With the exponential growing of information due to digital society, new needs and applications are coming up. Knowledge management, specialized dictionaries, semantic information retrieval in a multi-lingual context are some examples. All of these require a computational representation of Terminology, i.e. a computational representation of the conceptual system of terminology.

 

Nevertheless, the current definition of Terminology in ISO standards (ISO 1087-1) cannot be directly implemented in a computational model. Our main objective is to specify a consensual model of the notion of concept which can be operationalized, while remaining in the « spirit » of the ISO standards on Terminology, and to study the impacts on Terminology both from a methodological and practical points of view (ISO 704).

 

In such a context, Ontology in the sense of Knowledge Engineering, constitutes one of the most interesting perspectives for operationalization of terminologies, bringing new approaches and methods to Terminology, e.g. alignment of ontologies for Terminology harmonization (ISO 860), verifying properties, reasonning, etc. It is the Ontological turn of Terminology.