What it is
When a designation has to be invented, there are criteria for judging it, and they are old enough to be standardized. ISO 704's second edition set them out as seven numbered subclauses: transparency, consistency, appropriateness, linguistic economy, derivability, linguistic correctness, and preference for the native language.
They repay reading in that order, because each is a different kind of demand. A transparent term lets a reader infer the concept from the form. A consistent one fits the existing terminology of the field rather than cutting across it. An appropriate one follows familiar and established patterns of meaning already in use. An economical one is short enough to be used in speech and in running text. A derivable one allows the derivatives and compounds the field will need. A linguistically correct one obeys the target language's own morphology. And the last criterion prefers a native form over a direct loan.
The useful thing about the list is not that it settles cases. It is that it names the grounds on which a reviser's objection can be made, so that an argument about a coinage becomes an argument about which criterion is being given priority.
Where the authorities stand
The criteria are standardized and the citation is a minefield, so it is worth being precise about which edition carries what. The seven labels above are verifiable in ISO 704:2000, as clauses 7.3.2 to 7.3.8. The 2009 edition moves the material into clause 7.4, on the formation of terms and appellations, whose internal numbering is not recoverable from a public contents page. The 2022 edition moves it again, to clause 7.6.2, titled simply Principles, and whether the seven labels survive there is not publicly readable. Note also that the ISO label is Derivability alone; the fuller phrase derivability and compoundability circulates widely and does not appear in the standard's own contents.
Valeontis and Mantzari, working from the 2000 edition, quote three of the criteria in full and are the best open source for their wording: appropriateness requires proposed terms to follow familiar and established patterns of meaning in use; economy requires terms to be concise so as to serve communication outside purely scientific settings; derivability requires that term formations allowing potential derivatives be chosen according to what the language permits.
The interesting content is that the criteria conflict, and the same authors show it rather than assert it. Discussing blends, they note that the disadvantage is precisely that they obstruct transparent and unambiguous access to the characteristics of the concept. A blend is economical and opaque at once, so economy and transparency are being traded against each other in every such coinage. Derivability quietly overrules both wherever a whole paradigm has to be built from one stem, because a term that cannot take the derivatives the field needs will be abandoned however transparent it is.
Consequences for translation
The list is worth having because it turns a matter of taste into a matter of grounds.
- Name the criterion when objecting to a coinage. Too long is not an objection; economy at the cost of transparency is, and so is the reverse.
- Check derivability before adopting a coinage. If the field will need a verb, an agent noun and an adjective, a term that yields none of them will fail whatever else it has going for it.
- Consistency is checked against the target term stock, not the source text. A coinage that fits the source system's patterns and cuts across the target's has satisfied nothing.
- The preference for a native form is a preference, not a rule, and it is the criterion most often overridden by established usage.
- Cite the edition whenever these criteria are invoked in writing. Three editions carry them under three different clause numbers.
Examples
EN>FR
- Source: fax
- Target: télécopie
- Comment: Economy against transparency, decided differently in two languages. Valeontis and Mantzari record that the English designation was produced by clipping facsimile transmission, which is maximally economical and tells a reader nothing, while French and Greek both answered with more transparent formations. Neither choice is wrong by the criteria: they weight the criteria differently, and both can say which one they weighted.
EN>EL
- Source: chip
- Target: πλινθίο
- Comment: Consistency and appropriateness satisfied by using the target language's own resources for the same move the source made. English terminologized an ordinary word meaning a thin slice; Greek terminologized an ordinary word meaning a small brick. The result is native, transparent to a Greek reader and derivable, and it resembles the English designation in nothing but the mechanism that produced it.
References
- ISO 704:2000. Terminology work: Principles and methods, 2nd edition. Geneva: International Organization for Standardization, clauses 7.3.2 to 7.3.8.
- ISO 704:2009. Terminology work: Principles and methods, 3rd edition. Geneva: International Organization for Standardization, clause 7.4.
- ISO 704:2022. Terminology work: Principles and methods, 4th edition. Geneva: International Organization for Standardization, clause 7.6.2.
- Valeontis, K. and Mantzari, E. (2006). "The Linguistic Dimension of Terminology: Principles and Methods of Term Formation." First Athens International Conference on Translation and Interpretation, "Translation: Between Art and Social Science", Athens, 13 and 14 October 2006, sections 4.1, 4.2.3 and 6.