Frieda Steurs is full professor at the KU Leuven, Faculty of Arts, campus Antwerpen. She works in the field of terminology, language technology, specialized translation and multilingual document management. She is a member of the research group Quantitative Lexicology and Variation Linguistics (QLVL). Her research includes projects with industrial partners and public institutions. She is the founder and former president of NL-TERM, the Dutch terminology association for both the Netherlands and Flanders. She is also the head of the ISO TC/37 standardization committee for Flanders and the Netherlands.. She is the president of TermNet, the International Network for Terminology (Vienna).She has coordinated a large number of research projects in the field of translation technology, terminology management and digital language resources.TermWise : creating resources for specialized language use (IOF funding KU Leuven 2009-2013)Scate : SCATE - Smart Computer-Aided Translation Environment (IWT 2014-2018)COST e-Lex : e-lexicography (ISCH COST Action IS1305 2013-2017)COST enetCOLLECT: computer assisted language learning and crowdsourcing techniques (ISCH COST Action 2017-2022)Since 2016, she is the head of research of the INT, the Dutch Language Institute in Leiden. In this capacity, she is responsible for the collection, development and hosting of all digital language resources for the Dutch Language. The INT is the CLARIN centre for Flanders, Belgium.
Art. 110. Et afin qu'il n'y ait casue de douter sur l'intelligence desdits arrêt... more Art. 110. Et afin qu'il n'y ait casue de douter sur l'intelligence desdits arrêts, nous voulons et ordonnons qu'ils soient faits et écrits si clairement, qu'il n'y ait ni puisse avoir aucune ambiguité ou incertitude ne lieu à demander ... (Ordonnance 188 de 1539 prise par le Roi François ...
The efficient and effective use of specialised language is a prerequisite for successful communic... more The efficient and effective use of specialised language is a prerequisite for successful communication in industry, education and scientific communities. But specialised communication is not only prerequisite for basic functions in the society as health and democracy. It also plays a crucial role in engineering /automotive/industry environments, where the terminology management has a direct impact for security and safety issues and, as a consequence, on the liability of products and services. As the manufacturer is legally responsible for the manual towards the end-user, the user manual and all relevant technical documentation is an integral part of the product. In order to avoid safety and quality issues, this needs to be managed and quality needs to be measured.
However, there is a correlation between process quality, service quality and product quality. Whenever organisations design their business processes and work-flows according to general or industry-relevant quality standards, this has an influence (both direct and indirect) on the quality of their processes, products and services. Terminology management, quality assurance in technical documentation, state-of-the-art standards and training and qualification of professionals are key. Whenever an organisation tackles one or two or all three of these aspects, this has an impact on the other aspects or the entire quality system.
Translating legal and administrative language : How to deal with legal terms and their flexible m... more Translating legal and administrative language : How to deal with legal terms and their flexible meaning potential. Kris Heylen¹ & Frieda Steurs¹² ¹KU Leuven (University of Leuven) ²University of the Free State, Bloemfontein & UCO, Angers
Compared to other Languages for Specific Purposes (LSPs), the terminology of the legal domain poses a number of specific challenges to translation. Firstly, most legal terms refer to abstract concepts and are not defined through referential properties (contrary to e.g. machine parts in a technical domain), but rather intentionally, using other abstract concepts. Secondly, because the law deals with all aspects of everyday life, legal terminology shows a considerable overlap with Language for General Purposes (LGP). Thirdly, the legal jargon often uses a number near-synonyms (e.g. violation, breach, infringement or null and void) for the same concept (Gozdz-Roszkowski 2013). These properties potentially cause semantic vagueness and necessitate that an onomasiological approach to legal terminology (first defining a concept and then listing the terms) be supplemented with a semasiological approach that investigates how near-synonymous terms and terms shared with LGP realize their flexible meaning potential in specific contexts. In a translation setting, this problem of semantic instability is further aggravated because the terms’ contextual nuances do not only have to be adequately rendered in other language but the terms’ translational equivalents also have their own ambiguity in a different legal system, whose concepts might be similar but often not completely equivalent. In this paper, we look at a case study of the translation of the Statutory Regulations of the University of Leuven (Organiek Reglement KU Leuven) from Dutch and the Belgian-Flemish legal system into English with different legal systems present in the background (UK Law, American Law, European Law). First we analyse the ambiguity of the terms in the source text language-internally through a corpus-based collocation analysis of terms extracted from the document and compared with their use in the official decrees of the Flemish government pertaining to higher education. Secondly, we analyse the consistency with which ambiguous terms are translated in two (independent) English translations of the Statutes and Regulations as well as translations of other university policy documents.
Art. 110. Et afin qu'il n'y ait casue de douter sur l'intelligence desdits arrêt... more Art. 110. Et afin qu'il n'y ait casue de douter sur l'intelligence desdits arrêts, nous voulons et ordonnons qu'ils soient faits et écrits si clairement, qu'il n'y ait ni puisse avoir aucune ambiguité ou incertitude ne lieu à demander ... (Ordonnance 188 de 1539 prise par le Roi François ...
The efficient and effective use of specialised language is a prerequisite for successful communic... more The efficient and effective use of specialised language is a prerequisite for successful communication in industry, education and scientific communities. But specialised communication is not only prerequisite for basic functions in the society as health and democracy. It also plays a crucial role in engineering /automotive/industry environments, where the terminology management has a direct impact for security and safety issues and, as a consequence, on the liability of products and services. As the manufacturer is legally responsible for the manual towards the end-user, the user manual and all relevant technical documentation is an integral part of the product. In order to avoid safety and quality issues, this needs to be managed and quality needs to be measured.
However, there is a correlation between process quality, service quality and product quality. Whenever organisations design their business processes and work-flows according to general or industry-relevant quality standards, this has an influence (both direct and indirect) on the quality of their processes, products and services. Terminology management, quality assurance in technical documentation, state-of-the-art standards and training and qualification of professionals are key. Whenever an organisation tackles one or two or all three of these aspects, this has an impact on the other aspects or the entire quality system.
Translating legal and administrative language : How to deal with legal terms and their flexible m... more Translating legal and administrative language : How to deal with legal terms and their flexible meaning potential. Kris Heylen¹ & Frieda Steurs¹² ¹KU Leuven (University of Leuven) ²University of the Free State, Bloemfontein & UCO, Angers
Compared to other Languages for Specific Purposes (LSPs), the terminology of the legal domain poses a number of specific challenges to translation. Firstly, most legal terms refer to abstract concepts and are not defined through referential properties (contrary to e.g. machine parts in a technical domain), but rather intentionally, using other abstract concepts. Secondly, because the law deals with all aspects of everyday life, legal terminology shows a considerable overlap with Language for General Purposes (LGP). Thirdly, the legal jargon often uses a number near-synonyms (e.g. violation, breach, infringement or null and void) for the same concept (Gozdz-Roszkowski 2013). These properties potentially cause semantic vagueness and necessitate that an onomasiological approach to legal terminology (first defining a concept and then listing the terms) be supplemented with a semasiological approach that investigates how near-synonymous terms and terms shared with LGP realize their flexible meaning potential in specific contexts. In a translation setting, this problem of semantic instability is further aggravated because the terms’ contextual nuances do not only have to be adequately rendered in other language but the terms’ translational equivalents also have their own ambiguity in a different legal system, whose concepts might be similar but often not completely equivalent. In this paper, we look at a case study of the translation of the Statutory Regulations of the University of Leuven (Organiek Reglement KU Leuven) from Dutch and the Belgian-Flemish legal system into English with different legal systems present in the background (UK Law, American Law, European Law). First we analyse the ambiguity of the terms in the source text language-internally through a corpus-based collocation analysis of terms extracted from the document and compared with their use in the official decrees of the Flemish government pertaining to higher education. Secondly, we analyse the consistency with which ambiguous terms are translated in two (independent) English translations of the Statutes and Regulations as well as translations of other university policy documents.
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Papers by Frieda Steurs
However, there is a correlation between process quality, service quality and product quality. Whenever organisations design their business processes and work-flows according to general or industry-relevant quality standards, this has an influence (both direct and indirect) on the quality of their processes, products and services. Terminology management, quality assurance in technical documentation, state-of-the-art standards and training and qualification of professionals are key. Whenever an organisation tackles one or two or all three of these aspects, this has an impact on the other aspects or the entire quality system.
Kris Heylen¹ & Frieda Steurs¹²
¹KU Leuven (University of Leuven)
²University of the Free State, Bloemfontein & UCO, Angers
Compared to other Languages for Specific Purposes (LSPs), the terminology of the legal domain poses a number of specific challenges to translation. Firstly, most legal terms refer to abstract concepts and are not defined through referential properties (contrary to e.g. machine parts in a technical domain), but rather intentionally, using other abstract concepts. Secondly, because the law deals with all aspects of everyday life, legal terminology shows a considerable overlap with Language for General Purposes (LGP). Thirdly, the legal jargon often uses a number near-synonyms (e.g. violation, breach, infringement or null and void) for the same concept (Gozdz-Roszkowski 2013). These properties potentially cause semantic vagueness and necessitate that an onomasiological approach to legal terminology (first defining a concept and then listing the terms) be supplemented with a semasiological approach that investigates how near-synonymous terms and terms shared with LGP realize their flexible meaning potential in specific contexts. In a translation setting, this problem of semantic instability is further aggravated because the terms’ contextual nuances do not only have to be adequately rendered in other language but the terms’ translational equivalents also have their own ambiguity in a different legal system, whose concepts might be similar but often not completely equivalent. In this paper, we look at a case study of the translation of the Statutory Regulations of the University of Leuven (Organiek Reglement KU Leuven) from Dutch and the Belgian-Flemish legal system into English with different legal systems present in the background (UK Law, American Law, European Law). First we analyse the ambiguity of the terms in the source text language-internally through a corpus-based collocation analysis of terms extracted from the document and compared with their use in the official decrees of the Flemish government pertaining to higher education. Secondly, we analyse the consistency with which ambiguous terms are translated in two (independent) English translations of the Statutes and Regulations as well as translations of other university policy documents.
However, there is a correlation between process quality, service quality and product quality. Whenever organisations design their business processes and work-flows according to general or industry-relevant quality standards, this has an influence (both direct and indirect) on the quality of their processes, products and services. Terminology management, quality assurance in technical documentation, state-of-the-art standards and training and qualification of professionals are key. Whenever an organisation tackles one or two or all three of these aspects, this has an impact on the other aspects or the entire quality system.
Kris Heylen¹ & Frieda Steurs¹²
¹KU Leuven (University of Leuven)
²University of the Free State, Bloemfontein & UCO, Angers
Compared to other Languages for Specific Purposes (LSPs), the terminology of the legal domain poses a number of specific challenges to translation. Firstly, most legal terms refer to abstract concepts and are not defined through referential properties (contrary to e.g. machine parts in a technical domain), but rather intentionally, using other abstract concepts. Secondly, because the law deals with all aspects of everyday life, legal terminology shows a considerable overlap with Language for General Purposes (LGP). Thirdly, the legal jargon often uses a number near-synonyms (e.g. violation, breach, infringement or null and void) for the same concept (Gozdz-Roszkowski 2013). These properties potentially cause semantic vagueness and necessitate that an onomasiological approach to legal terminology (first defining a concept and then listing the terms) be supplemented with a semasiological approach that investigates how near-synonymous terms and terms shared with LGP realize their flexible meaning potential in specific contexts. In a translation setting, this problem of semantic instability is further aggravated because the terms’ contextual nuances do not only have to be adequately rendered in other language but the terms’ translational equivalents also have their own ambiguity in a different legal system, whose concepts might be similar but often not completely equivalent. In this paper, we look at a case study of the translation of the Statutory Regulations of the University of Leuven (Organiek Reglement KU Leuven) from Dutch and the Belgian-Flemish legal system into English with different legal systems present in the background (UK Law, American Law, European Law). First we analyse the ambiguity of the terms in the source text language-internally through a corpus-based collocation analysis of terms extracted from the document and compared with their use in the official decrees of the Flemish government pertaining to higher education. Secondly, we analyse the consistency with which ambiguous terms are translated in two (independent) English translations of the Statutes and Regulations as well as translations of other university policy documents.