Standardised Modelling and Interchange of Lexical Data in Specialised Language

In order for their content to be exploited to its fullest, true electronic dictionaries must be built on a very strictly defined structure with highly specific data categories. Specialised language dictionaries, especially multilingual ones, strongly benefit from a structure where data are identified with a high degree of precision, in a monosemic ‘hub and spoke’ model. A representation that meets the ISO 16642 Terminological Markup Framework (TMF) and ISO 30042 TermBase eXchange (TBX) standards is ideally suited to implement such a model. However, using an XML markup language that meets these standards defined by the International Standards Organization does not guarantee the data’s quality or interoperability. In addition, the description and maintenance of standardised categories of terminological data (ISO 12620) still pose a number of difficult challenges.This contribution is a revised and translated version (August 2018) of an article published in French under the title ‘Modélisation et échange normalisé des données lexicales en langue spécialisée’ in journal Revue française de linguistique appliquée (XXII-1, June 2017), devoted to the topic ‘Diversité des ressources lexicales : de leur élaboration à leur utilisation’ [‘Diversity of lexical resources: from production to utilization’].