New developments in information technology for interlingual communication Available to Purchase

Information technology is a new interdisciplinary field combining information science, computing, telecommunications and electronics. As it establishes links across national and linguistic boundaries it also acquires a multilingual dimension requiring translators as links in the interlingual communication process. The translator thus can no longer be considered in isolation; he is simply another mediator, generally between natural languages, similar in function to information scientists who mediate between natural and artificial languages, be they documentation languages or command languages to access databases, and similar also to those computational linguists who mediate between natural languages and computer languages. Interlingual communication is expanding and its means and methods are changing. This is not only reflected in two major Aslib Conferences on this topic in two years, but in Action Plans of the Commission of the EC, the activities of INFOTERM in Vienna, ISO, FID, and UNESCO involvement in this work, the growth of terminological data banks, as well as new organizations and studies in every developed country, some of which were mentioned during this conference.