With the rapid development of science and technology, new concepts in different domains are constantly emerging and correspondingly neoterms are needed to be created to designate concepts. Phonetic translation, semantic translation and their combination are common methods used in translingual borrowing. However, they have some limitations.

 

Our works rely on the concept theory of the ISO standards on terminology where concepts are defined as « unique combinations of characteristics » [ISO 1087-1] and structured into a system. « Concepts do not exist as isolated units of knowledge but always in relation to each other ». We propose recommendations for building Chinese neoterms based on the formal definition of the conceptual system of the terminology and on attribute-head construction of Chinese noun terms.