V. Requirements of the Data
As mentioned above, before a match of vocabularies can be attempted all participants must be familiar with the structure of the participating vocabularies. Each participating vocabulary should have the following information available for each term:
- Scope Notes: While traditional thesaurus construction has not called for definitive scope notes on each term in the thesaurus, they are absolutely necessary for multilingual equivalency work. If participants cannot be sure that the meanings of their terms and their scopes of application are clear, finding accurate equivalents is impossible.
- Hierarchical Placement: As equivalents are identified, the hierarchical placement of the terms should be checked, since this often provides valuable contextual information about their use. However, this does not imply that the hierarchical structures themselves must also be equivalent. Equivalency work as defined in this document is based on term-to-term equivalents only and does not attempt to match hierarchical structures from one language to another.
- Illustrations: In multilingual equivalency work, images illustrating the terms being matched are as useful as scope notes in allowing for accurate identification of the equivalent terms. In the absence of literary warrant, images of actual objects requiring a descriptor designation in the thesaurus may carry the weight of providing warrant for that term
- Warrant: Terms selected as descriptors must reflect scholarly research; they should ideally appear in the scholarly literature of the appropriate language. During AAT term research, literary warrant is established for all descriptors and most lead-in terms in the AAT. To establish literary warrant, terms are researched in dictionaries and in other established sources such as glossaries, subject-specific dictionaries, encyclopedias, and monographs. Equivalents to AAT terms in other languages should also have literary warrant, which may be provided by the vocabulary used as either the source or the target language. Warrant for each term is noted on the bilingual term sheet for that term. SigmaNon-preferred Terms: It is not necessary to establish one-to-one equivalents between non-preferred terms. Establishing such equivalents is often not possible, especially because languages vary in the number of synonyms or variants for a given term. Each language group should be responsible for choosing the non-preferred terms for the chosen terms in their language.
- Bibliographic Sources: Participants must be familiar with the main sources used to establish terms. During or after a residency, each source cited on bilingual term sheets or multilingual term tracking sheets must be entered on a standard bibliographic source form, with a photocopy of the source's title page attached. These are filed with the AAT as part of the equivalency work.
10. ISO 2788-1974 (E), paragraph 3. 3. 2.
11. AAT Editorial Manual, Chapter 3. 1. 2.
12. See Appendix 2 for the AAT bibliographic source form.
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