Caracterización de la fase sólida

ISO standard 5964 Guidelines for the Establishment and Development of Multilingual Thesauri recognises three approaches to the construction of multilingual thesauri:

1.Ab initio construction, i.e. the establishment of a new multilingual vocabulary without direct reference to the terms or structure of an existing thesaurus;

2.Translation of an existing monolingual thesaurus;

3.Reconciliation and merging of existing thesauri into two or more working languages.

(ISO 5964-1985, 6)

When constructing a multilingual thesaurus there are naturally more matters to decide, than in a monolingual thesaurus work. In the context of management issues ISO standard 5964-1985 notes that one has to define the status of every language used in the thesaurus (ISO 5964-1985, 6). It is further stated and also typographically strongly emphasised that no language should be dominant:

“It is sometimes necessary, on practical grounds, to designate one of the languages as exchange language., i.e. the language which is used as a medium for exchanging indexing data (for example in a multilingual network). Even in these cases, however, it should be possible for indexers and users to use their local languages for indexing and retrieval. All the languages should be regarded as having equal status from the viewpoint of thesaurus construction. The imposition of a dominant language upon other language users is NOT RECOMMENDED”. (Ibid, 6)

Aitchison et al. (1997) does not consider multilingual thesaurus construction as being much more difficult than monolingual thesaurus construction. The main challenges lie in work organisation and languages belonging to different “language forms”, which are:

“Inflectional languages, such as Latin, which use case-endings. These root-suffixes qualify the noun and verbs.

Agglutinative languages, such as Turkish, Finnish and Hungarian where the root-suffixes can, and regularly do, stand as separate words.

Isolating languages, such as Chinese, which make no use of inflection, agglutination or prepositions.

Analytical languages, such as English, which use word order, auxiliary words and some vestiges of inflection to provide the grammatical structure.” (Ibid, 135)

Hudón (2001) states, that “[i]n the global information world, the multilingual thesaurus performs three well-defined functions:

• “Allowing individuals to use the language that they feel most at ease with so they can formulate queries as simply and intuitively as possible,

• Providing interpretation support to access information within documents written in a foreign language, and

• Facilitating the integration of information provided in various languages.”

(Ibid, 68)

She also notes, that for “the multilingual thesaurus to be most useful and efficient in these tasks, its relational structure should reflect the multiple ways of “seeing” the world that its multilingual and multicultural users bring with them when querying an information system. (Ibid, 68)

When listing relevant standards (ISO 5964 – 1985, which should be used in conjunction with ISO 2788) in the context of multilingual thesaurus construction, Aitchison & al. (1997) note, that

“This can be seen to be sound advice when it is considered that the majority of descriptors are nouns (---) and, more importantly, that thesaurus compilation is concerned with the identification of the concepts behind the words. (Ibid, 135)

It is further stated that although basic rules should be discussed in the light of linguistic variations, it is more important to have “a good working knowledge of the languages being handled, including the socio-cultural nuances, particularly present in non scientific subjects” (ibid, 135).

Naturally, the composition and action of working group also partly differ from the monolingual ones. In ISO 5964-1985 standard it is stressed that “[c]lose cooperation, at the international and multilingual level, is essential for the successful construction of a multilingual thesaurus” (ibid, 32). Three kinds of organisational structure are introduced:

“a) a centralized structure, in which all decisions are taken by a central agency.

Other agencies contribute terms and suggestions, but do not have a decision-making function. This form of structure allows fast decisions, but it also involves a danger that the views of the other cooperating agencies are not taken sufficiently into account;

b) a decentralized structure, in which each of a number of cooperating agencies assumes responsibility for selecting and interrelating the terms which fall within its own language and/or subject areas;

c) a semi-centralized structure, in which the work is controlled by a central editorial committee consisting of delegates from the various cooperating agencies. This committee organizes all aspects of cooperation between the agencies, controls the allocation of work, etc., and serves as the final authority in all intellectual and editorial matters.” (Ibid, 32)

It is further stated, that a decentralised structure is generally regarded as least effective, and a semi-centralised structure as the most effective. “Whichever type of structure is chosen, its terms of reference should apply not only to the initial stages of thesaurus construction, but should also hold throughout the continuous operations of revision and updating.” (Ibid, 32)

The construction of a multilingual thesaurus always necessitates multilingual cooperation. Whichever of the above mentioned working method is chosen, no monolingual part can answer for the terminological work. According to the ISO 5964-1985 standard it is essential “that editorial decisions concerning the terms of a given language should be fully endorsed by a native speaker of that language” (ibid, 33).

Concerning the involvement of subject and language specialists is it also stated that:

“The need for help from language and/or subject specialists may arise at any time during the construction of a multilingual thesaurus. These specialists need not be engaged on a full-time basis, but the information scientists responsible for the work should be able to consult an appropriate specialist in circumstances such as the following:

defining terms and establishing their interrelationships;

selecting the preferred term when synonyms are encountered;

adopting loan terms, or coining new terms.” (Ibid, 33)

As already stated in chapter 1.1 Background multilingual thesaurus construction faces several serious problems. The conceptional systems are not necessarily successfully translatable into foreign languages representing different cultural systems, and the transfer may lead into meaningless expressions (Hudón 1997). A common way to create a multilingual thesaurus is translating an existing monolingual thesaurus (cf.

ISO 5964, and also results in chapter 9.3.1 Construction practices). Hudón (1997)

considers a monolingual thesaurus as being culturally biased, and therefore a straight translation might lead to a form of “cultural imperialism”. She reminds us that:

“It is useful to remember at all times that there is more to multilingual thesaurus development than finding equivalents for concepts and terms. There is definite cultural dimension to the process, and in fact it might soon be more appropriate to refer to multicultural thesauri, rather than multilingual thesauri. There is also a political dimension to multilingual thesaurus construction, especially in dealing with languages, which are not, contextually, on the same “standing”. Canada, for example, has a good grounding in multilingual thesaurus construction, but it remains struggle to make sure that French (the minority language) and English are given equal treatment in the many thesauri designed and used in the country.” (Ibid.)

Hudón (ibid.) also states that designers of multilingual thesauri face many substantial challenges and obstacles, of which some are of an administrative nature, some of a linguistic or semantic nature, and some are related to technology. She further (2001) reminds us, that in order to avoid the traditional problems, “it has been recommended that multilingual tools be built up from the ground up, starting with distinct banks of terms (one for each language represented) and developing distinct structures through semantic relationships, with immediate help from native speakers of each one of the thesaurus languages” (ibid, 69).

Doerr (2001) also states that even though semantic heterogeneity of terminological resources has frequently been referred to as a problem, a systematic analysis of its intellectual basis and structure has not been carried out. According to Doerr, translated thesauri are thesauri, “--- where each concept is optimally interpreted in words of another or multiple languages, to allow speakers of those languages to understand better and use concepts of this thesaurus more effectively”. He also stresses that such translations are in general not established indexing terms of the target language. (Doerr 2001)

Nonetheless, controlled vocabularies reduce linguistic problems even in a monolingual searching environment and the benefits are the same – or even greater - in a multilingual environment. According to Milstead and Feldman (1999) metadata attacks three language problems that cause poor precision: polysemy, synonymy and ambiguity. When operating with a foreign language, these problems are even more difficult to solve without any vocabulary or terminological help.

“The larger the information domain, the more important is to find an effective and efficient way to define narrower domain for searching. One of the major causes of false hits in retrieval is homographs, that is, words that look the same but have different meanings. The advantage of searching within a specific domain is that terms are often ambiguous across several disciplines, but seldom have multiple meanings within a particular discipline or subject domain.” (Chan, Lin, & Zeng 2000, 188) Thesauri usually include scope notes to define or clarify the meaning and to guide the use of ambiguous terms in that particular context, and thus help the indexer and seeker to select a proper equivalent for their purposes. Different virtual libraries, such as the Finnish Virtual Library (Virtuaalikirjasto) and the British SOSIG (Social Science

Information Gateway) also aim to restrict information retrieval to narrower and more relevant domains.

As earlier stated, a thesaurus can be seen as a cultural product, reflecting its origin.

The same also applies on a broader level as well. Hjørland and Pedersen (2005) state:

“In general, one could say that a specific interest (say that of Scandinavian public libraries) should lead to the design of systems, which are optimal given the interest or purpose and which do not just lead to the acceptance of implicit values inherent in systems that are designed, for example, for commercial purposes. A system designed for a Scandinavian public library should not, for example, tend to identify American commercial websites but should be optimised to identify pages reflecting their cultural and democratic values and purposes.” (Ibid, 586)