La terminologie face au discours de la vulgarisation scientifique

In the last 50 years the rise of English as the international lingua franca of science has posed interesting challenges for terminology in languages such as Italian. First, some text types such as academic articles in Italian no longer exist as scientists write in English unless their topic is just of local interest. Second, university textbooks are frequently translations from English. As a consequence, the language of science in languages such as Italian is very much the language of popular science. This has a number of consequences for terminological theory as terminologization or term formation is no longer the preserve of the domain expert since scientific journalists, terminologists and translators may operate in a context where they (can) coin new terms. In this case, term formation involves quite a lot of translation, which is usually shunned in terminology practice. Moreover, from a theoretical point of view, terminologists and terminographers cannot overlook the requirements of the target readers or audience in popular science. In other words, they can never forget that in popular science ‘transparent’ terms may be preferred to terms that are perhaps more accurate, but rather opaque. Another relevant aspect in popular science terminologization can be diachronic change to meet requirements that were not apparent when the relevant terms were first coined. Terminologization is, however, only one side of the problem. Developing terminology as in term collections or term banks meant specifically for popular science implies a reconsideration of criteria concerning the definitions, contexts, phraseology, etc.. Also conceptual structure needs rethinking as a not so accurate use of terms involves a degree of fuzziness that can make ontologies more complex to pin down. Another consideration is that it sometimes mistakenly assumed that no terms are coined at popular science level or – if they are – that they are necessarily ‘neutral’, i.e. devoid of connotations as those coined by domain experts. However, the lay public can become involved in the debates of science, especially when scientists feel that this can somehow further their cause, give them greater visibility or grant them more funds for their research. In this paper we propose to take a closer look at terminology – as a discipline and as a process – in popular science. To this end, we shall consider a number of cases – especially in the currently much debated domain of string theory in physics – to find evidence of processes at work in the terminological practice of popular science and develop a framework of reference for compiling adequate term collections or term banks. Indeed any collection or bank that is developed for the purposes of science popularization has to be based on different criteria than those governing term collections or term banks meant for domain experts, technical writers or even translators, who need to be able to write like experts.