The answer today clearly is in the negative, but ought to be affirmative. The reason is that at this time there is a great demand for terminological resources, not the least as a reflex of the rapid development of information and natural language based communication technologies. Thus, objectively viewed, professionals in the key fields of terminology should have a fair chance of creating a sound financial foundation for their activities.

There is an unsatisfactory situation facing many quarters of the field of terminology today despite the new prospects of commercial interest that we can witness.

For one thing, the field of terminology is, in my opinion, strikingly under-communicated. This holds true both as regards terminological end-user products and important terminological components as modules of other products. To this one could add that the working procedures in terminology and the pertaining data resources have not been prepared for and streamlined to suit the present requirements of the current market place.

Traditionally, terminologists have collaborated extensively with publishers, most often with the goal of publishing dictionaries and terminological collections of a specialised nature. Nowadays, new partners are coming onto the scene. However, the new players will obviously make new demands as regards both terminological content, features and methods of data presentation and usage.

Publications: dictionaries and terminological instruction manuals. Published book editions and data published via the Internet.

Terminological services: Examples of these include courses and the study and tailoring of terminological resources for individual enterprises and branches of industry.

Terminological databases for use over the Internet that are being continuously updated from electronically accessible professional journals and publications. Such descriptive databases must be able to mirror in a detailed way the new terminology currently used in specialised professional sectors of activity.

Products from the field of human language technologies:
There is now a substantial demand for the integration of terminological data in a variety of products coming from the field of language technologies. Examples of such products include document management systems, advanced retrieval systems, information systems targeting specific user groups and ICT enabled translation systems. Moreover, systems (e.g. retrieval and translation) for use in e-commerce will be dialogue based and offer current forms of terminology in both written and spoken communication.

Terminological resources for the new and emerging market segments and applications must be developed based on the requirements made by the new market partners. Our working procedures and terminological methods must be overhauled in order to develop resources that are geared to the data needs of the new market place.

Given the prospects opened up for new commercial applications of terminological resources there seems to be a clear need for an International Terminology Innovation Plan (TIP) that could function as a focal point in communicating and demonstrating the value of terminological goods and services to both public and private sectors.

It is normally the case that the companies that develop ICT systems and language engineering services with embedded terminology data sets operate in an international market place and hence aims at producing systems with standardised, multilingual terminological data facilities.

Therefore, it would be very valuable if there could be an international committee that would have as its primary objective to produce guidelines based on up-dated market analyses and contacts with the different applications developers and user groups.