ISO/TC 37 - Language and terminology

This document establishes criteria for the management of data categories for use in the creation and maintenance of language resources within a given community of practice (CoP). It defines the roles and responsibilities associated with the creation and maintenance of such repositories. It also specifies procedures to establish a governance structure for the management of a data category repository (DCR), including the addition of new data category specifications and continuous quality assurance.

This document provides requirements and recommendations governing data category specifications for language resources. It specifies mechanisms for creating, documenting, harmonizing and maintaining data category specifications in a data category repository (DCR). It also describes the structure and content of data category specifications.

This document establishes the basic principles and methods for preparing and compiling terminologies both inside and outside the framework of standardization. It describes the links between objects, concepts, definitions and designations. It also establishes general principles for the formation of terms and proper names and the writing of definitions. This document is applicable to terminology work in scientific, technological, industrial, legal, administrative and other fields of knowledge. This document does not stipulate rules for the presentation of terminological entries in International Standards, which are treated in ISO 10241-1 and ISO 10241-2.

This document specifies the sequence of characters to be used in the alphabetical ordering of multilingual terminological and lexicographical data (terms, term elements, or words) represented in the Latin alphabet. Character sets of languages represented in the Latin alphabet are taken into account insofar as terminological or lexicographical data have been recorded. Character sets used in internationally standardized transliteration into Latin script are also taken into account. The sequence of alphabetical characters given is intended for multilingual purposes only and is not intended to affect the alphabetical order of any specific language. The main part of this document specifies letter-by-letter ordering of character strings. Annex A treats word-by-word ordering, which is a widely used alternative to this system. Annex B gives two additional rules that can be useful for lexicographical and terminological ordering. Annex C gives ordering rules for chemical names. Annex D lists the character repertoire of the Latin alphabet. Annex E lists languages using the Latin alphabet. Annex F gives alphabetical sequences derived from the sequence specified in this document for a number of languages that use the Latin alphabet. Annex G gives a formal description of the rules laid down in the main part of this document conforming with ISO/IEC 14651.

This document describes the serialization of the lexical markup framework (LMF) model defined as an extensible markup language (XML) model derived from the language base exchange (LBX) schema and compliant with the W3C XML schema. This serialization covers the classes, data categories, and mechanisms of ISO 24613-1 (core model), ISO 24613-2 (machine-readable dictionary (MRD) model), and ISO 24613-3 (etymological extension).

This document specifies requirements and recommendations for the provision of conference interpreting services. It is primarily addressed to conference interpreters and conference interpreting service providers. It also serves as reference for users of conference interpreting services.

This document specifies the structure of an ontology for a fine-grained description of the expressive power of corpus query languages (CQLs) in terms of search needs. The ontology consists of three interrelated taxonomies of concepts: the CQLF metamodel (a formalization of ISO 24623-1); the expressive power taxonomy, which describes different facets of the expressive power of CQLs; and a taxonomy of CQLs. This document specifies: a) the taxonomy of the CQLF metamodel; b) the topmost layer of the expressive power taxonomy (whose concepts are called “functionalities”); c) the structure of the layers of the expressive power taxonomy and the relationships between them, in the form of subsumption assertions; d) the formalization of the linkage between the CQL taxonomy and the expressive power taxonomy, in the form of positive and negative conformance statements. This document does not define the entire contents of the ontology (see Clause 4).

This document provides requirements and recommendations for representing subject fields and concept relations in TBX-compliant terminological document instances. Examples in this document utilize the DCA style of TBX markup.

This document specifies requirements and recommendations related to fundamentals of translation-oriented terminography for producing sound bilingual or multilingual terminology collections. It deals with the main tasks, skills, processes and technologies for translation-oriented terminography practiced by terminology workers who do terminology work in low-complexity settings as part of non-terminological activities. It does not cover terminology management involving sophisticated workflows, a multitude of roles, or advanced terminological skills and competences.

This document covers the measurable or magnitudinal aspect of quantity so that it can focus on the technical or practical use of measurements in IR (information retrieval), QA (question answering), TS (text summarization), and other NLP (natural language processing) applications. It is applicable to the domains of technology that carry more applicational relevance than some theoretical issues found in the ordinary use of language. NOTE ISO 24617-12 deals with more general and theoretical issues of quantification and quantitative information. This document also treats temporal durations that are discussed in ISO 24617-1, and spatial measures such as distances that are treated ISO 24617-7, while making them interoperable with other measure types. It also accommodates the treatment of measures or amounts that are introduced in ISO 24617‑6:2016, 8.3.

This document describes an extension to ISO 24613-1 and ISO 24613-2 to support the development of detailed descriptions of common etymological phenomena and/or diachronic information with respect to lexical entries in born-digital and/or retro-digitized lexicons. It provides both a meta-model for such an extension as well as the relevant data categories.

This document provides basic principles and a methodology for establishing a specification for designing and constructing a formally defined, or controlled, system of oral communication that avoids or filters out phonetic interferences and confusions between words of the same language and between languages. The system is both abstracted from, and contextually situated in, the domains of industry, business or other technologies. This document deals only with oral communication between native speakers, or non-native speakers, or a native speaker and a non‑native speaker, who can be disturbed due to different phenomena, such as phoneme confusion, phonetic interferences and confusions between words (for example: homophony, quasi-homophony or co-articulation) of the same language and/or different languages and the resulting ambiguities due, for example, to multilingual communication or stressful situations. This document deals with speakers and listeners without speech or hearing impediments[16], and does not include sign languages which have a phonological system equivalent to the system of sounds in spoken languages[23]. Foreseen applications are essentially in safety critical applications using human oral communication. This document is also applicable to other domains involving, for example, training and evaluation procedures and robots.

This document specifies how to represent (not visualize) documents (instance data, not data schemas) as graphs. It does not specify how to visualize or operate on document data, but it aims at making documents easier for people to compose and comprehend by allowing for various graph-based flexible user interfaces, possibly incorporating document-visualization practices (see Introduction). In this connection, this document does not specify annotations to existing documents either, but rather it specifies a schema of documents with explicit logical structures.

This document describes the serialization of the lexical markup framework (LMF) model defined as an XML model compliant with the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) Guidelines. This serialization covers the classes of ISO 24613-1 (the LMF core model) as well as classes provided by ISO 24613-2 (the machine readable dictionary, MRD, model) and ISO 24613-3 (the etymological extension).

This document specifies requirements and recommendations for healthcare interpreting services in spoken and signed communication. It is applicable to all situations requiring healthcare interpreting, where the parties involved need to communicate using spoken or signed language, to treat a health-related issue. It is intended for interpreting service providers and healthcare interpreters.

This document provides a set of empirically and theoretically well-motivated concepts for dialogue annotation, a formal language for expressing dialogue annotations (the Dialogue Act Markup Language, DiAML), and a method for segmenting a dialogue into semantic units. This allows the manual or automatic annotation of dialogue segments with information about the communicative actions which the participants perform by their contributions to the dialogue. The annotation scheme specified in this document supports multidimensional annotation of spoken, written, and multimodal dialogues involving two or more participants. Dialogue units are viewed as having multiple communicative functions in different dimensions. The markup language DiAML has an XML-based representation format and a formal semantics which makes it possible to perform inferences with DiAML representations. This document also specifies data categories for dimensions of dialogue analysis, for communicative functions, for dialogue act qualifiers, and for relations between dialogue acts. Additionally, it provides mechanisms for customizing these sets of concepts, extending them with application-specific or domain-specific concepts and descriptions of semantic content, or selecting relevant coherent subsets of them. These mechanisms make the dialogue act concepts specified in this document useful not only for annotation but also for the recognition and generation of dialogue acts in interactive systems.

This document describes the machine-readable dictionary (MRD) model, a metamodel for representing data stored in a variety of electronic dictionary subtypes, ranging from direct support for human translators to support for machine processing.

This document provides a framework for encoding a broad range of spatial information and spatiotemporal information relating to motion as expressed in natural language texts. This document includes references to locations, general spatial entities, spatial relations (involving topological, orientational, and metric values), dimensional information, motion events, paths, and event-paths triggered by motions.

This document provides policy makers in governments, administration, non-profit and profit organizations with guidelines and a methodology for the development and implementation of a comprehensive policy concerning the planning and management of terminology. This document defines key concepts and describes scenarios and environments that can require different kinds of terminology policies. It also places terminology policies in the broader context of institutional strategic frameworks.

This document specifies requirements for the competences and qualifications of legal translators, revisers and reviewers, best translation practices and the translation process directly affecting the quality and delivery of legal translation services. In particular, it specifies the core processes, resources, confidentiality, professional development requirements, training and other aspects of the legal translation service provided by individual translators. Fulfilment of all the requirements set out in this document enables the individual legal translator to demonstrate conformity of their legal translation services to this document and their capability to maintain a level of quality in legal translation services that will meet the client's and other applicable specifications. The use of output from machine translation, even with post-editing, is outside the scope of this document. Consulting of a machine translation resource by a legal translator, does not constitute use of raw machine translation plus post-editing. This document does not apply to interpreting services.

This document specifies requirements and recommendations for using simultaneous interpreting delivery platforms in settings where the interpreters are, or are not, in the same room as participants and speakers at a communicative event. In conjunction with ISO 20108, this document provides the relevant requirements and recommendations for the quality and transmission of sound and image to interpreters and from interpreters to participants, and for the configuration of the interpreter's working environment.

This document provides a comprehensive model for the annotation and representation of referential phenomena in natural language texts and multimodal interactions. Such phenomena can cover simple anaphoric or coreferential mechanisms as well as more complex bridging or multimodal mechanisms. It provides a reference serialisation in XML defined as a customisation of the TEI P5 guidelines. In addition, the document describes the core data categories related to referential entities and link structures, and also needed for the description of annotation schemes and serialisation mechanisms for implementing conformant models as concrete data formats.

This document provides the vocabulary for translation, interpreting and related technology standards.

This document specifies general, i.e. implementation- and use-case-independent terminology database design principles to enable maximum efficiency and quality in terminology work. Thus, this document supports creating, processing, and using high quality terminology. The intended audiences of this document are terminologists, translators, interpreters, technical communicators, language planners, subject field experts, and terminology management system developers. This document describes a maximum approach, i.e. terminology database design for distributed, multilingual terminology management. It can also be used for designing smaller solutions.

This document specifies essential features of terminology management systems, regardless of specific software engineering paradigms, user interface and user assistance design principles, and specific data models. These features enable maximum efficiency and quality in terminology work and, thus, support creating, processing, and using high quality terminology. The intended audiences of this document are software engineers/developers as well as terminologists, technical communicators, translators, interpreters, language planners, and subject field experts. This document describes all features needed for recording, editing, maintaining, exchanging, and presenting terminological data. Term extraction features used to identify new terms are out of the scope of this document.

This document establishes basic terms and definitions for terminology work and terminology science. It does not include terms and definitions that are specific to computer applications in terminology work.

The component metadata lifecycle needs a comprehensive infrastructure with systems that cooperate well together. To enable this level of cooperation this document provides in depth descriptions and definitions of what CMDI records, components and their representations in XML look like. This document describes these XML representations, which enable the flexible construction of interoperable metadata schemas suitable for, but not limited to, describing language resources. The metadata schemas based on these representations can be used to describe resources at different levels of granularity (e.g. descriptions on the collection level or on the level of individual resources).

This document describes the core model of the lexical markup framework (LMF)l, a metamodel for representing data in monolingual and multilingual lexical databases used with computer applications. LMF provides mechanisms that allow the development and integration of a variety of electronic lexical resource types.

This document establishes the basic principles and practices of legal interpreting services, and specifies the competences of legal interpreters. It also describes the various legal settings and provides recommendations for the corresponding interpreting modes. It is applicable to all parties involved in facilitating communication between users of legal services using a spoken or signed language.

This document specifies requirements for typical conference systems, the parts they are composed of, the auxiliary devices necessary for their use (such as microphones, headphones, and sound reinforcement equipment) and the environment in which they are used. These requirements ensure interoperability and optimum performance under conditions of normal operation. It is applicable to both wired and wireless systems. The environment and areas where events are held are described in Annex A. This document facilitates the determination of the quality of conference systems, the comparison of different systems and the assessment of their proper use by listing their characteristics. This document contains the technical backbone of ISO 20108 and ISO 20109.

This document explains fundamental concepts and describes the metamodel, data categories, and XML styles: DCA (Data Category as Attribute) and DCT (Data Category as Tag). It also specifies the methodology for defining TBX dialects. The audience for this document is anyone wishing to create a new dialect compliant with TBX. This document can also be used to analyze and to understand a terminological data collection or to design a new terminology database that complies with international standards and best practices. Typical users are programmers, software developers, terminologists, analysts, and other language professionals. Intended application areas include translation and authoring. The TBX-Core dialect is described in detail in this document. All other industry-supported dialects are out of the scope of this document. NOTE TBX dialects are defined by industry stakeholders. Any materials needed to implement currently shared dialects are publicly available as self-contained industry specifications (see for instance the TBX Info website[15]).

ISO 24623-1:2018 describes the abstract metamodel designed to accommodate any corpus query language (QL) and providing a basis for coarse-grained classification. The metamodel consists of several components referred to as CQLF classes, levels, and modules, and is illustrated with examples from the Single-stream class (where a single data stream is used to organize the relevant data structures). Within this class, this document discusses three CQLF levels (Linear, Complex and Concurrent), as well as their subdivisions into modules, dictated by functional and modelling criteria. ISO 24623-1:2018 does not provide a way to specify further details beyond the above-mentioned divisions, and neither does it contain within its scope QLs designed to query more than one concurrent data stream, as in multimodal corpora or in parallel corpora (such QLs can still be classified according to the criteria suggested here for less expressive QLs).

ISO/TR 20694:2018 gives the general principles for language registers in both descriptive and prescriptive environments. It defines key concepts and describes examples of different language registers that can be applied across all or many languages and those that are language-specific. It lays down guidelines for the use of appropriate language registers needed in a wide range of environments. These include: - terminology work, where it contributes to the development of a wide range of standards; - translation, so that appropriate language levels can be chosen in target languages, to match that of the source language; - lexicography, to improve descriptors of non-geographic language variants; - second language teaching and learning, so that students can avoid pitfalls associated with inappropriate language use; - software, to improve tagging of language variants in computer applications.

ISO 24615-2:2018 describes an XML-conformant serialization of the ISO 24615‑1 meta-model, with the objective of supporting interoperability across language resources or language processing components in the domain of syntactic annotations. As an extension of ISO 24615‑1, this document is also coordinated with ISO 24612.

ISO 18841:2018 specifies basic requirements for the provision of interpreting services. Additionally, it provides recommendations of good practice. NOTE Interpreting specializations/specialized interpreting services can be covered in other International Standards (e.g. ISO 20228, Legal interpreting).

ISO 21720:2017 defines version 2.0 of the XML Localisation Interchange File Format (XLIFF). The purpose of this vocabulary is to store localizable data and carry it from one step of the localization process to the other, while allowing interoperability between and among tools.

ISO 16642:2017 specifies a framework for representing data recorded in terminological data collections (TDCs). This framework includes a metamodel and methods for describing specific terminological markup languages (TMLs) expressed in XML. The mechanisms for implementing constraints in a TML are defined, but not the specific constraints for individual TMLs. ISO 16642:2017 is designed to support the development and use of computer applications for terminological data and the exchange of such data between different applications. This document also defines the conditions that allow the data expressed in one TML to be mapped onto another TML.

ISO 20108:2017 sets out requirements for the quality and transmission of sound and image input to interpreters and specifies the characteristics of the audio and video signals. The components of typical interpreting systems are specified in ISO 20109. Together with either permanent (see ISO 2603) or mobile (see ISO 4043) booths, these interpreting systems form the interpreters' working environment. In addition to setting out the requirements for on-site interpreting, where participants (speakers and members of the audience) and interpreters are at the same location, ISO 20108:2017 specifies requirements for different varieties of distance interpreting situations in which the interpreters are not at the same location as one or more of the conference participants. ISO 20108:2017 also addresses the work of manufacturers and providers of simultaneous interpreting equipment and technical staff. In conjunction with either ISO 2603 or ISO 4043, ISO 20108:2017 and ISO 20109 provide the relevant requirements both for the quality and transmission of sound and image provided to interpreters and for the equipment needed in the booths, the conference room and the distant site(s).

ISO 18587:2017 provides requirements for the process of full, human post-editing of machine translation output and post-editors' competences. ISO 18587:2017 is intended to be used by TSPs, their clients, and post-editors. It is only applicable to content processed by MT systems. NOTE For translation services in general, see ISO 17100.

ISO 24617-8:2016 establishes the representation and annotation of local, "low-level" discourse relations between situations mentioned in discourse, where each relation is annotated independently of other relations in the same discourse. ISO 24617-8:2016 provides a basis for annotating discourse relations by specifying a set of core discourse relations, many of which have similar definitions in different frameworks. To the extent possible, this document provides mappings of the semantics across the different frameworks. ISO 24617-8:2016 is applicable to two different situations: - for annotating discourse relations in natural language corpora; - as a target representation of automatic methods for shallow discourse parsing, for summarization, and for other applications. The objectives of this specification are to provide: - a reference set of data categories that define a collection of discourse relation types with an explicit semantics; - a pivot representation based on a framework for defining discourse relations that can facilitate mapping between different frameworks; - a basis for developing guidelines for creating new resources that will be immediately interoperable with pre-existing resources. With respect to discourse structure, the limitation of this document to specifications for annotating local, "low-level" discourse relations is based on the view that (a) the analysis at this level is what is well understood and can be clearly defined; (b) further extensions to represent higher-level, global discourse structure is possible where desired; and (c) that it allows for the resulting annotations to be compatible across frameworks, even when they are based on different theories of discourse structure. As a part of the ISO 24617 semantic annotation framework ("SemAF"), the present DR-core standard aims to be transparent in its relation to existing frameworks for discourse relation annotation, but also to be compatible with other ISO 24617 parts. Some discourse relations are specific to interactive discourse, and give rise to an overlap with ISO 24617 Part 2, the ISO standard for dialogue act annotation. Other discourse relations relate to time, and their annotation forms part of ISO 24617‑1 (time and events); still other discourse relations are very similar to certain predicate-argument relations ("semantic roles"), whose annotation is the subject matter of ISO 24617‑4. Since the various parts are required to form a consistent whole, this document pays special attention to the interactions of discourse relation annotation and other semantic annotation schemes (see Clause 8). ISO 24617-8:2016 does not consider global, higher-level discourse structure representation which involves linking local discourse relations to form one or more composite global structures. ISO 24617-8:2016 is, moreover, restricted to strictly semantic relations, to the exclusion of, for example, presentational relations, which concern the way in which a text is presented to its readers or the way in which speakers structure their contributions in a spoken dialogue.

ISO 2603:2016 provides requirements and recommendations for building and renovating permanent booths for simultaneous interpreting in new and existing buildings. This document also ensures the usability and accessibility of booths for all interpreters, including those with special needs. It is applicable to all types of permanent booths, using built-in or portable equipment. In conjunction with either this document or ISO 4043, ISO 20108 and ISO 20109 provide the relevant requirements both for the quality and transmission of sound and image provided to interpreters and for the equipment needed in the booths.

ISO 4043:2016 provides requirements and recommendations for the manufacturing of mobile simultaneous interpreting booths. The main features of mobile booths that distinguish them from permanent simultaneous interpreting booths are that they can be dismantled, moved and set up in a conference room not equipped with permanent booths. This document also ensures the usability and accessibility of booths for all interpreters, including those with special needs. Requirements for the use and siting of mobile booths are described in Annex A. In conjunction with either ISO 2603 or this document, ISO 20108 and ISO 20109 provide the relevant requirements both for the quality and transmission of sound and image provided to interpreters and for the equipment needed in the booths.

ISO 20109:2016 specifies requirements for equipment used for simultaneous interpreting. Accessibility requirements are defined in Annex A. Requirements for booths furniture are defined in Annex B. Requirements on the system operation are defined in Annex C. In conjunction with either ISO 2603 or ISO 4043, ISO 20108 and this document provide the relevant requirements both for the quality and transmission of sound and image provided to interpreters and for the equipment needed in the booths.

ISO 24624:2016 specifies rules for representing transcriptions of audio- and video-recorded spoken interactions in XML documents based on the guidelines of the TEI. As a secondary objective, the document aims to relate transcribed data with standards for annotated corpora. It is applicable to transcription data for studies in sociolinguistics, conversation analysis, dialectology, corpus linguistics, corpus lexicography, language technology, qualitative social studies and other transcription data of recorded spoken language. It is not applicable to other forms of transcription, most importantly transcriptions of hand-written manuscripts. Annex A gives a fully encoded example and Annex B provides an element index and an attribute index.

ISO 24617-6:2016 specifies the approach to semantic annotation characterizing the ISO Semantic annotation framework (SemAF). It outlines the SemAF strategy for developing separate annotation schemes for certain classes of semantic phenomena, aiming in the long term to combine these into a single, coherent scheme for semantic annotation with wide coverage. In particular, it sets out the notions of both an abstract and a concrete syntax for semantic annotations, mirroring the distinction between annotations and representations that is made in the ISO Linguistic Annotation Framework. It describes the role of these notions in relation to the specification of a metamodel and a semantic interpretation of annotations, with a view to defining a well-founded annotation scheme. ISO 24617-6:2016 also provides guidelines for dealing with two issues regarding the annotation schemes defined in SemAF-parts: a) conceptual and terminological inconsistencies that may arise due to overlaps between annotation schemes and b) the treatment of semantic phenomena that cut across SemAF-parts, such as negation, modality and quantification. Instances of both issues are identified, and in some cases, direction is given as to how they may be tackled.

ISO 17100:2015 provides requirements for the core processes, resources, and other aspects necessary for the delivery of a quality translation service that meets applicable specifications. Application of ISO 17100:2015 also provides the means by which a translation service provider (TSP) can demonstrate conformity of specified translation services to ISO 17100:2015 and the capability of its processes and resources to deliver a translation service that will meet the client's and other applicable specifications. Applicable specifications can include those of the client, of the TSP itself, and of any relevant industry codes, best-practice guides, or legislation. The use of raw output from machine translation plus post-editing is outside the scope of ISO 17100:2015. ISO 17100:2015 does not apply to interpreting services.

As part of a drive to provide international standards for language resource management, ISO/TS 24620-1:2015 on controlled natural language (CNL) sets out the principles of CNL and its utilization together with the relevant supporting technology. However, ISO/TS 24620-1:2015 also aims to introduce a general view of CNL with its objectives and characteristics and provide a scheme for classifying a range of CNLs. ISO/TS 24620-1:2015 additionally specifies certain normalizing principles of CNLs that control the use of natural languages in particular domains and are also oriented towards areas of practical application. These areas include public administrative communications, search optimization, and the management of automatic question-answering systems, but the current version of ISO/TStract 24620-1:2015 does not address any issue involving these applications directly.