Terminological databanks as the bodies of knowledge

Public Relations Review 39 (2013) 569–571
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Public Relations Review
Research in brief
Terminological databanks as the bodies of knowledge:
Slovenian public relations terminology
Nataˇsa Logar Berginc, Dejan Verˇciˇc ∗
University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Social Sciences, Kardeljeva ploscad 5, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history:
Received 14 May 2013
Received in revised form 12 July 2013
Accepted 31 July 2013
Keywords:
Public relations
Slovenian language
Terminological database
Corpus linguistics
a b s t r a c t
The aim of the research project Terminology Databanks as the Bodies of Knowledge: The
Model for the Systematisation of Terminologies is to compile a dictionary of Slovenian
public relations, with 2000 entries. The terms will be explained and translated into English,
with typical context, examples. From July 2013, the dictionary will be publicly available on
www.termania.net.
© 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Public relations are a cultural practice and profession. The term and basic terminology is clearly American and almost
untranslatable into many languages such as Arabic and the majority of Germanic and Slavic languages (van Ruler & Verˇciˇc,
2002, 2005). On the one hand, this raises the issues of globalisation and coherent practice development throughout the
world (Sriramesh & Verˇciˇc, 2009; van Ruler & Verˇciˇc, 2004; Verˇciˇc, 2009; Verˇciˇc, Grunig, & Grunig, 1996), and the issues
of language-cultural development of each individual language through a language policy on the other hand (Kalin Golob
& Logar Berginc, 2008). The starting point of the research was the following: it is difﬁcult to talk about Slovenian public
relations if it is not possible to denote the basic terms in this ﬁeld in Slovenian language; and in parallel, it is difﬁcult
to talk about the vividness of the language if it is not capable of forming its own terminologies, which ultimately, could
lead to the extinction of the language – not an unlikely scenario in the era of globalisation and digitalisation (Crystal,
2000: 21; European Commision, 2005: 11; Kornai, 2012). In order to simultaneously address both issues, the researchers
involved in the project Terminology databanks as the bodies of knowledge: the model for the systematisation of terminologies
(TERMIS, http://www.termis.fdv.uni-lj.si/index-en.html) aim to achieve two goals: (a) development of a publicly available
web-based terminology databank in the ﬁeld of Slovenian public relations, consisting of 2000 entries with explanations,
translation equivalents of headwords in English, as well as typical context patterns and (b) development of free technological
infrastructure to enable terminographically inexperienced experts a quick guide of terminographical work in their ﬁeld of
expertise. In this way, the solution demonstrated by the example of public relations terminology would also serve as a model
for addressing problems related to denotation and terminology for other ﬁelds of expertise in Slovenia.
∗ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (N. Logar Berginc), [email protected] (D. Verˇciˇc).
0363-8111/$ – see front matter © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2013.07.022
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N. Logar Berginc, D. Verˇciˇc / Public Relations Review 39 (2013) 569–571
2. Methodology
During the project, we have used the corpus approach to lexicography and terminography, as well as the latest knowledge
in the ﬁeld of language technologies related to lexicography (e.g. Atkins & Rundell, 2008; Erjavec, 2003; Hanks, 2008; Pearson,
1998). The development of the terminological databank was based on the corpus of public relations texts KoRP, a morphosyntactically tagged synchronic and monolingual corpus of written texts. It includes 1.8 million words from texts published in
the period 1994–2007 (Logar, 2007; Logar Berginc, 2012): Slovenian practitioners and researchers in the ﬁeld of public relations have contributed, free of charge, their publications in electronic form, which enables further machine processing. Based
on the combination of linguistic knowledge of the nature of terms, and the application of mathematical rules of division of
words and strings of words, one-word and multi-word terminological candidates were extracted from the Corpus (Vintar,
2010). The lists were reviewed by two experts from the ﬁeld of public relations. Afterwards, relevant data on the context of
the selected terms or terminological phrases, and useful lexicographical examples were obtained by automatic extraction
of lexical data, namely by using the Sketch engine tool or its application Word sketches (http://www.sketchengine.co.uk/;
´ 2008; Kilgarriff & Kosem, 2012; Kilgarriff, Rychly,
´ Smrˇz, & Tugwell, 2004;
Kilgarriff, Husák, McAdam, Rundell, & Rychly,
Kosem, Gantar, & Krek, 2012; Kosem, Husak, & McCarthy, 2011; Krek, 2012; Krek & Kilgarriff, 2006). The data was imported
into the dictionary editor on the portal www.termania.net (Romih & Krek, 2012), where ﬁnal editing and addition of explanations and translation equivalents is carried out, and where, after the completion of the project, the database will also be
publicly available.
3. Findings
From the linguistic point of view, the research has conﬁrmed the necessity of using the knowledge of linguistic technology
and tools for terminographical purposes − such an approach brings many advantages, of which the most signiﬁcant are:
decrease in time for the compilation of dictionaries and objectivisation, and thereby the credibility of dictionary data.
In the basic premise of the 2000 research (EBOK Research), Ruler et al. noted the following:
The European Association/for Public Relations Education and Research/recognised that its major responsibility is
to/.../produce an overview of public relations knowledge existing in different European countries (and different European
languages). It was decided that a compilation of the European Public Relations Body of Knowledge was needed, with the
hope of putting it alongside the existing North-American Public Relations Body of Knowledge (van Ruler, Vercic, Buetschi,
& Flodin, 2000: 2).
With TERMIS, it became obvious that the best way to set up a knowledge databank of public relations in Slovenia is
through the compilation of a terminological dictionary. The result of this work is a range of detailed and sometimes also
relatively comprehensive (encyclopaedic) explanations for 2000 key concepts of public relations, and their regulated and
conventionally standardised denotation (starting with the name of the ﬁeld).
4. Conclusions
With the TERMIS project, we have demonstrated, by way of example with public relations in Slovenia, how it is possible to compile terminological knowledge databanks in a contemporary, technologically based and objective manner. The
methodology used is in fact language independent, therefore our approach can also be used internationally; and the ﬁeld
of public relations can be used as a counterpart to the domination of the English language, especially in languages with a
small number of speakers, both at the expressive and conceptual level. However, despite all technology, the compilation of
the ﬁnal product – especially in terms of writing of explanations – still requires a considerable human contribution, which
brings to projects such as the one presented in this article another important dimension: (re)consideration by the members
of the expert community on key concepts of their own profession, on its connection to related ﬁelds and separation from
them, as well as on the professional self-image and identity. Participation in the dictionary compilation connected Slovenian
experts in the ﬁeld of public relations in the community which desires such consideration, is capable of it and can use it for
its own improvement. If projects similar to TERMIS will also continue to be carried out in Slovenia in the future, it is not to
be feared that the full functionality of the Slovenian language, in the key areas of its use, e.g. in science, will be lost; and the
branches of knowledge that will represent themselves in such a way do not have to fear the loss of development impetuous.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by the Slovenian Research Agency, Pristop, Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Slovenia
along with sponsors: Mercator, Poˇsta Slovenije, Zavarovalnica Maribor and Elektro Ljubljana.
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