Terminological databanks as the bodies of knowledge

Public Relations Review 39 (2013) 569–571

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Public Relations Review

Research in brief

Terminological databanks as the bodies of knowledge:

Slovenian public relations terminology

Natasaˇ Logar Berginc, Dejan Verciˇ cˇ ∗

University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Social Sciences, Kardeljeva ploscad 5, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:

Received 14 May 2013

Received in revised form 12 July 2013

Accepted 31 July 2013

Keywords:

Public relations

Slovenian language

Terminological database

Corpus linguistics

a b s t r a c t

The aim of the research project Terminology Databanks as the Bodies of Knowledge: The

Model for the Systematisation of Terminologies is to compile a dictionary of Slovenian

public relations, with 2000 entries. The terms will be explained and translated into English,

with typical context, examples. From July 2013, the dictionary will be publicly available on

www.termania.net.

© 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

Public relations are a cultural practice and profession. The term and basic terminology is clearly American and almost

untranslatable into many languages such as Arabic and the majority of Germanic and Slavic languages (van Ruler & Verciˇ c, ˇ

2002, 2005). On the one hand, this raises the issues of globalisation and coherent practice development throughout the

world (Sriramesh & Verciˇ c, ˇ 2009; van Ruler & Verciˇ c, ˇ 2004; Verciˇ c, ˇ 2009; Verciˇ c, ˇ Grunig, & Grunig, 1996), and the issues

of language-cultural development of each individual language through a language policy on the other hand (Kalin Golob

& Logar Berginc, 2008). The starting point of the research was the following: it is difficult to talk about Slovenian public

relations if it is not possible to denote the basic terms in this field in Slovenian language; and in parallel, it is difficult

to talk about the vividness of the language if it is not capable of forming its own terminologies, which ultimately, could

lead to the extinction of the language – not an unlikely scenario in the era of globalisation and digitalisation (Crystal,

2000: 21; European Commision, 2005: 11; Kornai, 2012). In order to simultaneously address both issues, the researchers

involved in the project Terminology databanks as the bodies of knowledge: the model for the systematisation of terminologies

(TERMIS, http://www.termis.fdv.uni-lj.si/index-en.html) aim to achieve two goals: (a) development of a publicly available

web-based terminology databank in the field of Slovenian public relations, consisting of 2000 entries with explanations,

translation equivalents of headwords in English, as well as typical context patterns and (b) development of free technological

infrastructure to enable terminographically inexperienced experts a quick guide of terminographical work in their field of

expertise. In this way, the solution demonstrated by the example of public relations terminology would also serve as a model

for addressing problems related to denotation and terminology for other fields of expertise in Slovenia.

∗ Corresponding author.

E-mail addresses: [email protected] (N. Logar Berginc), [email protected] (D. Verciˇ c). ˇ

0363-8111/$ – see front matter © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2013.07.022