Ever since Sweden entered the European Union in 1995, the TNC (the Swedish centre for technical terminology) has participated in projects financed by the European Commission. We contribute Swedish terminology to the Eurodicautom term bank and we are currently involved in the following projects, partly financed by the Multilingual Information Society-programme (MLIS) of the European Commission's DG XIII: Nordterm-Net, TDC-net, and WebIT/EFCOT, the latter of which is the subject of this paper.

The WebIT/EFCOT-project, which began in January 1999, takes a dual approach to providing a comprehensive terminology service to the information and communication technology community. Strand One (WebIT) aims to make available, in a web-based database, a pool of multilingual terminology commonly used in the software localization industry. The other partners involved are University of Limerick in Ireland (project coordinator) and L & H Technology in Germany. Strand Two (EFCOT) is based on the work carried out within JOGSCOT (the Joint Group for Swedish Computer Terminology) and aims to export its working methods: the JOGSCOT model. A second aim within EFCOT is to offer a European forum for discussions on computer terminology. Initially this forum will take the form of a joint web site: the EFCOT site. The partners in this project are the TNC, the TSK (the Finnish centre for technical terminology), the RTT (Norwegian council for technical terminology) and Archetypon in Greece.

The JOGSCOT model

How it all began

The best way to describe the EFCOT project is to begin with the history of JOGSCOT. In Sweden, language planning organizations (e.g. the TNC) have received an increasing number of queries concerning computer terminology. These queries come from journalists, translators, and technical writers, not from subject field specialists. The queries take the form of questions such as "What Swedish term should we use instead of web master, e-mail, home page?"

JOGSCOT was established in Sweden in 1996 in order to recommend Swedish computer terms to be used in place of English ones. JOGSCOT includes national experts in both computer technology and terminology, general language planning, stan-dardization and translation, as well as representatives from different media - a combination which helps pave the way for a substantial impact of the recommendations given.

Three subgroups

JOGSCOT's working methods can be described with reference to the JOGSCOT model which consists of three subgroups.

The coordination group, consisting of about eight members from language planning organizations and the computer technology industry, meets roughly once a month. Occasionally other people with relevant knowledge are invited. The coordination group has the main responsibility for the preparation and formulation of the suggested recommendations. After having been discussed by e-mail the JOGSCOT recommendations are revised and published by the coordination group on the JOGSCOT web site, which is freely accessible to all Internet users.

The meeting group, which is JOGSCOT proper, convenes about three times a year to discuss particularly important or difficult concepts as well as guiding principles, and questions concerning organisation and administration. The group includes the members of the coordination group, plus representative and influential people from the companies and organizations mentioned below. This helps to attract attention to the recommendations issued. An additional purpose of the meetings is to exchange ideas and experiences across the borders of different subject fields and company interests.

The members of the meeting group are also part of the reference group together with wider circles of people who have particular knowledge or who are able to contribute in other ways. The reference group functions as a body to which the terms suggested by the coordination group are submitted for consideration. Discussions about terminology take place mostly on the Internet and via e-mail, so the reference group never meets in real life, only in cyberspace. This makes it easier to welcome new members to this particular group.

The TNC and the Swedish Language Council coordinate the work of JOGSCOT and undertake the main responsibility for the group. The other participants in JOGSCOT are from other language planning institutions (e.g. the Swedish Academy), universities (e.g. the Royal Institute of Technology), the mass media (e.g. all major daily newspapers, Swedish Radio and Television and the International Data Group), agencies for technical information and translation (e.g. L & H Mendez Sweden), and major computer companies (e.g. Apple Computer, Sun Microsystems, IBM and Microsoft).

The JOGSCOT web site

Following discussion and consensus, the recommendations are published on the JOGSCOT web site (http://www.nada.kth.se/dataterm). Version 14 of the word list was published in April 1999 and it contains 116 term records and around 150 concepts.

Recommended terms

A term record has the following format (see example below). At the top we have the recommended term or terms, then a definition followed by the actual recommendation. The end of the record may contain comments about the concept.

webbmästare, webbansvarig
person with the overall responsibility for a web site

Use webbmästare or webbansvarig for the English term web master.

Comments
When necessary, different functions can be specified, e.g. webbredaktör or webbinfoansvarig (English infomaster) for the person who is responsible for the information which is published on the web site, webbskribent for the one who creates the information for publishing, and webbtekniker for the one who is responsible for all technical aspects.

Apart from the recommendations, other kinds of information are given on our web pages; for example, a presentation of the group and its activities as well as the underlying principles of the terminological work. There is also a FAQ-section with answers, where both terminological problems under discussion and a section for questions concerning rules for text editing are presented. For internal use, there is another password-proected web site which is used to pass on information that is primarily intended for the coordination group.

Mailing lists

E-mail is used almost exclusively for the communication within JOGSCOT and its various subgroups. For this purpose there are a number of different mailing lists through which the information is easily distributed both internally and to the public. In addition to those used by the coordination, meeting, and reference groups, the following mailing lists exist:

Datatermnytt (News on Computer Terminology)
New recommendations, revised versions or other changes to the web site are communicated on this mailing list. The main purpose of this list is therefore to distribute brief information from JOGSCOT to its participants; this list is not, however, primarily intended for discussion.

Application for Datatermnytt
By sending your e-mail address to this list, you will be included on the mailing list Datatermnytt.

Comments for the JOGSCOT group
Using this address, anyone can send comments on the recommendations or requirements for important notions to be dealt with by the group in the future. This is all done via the coordination group.

What terms do we discuss?

JOGSCOT gives recommendations on many aspects of current computer terms (e.g. their usage, their meanings, their grammatical forms). The decision about which terms to treat is mainly decided by queries coming via e-mail from interested people, but search statistics are also used. By recording the queries made, it is possible to obtain statistics in various forms, e.g. on the most frequent term searches. (Statistics from March 1999: 22 725 "visits", which means 800-1 000 per workday.) Top priority is given to concepts used not only by specialists but also by laypersons, and to concepts which do not ye have a well established usage pattern. Next, the group focus on terms of a more technical nature and on well-established computer terms of a more general character that persistently cause problems for users

Why use the JOGSCOT-model for EFCOT?

Even though the activities of JOGSCOT have only been underway for three years, the work carried out within JOGSCOT has been successful. This probably results from several factors:

· Current usage is taken into consideration because there are specialists from the computer technology field working in the group.

· The broad composition of JOGSCOT, including media representatives, results in a widespread dissemination of the recommendations.

· The existence of a web site is beneficial not only for spreading recommendations but also as a means of informing the public about the group, and new concepts are dealt with rapidly with the help of electronic communication.

· Time is right! Today, many people have personal computers with access to the Internet. The group would not have attracted the same attention had it started ten years ago.

The objectives of EFCOT

The positive attention that JOGSCOT has attracted represents a good reason for trying to use its working methods within other countries and languages. The partners of the EFCOT project - therefore plan

· to implement the JOGSCOT model according to national prerequisites in Finland, Greece and Norway

· to create groups similar to JOGSCOT in those countries

· to create national web sites for those groups

· to link these web sites to a joint EFCOT site.

Summary and outlook

With the Internet, computer terminology is developing at a considerable rate. No matter what language we speak, we are all facing the same problem. We at EFCOT therefore want to learn more about the activities of other groups with similar tasks. Thus, with the aim of connecting and coordinating the national activities into a transnational network, steps will be taken towards a future expansion of EFCOT to other countries - towards a true European electronic forum for computer terminology.