Terminology: A Practical Approach is intended primarily for students of terminology and translation.

This book takes a practical approach to terminology: it treats special language as living language used by people in real-life situations to communicate with one another. It describes natural language in all its diversity and disorder, and the challenges inherent in studying it.

This work is also practical in the approach it takes to terminological research. After defining terminology as we know it today, establishing it as an independent discipline, and laying down the fundamental principles that govern the practice, the book guides the reader through the stages of term and suject-field research, outlining methods of terminological analysis and parameters for recording terminological data. It points up the importance of using original-language documentation, delves into the role of standardization in English terminology, and discusses the use of new computerized applications in the field.

The practical sections are punctuated by more theoretical sections, which examine the nature of the relationship between term and concept, describe time-honored methods of definition, provide a typology of synonyms, and define the processes of term formation in modern English.

This English version of Robert Dubuc’s Manuel pratique de terminologie is very much an adaptation. There are two main reasons for this. First, the use of original-language documentation is a fundamental principle in terminology, so a textbook on the subject could hardly be a translation. Second, many aspects of terminological work are different in English. Most of the chapters have been researched in English-language sources–when possible–published primarily in the United States and Great Britain, and included in the bibliographies. All of the chapters cover, by and large, the same material as the original French, but the ideas have been organized and discussed as they are presented and treated in English sources.

This new English manual, aimed primarily at terminology and translation students, seeks to maintain the simple style and broad accessibility of the original. The adaptation respects Mr. Dubuc’s practical approach to terminology, practical in terms of both theoretical vision and research methodology. Given the few terminology manuals in the English language, this is a welcome contribution to the field of terminology.
NELIDA CHAN

The English version is in fact an excellent adaptation rather than a translation, in which Elaine Kennedy has not simply found English-language exemples to substitute for the French, but also recast the whole layout of the book to facilitate access to English-speaking students.
JOHN HUMBLEY, Meta