, the term and the situation. Each face is a way in, and she calls the resulting model a theory of doors: whichever door you enter by, the rooms inside are the same, and what changes is the route you take through them. Her own door is the linguistic one.
The consequence that matters outside theory is the one about status. If a term is a lexical unit that acquires terminological value in a communicative situation, then terminological status is not a property the unit carries around with it. The same string is a term in one text and an ordinary word in another, and no inspection of the string will tell you which. What decides is the situation: the field, the purpose, the sender and the addressee.
The neighbouring record on term and word asks what makes a unit a term at all. This one denies that the question can be answered without a text in front of you.
Where the authorities stand
The theory is Cabré's, and so are both of its images: the polyhedron and the doors appear in the same passage of her 2003 article, where she names the model herself. The 2023 collection of her work in English carries a chapter on the model of doors and another on the polyhedricity principle.
The most substantial criticism comes from a rival camp and should be labelled as such. Faber, who developed frame-based terminology, argues that for all its clarity about what terminological units are, the theory declines to commit to any particular linguistic model, and that its account of conceptual semantics is left vague. Cabré's position is that the door she enters by opens onto a theory of natural languages in general rather than onto one named model.
Liu and Wei's 2023 article is published dissent of an unusual kind. Their objection is not that the three doors are wrong but that the relations among the three dimensions were never worked out, which they argue breaks down in crosslingual settings. Their proposal, tested on domestic violence in English and Chinese, replaces three separate doors with a single three-wing revolving door: an extension rather than a refutation.
One editorial point is worth knowing. The 2022 survey of theoretical perspectives on terminology has no chapter on this theory, although it is invoked across the volume, and its reviewer in Parallèles regrets the omission.
Consequences for translation
The theory converts several judgments that look stylistic into terminological ones, which changes who is responsible for them.
- Termhood is a property of the unit in a text, so a project glossary should record the situation as well as the equivalent. A designation right for an administrative act may be wrong for a leaflet addressed to the public.
- The cognate is not the default. Where a target language has both an expert and a lay designation for one concept, choosing the expert form because it resembles the source is a terminological error, not a safe option.
- Determinologization is predictable and should be planned for. Terms that have entered general use carry their specialized sense for some readers and not for others, and the same document may need both.
- Situational fit does not license a wider referent. Reaching for a colloquial synonym that covers more ground than the source concept is a mistake the theory explains but does not authorize.
Examples
EN>IT
- Source: organic waste, as a defined municipal collection category
- Target: frazione organica in administrative acts; umido in citizen-facing texts
- Comment: Cirillo and Vellutino's corpus of Italian municipal texts shows the same category designated differently by text type. Umido is an ordinary adjective meaning damp. In a leaflet it acquires terminological value and names a legally defined category; anywhere else it is an adjective. Terminological status here belongs to the unit in a situation, not to the string.
EN>DA
- Source: menopause
- Target: overgangsalderen
- Comment: Danish has the cognate, menopausen, and in a patient information leaflet it is the wrong answer. Jensen and Zethsen record that lay Danish does not use it. Both designations name one concept, and only one of them is a term for this reader in this text. A model in which a term is a label fixed to a concept has nothing to say about the choice.
EN>ES
- Source: empty stomach, in a clinical instruction
- Target: en ayunas
- Comment: Valero-Garcés records an instruction whose Spanish counterpart is an everyday idiom rather than a technical calque, and an interpreter who produced en ayuno, which means something else. The same study supplies the limiting case: rendering columna vertebral as espalda is situationally comfortable, referentially wider, and therefore wrong.
References
- Cabré Castellví, M. T. (1999). La terminología: representación y comunicación. Elementos para una teoría de base comunicativa y otros artículos. Sèrie Monografies 3. Barcelona: Institut Universitari de Lingüística Aplicada, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
- Cabré Castellví, M. T. (2000). "Elements for a theory of terminology: Towards an alternative paradigm." Terminology 6(1), 35 to 57.
- Cabré Castellví, M. T. (2003). "Theories of terminology: Their description, prescription and explanation." Terminology 9(2), 163 to 199.
- Cabré Castellví, M. T. (2023). Terminology: Cognition, Language and Communication. IVITRA Research in Linguistics and Literature 36. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, chapter 1, "Terminology and linguistics: The model of doors," 9 to 18, and chapter 4, "The polyhedricity principle," 69 to 89.
- Liu, Y. and Wei, X. (2023). "From 'three doors' to 'one revolving door': Extending the Theory of Doors for a cross-lingual study of the concept of violence in English and Chinese language and culture." Terminology 29(1), 133 to 161.
- Faber Benítez, P. (2009). "The cognitive shift in terminology and specialized translation." MonTI 1, 107 to 134, at pp. 114 to 115.
- Bureau, P. (2023). Review of P. Faber and M.-C. L'Homme (eds), Theoretical Perspectives on Terminology. Parallèles 34(2), 67 to 68.
- Cirillo, N. and Vellutino, D. (2024). "Term Variation in Institutional Languages: Degrees of Specialization in Municipal Waste Management Terminology." In Proceedings of the DeTermIt! Workshop at LREC-COLING 2024, 134 to 140.
- Jensen, M. N. and Zethsen, K. K. (2012). "Translation of patient information leaflets: Trained translators and pharmacists-cum-translators, a comparison." Linguistica Antverpiensia, New Series 11, 32 to 49, at p. 40.
- Valero-Garcés, C. (2005). "Terminology and Ad hoc Interpreters in Public Services. An Empirical Study." The Journal of Specialised Translation 3, 75 to 96.