Backgrounds

Many cultures have stories, similar to that of the Tower of Babel, that observe that the big feats, such as building a "tower, whose top may reach unto heaven", cannot be achieved unless there is linguistic unity. While this is generally recognized (the EU parliament building in Strasbourg resembles the Tower of Babel as depicted by the painter Bruegel), one can also observe that the part of the people that care about achieving a workable 'linguistic unity' lack easy-to-use means and tools.

The traditional tool for fostering common understanding is using glossaries or dictionaries, such as the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the Sovrin Glossary and the NIST Glossary. Other initiatives produce documents with explanations, e.g. the terminology for talking about privacy by data minimization by Pfitzmann and Hansen (2010), or the EBSI Terminology (login required).

Traditional tools usually come with drawbacks that reduce their practical usefulness in this electronic era. Dictionaries leave their user to decide which of the various meanings that a term may have was intended. Glossaries typically provide a single meaning for a term, but lack a specification of the scope/context in which it is applied or where it is authoritative. And documents rarely explain the ideas (concepts) behind terms they use.

The eSSIF-Lab terminology effort is an attempt to improve on this, by

• creating and using tools that help authors and readers to understand the texts the create/read;
• creating and maintaining a Terminology Corpus that documents such understanding;
• automatically regenerate artifacts such as glossaries or dictionaries) as the corpus is being updated.