POOLING AND THREADING IN TRANSLATION TERM BANKS

Bilingual end multillngual terminology data banks (term banks) have proven an effective aid to translation. The translation problem which has been most resistant tO term bank ass i s tance ~ however, i s that of ident i fy ing prec i se ly those t rans la t ions which are appropr ia te fo r a g iven term in a SL text. This i s compounded by the re la ted problems of SL homonymy and polysemy and TL synonymy. The greates t cha l lenge at the text leve l i s dynamica l ly spec i fy-ing the lex icon used in the sub l~age of a document. The so lu t ion to th i s problem depends somewhat on whether te rmino-logy i s he ld in one la rge bank, whic h promotes shar ing and comprehens iveness, or in many smal le r banks, wh iohencoura-ges independence and spec ia l i za t ion. The pr inc ip le approach to the t rans la t ion ident i f i ca t-i on problem hereto fore has cons is ted in f i l te r ing out i r