The Diploma of Postgraduate Studies: Terminology and Professional Needs, the only one of its kind, explores the contribution and relevance of terminology in many areas of knowledge. The course looks at the fundamental role that terminology plays in documentation, lexicography, linguistic normalization, language teaching and linguistic engineering. Knowledge, skills and resources for each of these areas is explored.

The course materials have been developed by the IULATERM group at the Institut Universitari de Lingüística Aplicada (The University Institute of Applied Linguistics) of Pompeu Fabra University. All teaching staff have extensive academic and professional experience in this area.

The program is taught in English. However, the knowledge and skills can be used for any other language in the world.

This course is one of a range of UPF Terminology programs, offering comprehensive professional training in the field and equipping students with the tools needed to carry out terminology work in various professional scenarios. Various programs together can be used to reach the qualification of Master online in Terminology.

Objectives

The objectives of the programme are to give participants a broad view of terminology, including the following:

• To go deeper into the interdisciplinary basics of terminology.
• To examine in detail the relationship between terminology and documentation, translation, lexicography, linguistic standardisation, language teaching and linguistic engineering.

Programme

Terminology is becoming more and more necessary in many professions in various areas. Situations like translation, documentation, language management, digital documentation management, linguistic engineering, knowledge dissemination, writing specialized texts, teaching specific subjects all require terminology, terminology management and the resolution of terminological problems.

Students acquire an overall view of the synergies between terminology and other professional areas. They carry out exercises that respond to real professional needs in areas like translation, lexicography, teaching, documentation, linguistic planning and automatic information management.

Potential candidates

Translators and interpreters, documentalists, technical writers, journalists involved in scientific dissemination, lexicographers and dictionary editors, editors of scientific magazines, philologists and linguists interested in lexicon, text book editors, teachers of languages for specific purposes, teachers and specialists in various subjects interested in building subject-specific glossaries.

Methodology

Digital classroom with access restricted to course students and lecturers, with exclusive teaching material in the form of websites, discussion forums, chat, tests, exercises and administrative and academic services.

Individual attention with direct, ongoing contact with teaching staff for the taught units, the course directors, the dynamiser and the webmaster for resolving any academic queries or other issues.

Innovative teaching methodology based on discussion forums and the teaching material available on the homepage of the course's digital classroom.

Work method for the programme

To begin with, registered students receive technical instructions. When a module or each of the module units begin, they receive a welcome message for starting the corresponding activities and completing them within the stated period.

The course is organised into taught units, each of which is taught by one lecturer, who handles queries and manages the debate forums every day the unit is being taught.

Students read the materials for each unit, ask the lecturer any questions, participate actively in the tutored forums and prepare given exercises. The teaching staff will tell students to improve any exercises that do not pass the first submission, personally tutoring each student.

The Diploma of Postgraduate Studies dissertation is a project supervised by the programme's directors and teaching staff.

Evaluation

Assessment is done by combining the following marks according to this elements:

• Results of the exercises and/or tests from all the course or workshop units.
• Evaluation of active participation in the discussion forums for all course units.
• Evaluation of the student's ability to redo exercises he/she did not pass the first time.

Academic contents

The Diploma of Postgraduate Studies: Terminology and Professional Needs is organised into six units and a final supervised dissertation:

Unit 1: Terminology and translation
Unit 2: Terminology, terminography and lexicography
Unit 3: Terminology and documentation
Unit 4: Terminology, international standardisation and language planning
Unit 5: Terminology and language teaching
Unit 6: Terminology, linguistic engineering and computational linguistics
Supervised Postgraduate programme dissertation*

*The dissertation consists of describing and evaluating the terminology requirements and resources needed by a given professional group in their work context.
 

1. Terminology and translation
1.1. Introduction
1.2. Communication and specialized translations
1.3. The role of terminology
1.4. Problems of terminology in translation
1.5. Terminological training for translators
1.6. The translator as a systematic terminologist: levels of implication
2. Terminology, terminography and lexicography
2.1. Introduction
2.2. Lexicography and terminology: independent disciplines
2.3. Terminology, a interdisciplinary, multi-input area of knowledge
2.4. Term, word and lexical unit
2.5. Applications: lexicography and terminography
3. Terminology and documentation
3.1. Introduction
3.2. Interrelation between terminology and documentation
3.3. What is a terminological approach to documentation?
3.4. Cooperation in terminology and documentation: common fields of research
4. Terminology, international standardization and linguistic normalization
4.1. Introduction
4.2. The concept of normalization
4.3. Specialist intervention in terminological normalization
4.4. Terminological normalization organizations
4.5. Organisations for cooperation, associations and terminology networks
5. Terminology and language teaching
5.1. Introduction
5.2. Specialized language vs Language for Special Purposes
5.3. Characteristics of speciality languages
5.4. Teaching languages for specific purposes
6. Terminology, linguistic engineering and computational linguistics 
6.1. Introduction
6.2. Concept of terminotics
6.3. Terminological databases
6.4. Developing a terminological database
6.5. Creating knowledge banks
6.6. Developing corpora in different specialized fields
6.7. Semiautomatic extraction of terminology from corpora
6.8. Representation of specialized information using concept systems
6.9. Improving information retrieval systems
6.10. Creating terminological search engines
6.11. Automatic generation of translation memories
6.12. Automatic following of normalized terminology

Qualification and Academic Value

Diploma of Postgraduate Studies: Terminology and Professional Needs, awarded by Pompeu Fabra University.

30 ECTS*
European Credit Transfer System. 1 ECTS credit equals a total approximate dedication of 25 hours by the participant, including teaching hours and independent work.