Multilingual thesaurus construction – integrating the views of different cultures in one gateway to knowledge and concepts

Abstract

The development of a multilingual thesaurus is more than the putting together of several monolingual thesauri. The truc multilingual thesaurus offers complcte conceptual and terminological inventories for each one of the languagcs involved; most importantly, it presents a fully developed thesaural structure in each language. so that a user consulting the linguistic version most appropriate for her/him gets the same amount of semantic information. Gencral linguistic and specific semantic problems arising in multilingual thesaurus construction are relatively well defined in the various textbooks and in the guidelines covering this area. Much details are provided on the conceptual equivalence issue, an various ways of dealing with conceptual divergence are described. But when discussing semantic solutions, display options, management issues, or use of technology, specialists and guidelines seldom, if ever, go as far as commenting on whether or not a particular option is truly respectful of a language and its speakers. This paper, based on the premise that in a multilingual thesaurus all languages are equal, reviews the op ions and solutions offered by the guidelines to the developer of specialized thesauri. It also introduces other problems of a sociocultural, and even of truly political naturc, which are a prominent feature in the daily life of the thesaurus designer but with which the theory and the guidelines do not deal very well. It focuses in turn on semantic, managerial, and technological aspccts of multilingual thesaurus construction, from the perspective of giving equal treatment to all languages involved.