Pooling And Threading In Translation Term Banks

Bilingual end multillngual terminology data banks (term banks) have proven an effective aid to translation. The translation problem which has been most resistant tO te rm bank a s s i s t a n c e ~ however , i s t h a t o f i d e n t i f y i n g p r e c i s e l y t h o s e t r a n s l a t i o n s which a r e a p p r o p r i a t e f o r a g i v e n te rm i n a SL t e x t . This i s compounded by t h e r e l a t e d problems of SL homonymy and polysemy and TL synonymy. The g r e a t e s t c h a l l e n g e a t t he t e x t l e v e l i s d y n a m i c a l l y s p e c i f y i n g the l e x i c o n used i n t he s u b l ~ a g e o f a document. The s o l u t i o n to t h i s problem depends somewhat on whe the r t e r m i n o l o g y i s h e l d i n one l a r g e bank, whic h promotes s h a r i n g and c o m p r e h e n s i v e n e s s , o r i n many s m a l l e r banks, w h i o h e n c o u r a ge s independence and s p e c i a l i z a t i o n .