UGRTerm is a bilingual (Spanish-English) database containing the official nomenclature of the University of Granada. The creation of this resource database, pioneering in the context of Spanish and Latin American universities, was proposed by the Directorate for Language Policy, part of the Vice-Rectorate for Internationalization, as a response to the need to systematically manage university terminology.
UGRTerm will be officially presented to the university community on Tuesday 13 March at the Higher Technical School of Civil Engineering.
The context of the UGR and the need to standardise terminology
The University of Granada manages an extensive range of academic programmes, conducts highly complex and diverse research activities at both the national and international levels, and provides the University community and society with a vast array of services.
By way of an example, the UGR teaches a staggering 10,450 courses, 98 bachelor’s degrees (including our international double degrees), 104 master’s degrees and 28 doctoral programmes. These academic programmes are taught to approximately 60,000 students every year, over 4,800 of whom are international.
This context poses significant challenges to the consistent, coherent and systematic communication of information, both internally at the University and externally with regard to our international students and stakeholders. This is made all the more complex by the need to communicate information both in Spanish and in a host of other languages, especially in English.
Moreover, this difficult task is further intensified by the sheer variety of posts, positions, services, units, faculties, schools etc. involved in coordinating, managing and governing the University throughout its 7 campuses.
Precisely because of this complexity, the effective management of information and communication in different languages is essential in order to satisfy the needs of our University community and partner institutions, as well as the public bodies and private sector organisations that maintain close ties with our Institution.
The Language Policy of the University of Granada is therefore a fundamental cornerstone of our Internationalization Strategy and Communication Policy. In this regard, UGRTerm has been conceived as a centralised, open access bilingual resource (and as a multilingual resource in the near future), the main objective of which is to facilitate communication in the UGR and make it more effective and consistent, both internally and externally.
By means of a centralised management system, it is possible to eliminate potential ambiguities in the use of institutional terminology, control the proliferation of new terms (both in Spanish and in English), and identify obsolete terms. Consequently, UGRTerm aims at standardisation and harmonisation since its objective is to create the foundations for the official nomenclature of the UGR and homogenise term uses at our Institution.
Accordingly, it aims to support all members of the University in the area of linguistic communication, including our academic and research staff, administrative and support staff, and students, while also enhancing the national and international image of the UGR.
The contents of UGRTerm
UGRTerm is not a comprehensive dictionary of University terminology per se, but rather a living, ongoing project that will progressively incorporate terminology arising within the context of the UGR. Shortly, it will also encompass terminology related to the higher education sector and, more specifically, to the European Higher Education Area, with a view to facilitating the exchange of information at the institutional level between different user groups.
Currently, UGRTerm contains over 27,500 terms (14,165 in Spanish and 13,442 in English), brought together under a total of 13,410 entries.
Specifically, users can consult the following thematic areas:
At the very least, each entry provides the official/standardized Spanish term used in the UGR (usage status) and its English correspondence. It also indicates the status of terminology which, for one reason or another, is not considered appropriate by the University. Furthermore, it may also provide additional information regarding the type, meaning, and use of terms, including abbreviations, variants, definitions, contexts, etc.
When relevant, denominations in Spanish include both the masculine and female gender. For the specification of English correspondences, European English was chosen, given the need to regulate this international academic lingua franca. However, whenever possible and necessary, priority was given to English equivalences that reflect and identify the reality of the Spanish university system and of the UGR, as opposed to other culturally marked denominations used in the United Kingdom or the USA.
Features of UGRTerm
UGRTerm provides a search engine with simple and advanced searches where terms can be explored alphabetically or by subject area. This flexibility enables users to access each term entry from different access points, depending on their user profile, needs and knowledge level.
Users can also make suggestions regarding a specific term as well as the term base in general. Academic and research staff, and administrative and support staff, can also consult the terminological problems that UGRTerm has not as yet solved.
In short, UGRTerm is a dynamic resource that will progressively incorporate new entries, facilitating the comprehension, writing, and translation of documents at the University of Granada. In addition, it is also aimed at external users who require specific information in Spanish or English about our Institution or about higher education.
Credits and technical information
The database not only contains the current nomenclature of the UGR, but also higher education terms compiled over the years by Guadalupe Soriano Barabino at the former Vice-Rectorate of International Relations, now known as the Vice-Rectorate for Internationalization.
UGRTerm was designed and developed under the coordination of Silvia Montero Martínez, from the Department of Translation and Interpreting of the UGR, with the collaboration of Pamela Faber, Mercedes García de Quesada, Pilar León Araúz, Arianne Reimerink and Alan Hewitt, and with the technical support of SI2 Soluciones and the Web Office (OfiWeb) of the University of Granada.
For further information about UGRTerm and its terms and conditions of use please visit About UGRTerm
Contact information:
Silvia Montero Martínez
Department of Translation and Interpreting
Email: smontero@ugr.es
