IAA's Multilingual Astronautical Terminology Database Development; Status and Some Thoughts

Paper number

IAC-11,E8,1,1,x10638

Author

Prof. Keiken Ninomiya, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Japan

Coauthor

Dr. Tetsuo Yoshimitsu, ISAS/JAXA, Japan

Coauthor

Prof. Yasunori Matogawa, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Japan

Coauthor

Dr. Jean-Michel Contant, International Academy of Astronautics (IAA), France

Year

2011

Abstract

Since 1986, the IAA Multilingual Terminology Database Committee and its successor IAA Study Groups on IAA Multilingual Space Dictionary have been making a continued effort to develop a multilingual dictionary of space-related terms. The first output, visible to the general public, was the lexicon published in floppy-disk form by a company in Hungary in 1996, and named The IAA Multilingual Space Dictionary, Version 1.1. It covered 2614 (English) terms for 14 languages. In the version V.1.2, which followed V.1.1 in 1998, the number of the languages was increased to 16. The CDROM version of V.1.2 was distributed free of charge at the 2nd World Space Congress in Houston.

In 2002, to make compiling process of the dictionary more efficient and to enable easier access by the general public, the dictionary was computerized using a database server and some recent Internet technologies, resulting in the installation of the V.1.2A having 2628 terms. The database is accessible from all over the world via Internet for searching the terms. The database system is flexible for adding new terms and languages easily. It was used to develop the V.2.1 in which the number of languages was increased to 20. The present version V.3.0 of the Dictionary covers 20 languages for over 3,500 astronautical terms (although, except for the case of the completed five languages, the newly added 900 or so terms have yet to be translated into respective languages). Based on the Version 2.1 or 3.0, three bi-lingual lexicons and a 6-languages lexicon were published in book-form to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of IAA in 2010.

In this paper, the authors present the status and some details of the multilingual database-system. Also, a protocol to conduct the continued development of the dictionary is proposed. The database system will be able to provide an efficient means for developing a future version of the Dictionary including definitions. Whether such an IAA’s multilingual space dictionary with definitions could be compiled successfully, however, will depend not so much on the database-system itself as on how the people who make the definitions can be found and organized.

Abstract document

IAC-11,E8,1,1,x10638.brief.pdf

Manuscript document

IAC-11,E8,1,1,x10638.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).

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