The Diccionario Panhispánico de la Administración Pública (DiPAP): An Example of Terminological Democratization

Abstract

The Diccionario Panhispánico de la Administración Pública (DiPAP) is a collaborative digital lexicographical project for public administration terminology. This article presents an overview of the dictionary’s construction, as well as the current and future challenges of lexicographic work. The project focuses on the health, education, transportation, and finance public sectors of Argentina, Colombia, Spain, and Mexico. Underlying the project is a panhispanic perspective on the Spanish language, plain language, and public administration terminology. DiPAP provides two types of definitions, institutional and simplified (plain language), along with equivalents in several Spanish varieties. Its database contains a term bank, a document bank, and a government procedures bank, all based on internet sources. These banks make up the Corpus panhispánico de la administración pública (CorpusPAP). CorpusPAP allows users to acquire information from institutional websites and access additional related information, including DiPAP and CorpusPAP. The terminology used in DiPAP’s government procedures bank lies at the intersection between administrative language and the plain language best suited for the general population.