Terminology

Terminology is an important part of semantic interoperability - said very simply, it is equal understanding of the content by all users and assignment of exact meaning to exact term in the exact area.

Nowadays information society contains many different terms, that are often understanded differently or even more frequent event is to name the same objects with still new terms. Terms in the information society and ICT area are assimilated to Slovak language mainly by "slovakization" of english terms - invention of the own terms is rare.

There exists general terminological base, but there are also many specific terms for various specific areas and topics of information society (i.e. telecommunications, eHealth etd), there eventually exists also different abbrevations and expressions, used by fixed organizations (European Union, NATO, OECD etc.).

First try to get analysis and overview of the general field of information society has been made by the Ministry of Finance of the Slovak Republic, that published  Methodological Guideline for the Usage of Technical Terms in the Information Society Area (549 kB) (Slovak version)  in May 2008 (Financial Bulletin No. 5/2008). The guidance aims on the terms mainly used in legislative and strategic documents. The first version is supposed to be thoroughly actualized in the future.

Here follows some of the well-known sources:

• wikipedia.sk - voluntarilly filled explanatory website, there exists also english version
• Terminological glossaries of Government Office of the SR - general dictionaries, maintained by The Division for the Approximation of Law and The Technical Support Division, mainly White Book
• Explanatory Terminological Dictionary of Electronic Communications - dictionary maintained by The Research Institute of Posts and Telecommunications, covering mainly telecommunications area
• Czech Terminological Database of Libraries and Informatics Science - database of National Library of the Czech Republic
• Glossary of the Technology Terms IDABC (EN) - glossary of European Union, created within pan-european services initiative 
• eLearningEuropa.info (EN) - simple explanatory dictionary of European Union
• Telemedicine Glossary (EN) - specialized european glossary of the telemedicine