Multilingual Dictionary of Knowledge Management: English – German – French – Spanish – Italian

Citation

Turner, R. (2002), "Multilingual Dictionary of Knowledge Management: English – German – French – Spanish – Italian", New Library World, Vol. 103 No. 9, pp. 353-354. https://doi.org/10.1108/nlw.2002.103.9.353.3

Many information professionals have one or two languages, other than their mother tongue, that they may feel reasonably comfortable with for general reading. However, in an increasingly global market that is often only divided by language this absolute gem of a book will doubtless become more and more useful. As the language of knowledge and technology becomes more complex and rapidly changes, then a specialised dictionary is imperative.

Vollnhals begins with a well thought out and quite technical overview of his definition of what knowledge management is. He identifies five main elements of the sector as knowledge representation, knowledge engineering and problem solving; database technologies, data mining and visualization techniques; document management; intelligent systems; business applications. He is really describing corporate knowledge with its hugely diverse elements from project management to the very specialised technical elements.

Although the book is published in Germany by a German author, the main section is arranged alphabetically in the order of the English terms. The English term is given in bold, with any explanatory information in a light face after this, and the translations follow, each with the relevant language symbol, i.e. de, fr, es, it.

The main section of the book is the multilingual dictionary of knowledge management. Many of the terms in the dictionary are either so new or technical that they would not appear in many general monolingual dictionaries, let alone bi‐lingual general or even subject dictionaries. Hence search strategy was listed as expected, but on a quick trawl through an array of dictionaries I could not find voice recognition system or process modelling. Even more subject specific terms such as procedural semantic network or Bayesian decision theory would require a language specialist to merely translate the words, let alone describe what it refers to and also provide four language translations! There are 3,400 such entries in the main dictionary.

My initial doubts about this work revolved around how a non‐English speaker would access the main dictionary. However, this is logically and effectively solved by four separate indexes which list the German, French, Spanish or Italian terms in alphabetical order and refer to the relevant English term in the main section.

The author specifically states that his book is not just intended for those immediately involved in knowledge management, but is also for decision makers, IT consultants, database specialists, documentalists as well as engineers and specialists from many fields. This book is not a basic or general information dictionary, but is essential for anyone in any high technology work that operates in an international environment, which includes almost all of us today.

This obvious labour of love is made more striking when one considers that the terminology of knowledge management is still in a state of flux, is rapidly developing and is far from definitive. The whole concept and structure of the book makes this a beautiful piece of work. Ultimately, it will facilitate international communication in a subject field that is truly cutting edge, and that can only be applauded.