• European Commission
• Council
• Parliament
• Court of Auditors
• Economic & Social Committee
• Committee of the Regions
• Court of Justice
• Translation Centre for the Bodies of the EU
• European Investment Bank
• European Central Bank

This multilingual database will also be made accessible to the European citizens by the end of 2006.

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Objectives

• IATE aims to provide a web-based infrastructure for all EU terminology resources, enhancing the availability and standardisation of the information. These resources include any existing data compiled by the participating organisations and the three major existing databases (EURODICAUTOM: the European Commission's multilingual term bank born from two existing lexicographic tools, the Dicautom and the Euroterm; TIS: Terminological Information System of The General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union and EUTERPE: Exploitation Unifiée de la Terminologie au Parlement Européen or 'European Parliament one-stop terminology management system').
• IATE was also developed to serve as a vehicle for the application of advanced language processing technology to multi-lingual terminology management.
• It aims to support interactivity through the provision of:
  • The possibility for a user to carry out modifications and add entries directly to the central database;
  • In-built validation procedures to ensure quality;
  • The development of management and reporting tools;
  • A messaging system to be used as a communication mechanism between the actors in the terminology workflow.

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How does it work?

IATE will provides a web-based interactive working environment that enables cooperation between the European Institutions and agencies. The network is made up of: 

• A central terminology database;
• A Web server for remote consultation, data inputting and editing;
• An application server for the management of access rights, data administration, validation workflow and messaging.

Online access in a read and write mode makes new terms available to all database users immediately. Let us take a concrete scenario: Camille is a French to Italian translator within the European Commission's Translation Service. Her specialist subject is European employment policy.

IATE provides a simple search interface that allows users to retrieve information from the database. Camille has been asked to translate a text on EMPLOI, the Community Employment initiative. As this is a new topic for her, she has to familiarise herself with topic-specific terminology.

The user can specify the language of the word(s) in question and the language(s) required. Camille specifies that her source language will be French and the target language will be Italian.

The user may also indicate additional search criteria like the subject domain a term belongs to or the Institution that introduced the concept. In order to get a more global perspective on vocabulary, Camille can select a subject domain code like "Social Affairs'.

Based on this information the system will provide a "hit-list" of the search term in the requested languages. From this list the user can - by a simple mouse click - retrieve additional information, like definition or examples of the usage of a term. Having retrieved her hit-list in Italian and French, Camille is not only able to understand the basic meaning of the terms she requested, but also read an overview of the background. In this way, she is able to produce a far more informed and precise piece of work.

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Achievements

• Besides the backbone of the system - the database - several versions of the user interfaces for retrieval, data entry and administrative tasks have already been designed and implemented.
• User tests were carried out using a prototype and in two pilot test phases. A final version of the IATE system was delivered to the Commission in December 2002. The database is now operational, but it is only available to EU institutions. IATE will become accessible to the general public by the end of 2006 in a read-only version.
• The datebase incorporates all of the existing terminology databases into one new, highly interactive and accessible inter-institutional relational database. The following legacy databases have been imported into IATE which now contains approximately 1.4 million multilingual entries:
  • Eurodicautom (Commission),
  • TIS (Council),
  • Euterpe (EP),
  • Euroterms (Translation Centre),
  • CDCTERM (Court of Auditors),
  • A thesaurus from the Court of Justice.

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Who benefits?

Public Administrations: This will be the primary group of beneficiaries of IATE. Their improved administration, management and coordination will lead to financial, manpower and resource savings.

Professionals, businesses and citizens: Those who are not EU civil servants but who need to have access to the most up to date terminology for professional and personal reasons, also stand to gain from a single point of access to EU terminology resources.

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The role of IDA

IDA has provided funding for the development of IATE. In addition, IDA's generic services are being used, including TESTA for telecommunication aspects and CIRCA for the coordination of the various expert groups.

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Technical information 

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Documentation