TERMINOLOGY STANDARDIZATION OF MONGOLIAN TECHNICAL VOCABULARY

TERMINOLOGY STANDARDIZATION OF MONGOLIAN TECHNICAL VOCABULARY – Ivan Gyozo Somlai

I have written several formal recommendations to both the former ATVET and its successor, the new TVET, as well as Oyu Tolgoi concerning issues related to technical terminology. The logic for these recommendations came from my consulting work with Oyu Tolgoi, visits to 10 public and 4 private technical institutions as well as reviews of numerous existing dictionaries and word lists (glossaries). In the following, I have compiled the discrete comments in an amalgamated recommendation.

OBJECTIVE

Use of professionally developed bilingual (Mongolian/English) competency-based curricula with clear outcomes related to the work required by most international companies and using a standardized technical terminology

RATIONALE

Through the combination of my own translation team’s efforts, discussions with OT internal translators, OT provider translators, higher education institutions, Mongolian technical specialist contacts elsewhere, and perusal of definitions from at least 6 technical dictionaries, I can confidently say that there is a dearth of uniformity in technical terms leading to confusion and potential safety concerns. This is caused by the changes in both education and technology, resulting in older technicians being more familiar with Russian terms, while younger ones are current with some English terminology, thus availing translation for one technical term in two to three different ways.

For some English terms there is no Mongolian word, although there may be no need to translate all technical words into Mongolian. Some translators try to “Mongolianize” terms, while others favour anglicizing them. Ongoing monitoring of assessment processes which I have been involved with has thus elicited several terminological errors and the replacement of more common usage terms. Although the Mongolian Agency for Standardization and Metrology (MASM) has a standardization mandate, it has focused on sectors other than TVET up to now. The foregoing predicates a need for a committee to standardize technical terminology in Mongolia.

Dictionaries

A common issue with some existing technical dictionaries is that the words are ordered thematically, not alphabetically, making it difficult for non-specialists to find specific terms. Comprehensive indexes are also lacking and there is a dearth of uniformity in technical terms.

Translation:

At least six dictionaries are available on-line, with another half dozen hard copies purchasable at various bookstores and academic publishers in Mongolia. OT itself has a compilation of human resource and technical terms, while private providers have developed their own glossaries.

Cooperative effort:

Currently there is no coordination of government, companies and institutions working separately on similar projects: e.g. one major multinational in Ulaan Baatar has 6 translators working on technical manuals from English to Mongolian for their use; their translations, once vetted for relevance, could be standardized for the trades they covered, with due credit given; while similar products by other entities could be also standardized, thus avoiding duplicative efforts and abetting the sharing of cooperative efforts. However, at present each company develops and retains its own translations.

Safety:

Having had incidental discussions with numerous subject-knowledgeable staff, it became evident that some safety manuals were found to be deficient in the translation leading to potential safety issues; the reason for this was that the content in the Mongolian language does not look or sound really Mongolian, but rather is a literal[1] translation. While effort had been extended to make the translations identical to the English, when Mongolians read them, the sentences become unclear or unfinished or incoherent. In some, what is described in the middle is transformed again by the end.

PROPOSAL

There need be a thorough review of all manuals with the help of Mongolian linguists, expatriate translation along with firm-specific and other technical experts. Properly written, the public and staff will perceive the information positively and Mongolian documents would become truly standard setting.

I therefore advocate for a national technical terminology standardization commission to set the standard technical terminology so that all institutes throughout Mongolia, especially as they update and expand their curricula, use the same vocabulary. Such a commission could be responsible for:

·       Standardization of terminology

·       Preparation of specialized glossaries for each trade

·       Revision of glossaries produced by foreign operators and clients

·       Storage, management and dissemination of terminology

Respectfully submitted,

Ivan G. Somlai
Director - Global Collaboration (http://globalcollaboration.blogspot.ca/)
Ivan.Somlai@INSEAD.edu (alternatively, ivansomlai@gmail.com)
Associate - Centre for Asia Pacific Initiatives, University of Victoria (www.capi.uvic.ca/)
Managing Editor (since 2006) - International Journal of Social Forestry (www.IJSF.org)
Skype & LinkedIn---Ivan G. Somlai

---

[1] Literal language refers to words that do not deviate from their defined meaning, most common in machine-aided translations. Figurative language refers to words, and groups of words, that exaggerate or alter the usual meanings of the component words. Idiomatic translation conveys the meaning of the original, or source text, by using equivalent language and the forms and structures of the target language, in order to produce a translation that reads like an original.