This article describes the theoretical premises and methodology presently being used in the development of the PuertoTerm database on Coastal Engineering. In our project there are three foci, which are highly relevant to the elaboration of lexicographic and terminological products: (1) the conceptual organization underlying any knowledge resource; (2) the multidimensional nature of conceptual representations; and (3) knowledge extraction through the use of multilingual corpora. In this sense we propose a frame-based organization of specialized fields in which a dynamic, process-oriented event frame provides the conceptual underpinnings for the location of sub-hierarchies of concepts within a specialized domain event. We explain how frames with semantic and syntactic information can be specified within this type of framework, and also discuss issues regarding concept denomination and terminological meaning, based on the use of definitional schemas for each conceptual category. We also offer a typology of images for the inclusion of graphic information in each entry, depending on the nature of the concept. Notes* This research is part of the project PuertoTerm: Knowledge representation and the generation of terminological resources within the domain of Coastal Engineering, BFF2003-04720, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education. .Although the corpus also has a significant number of German texts, for the sake of simplicity we are limiting our analysis here to English and Spanish. 2.These statistics were obtained with the Wordlist tool of the computer application Wordsmith Tools®.3. The overall difference in the type/token ratio is probably due to the fact that the relative scarcity of Coastal Engineering texts in Spanish has led to the inclusion of texts belonging to 20 Pamela Faber et al.closely related fields of knowledge, such as Environmental Science, Geology or Hydrology. This leads to a similar standardized type/token ratio (if analyzed in comparable chunks) but a differing overall type/token ratio, where the highly homogeneous English corpus is compared as a whole to the more heterogeneous Spanish corpus.

A Terminology course for Translation students must deal with the role of terminology in the translation process from both a theoretical and practical perspective. The objective of such a course is not to train translators as terminologists or documentation professionals, but rather as language mediators whose job is to facilitate interlinguistic communication. Translation students should thus learn how to carry out descriptive terminological work oriented towards producing a suitable target text. This means developing specific strategies as well as learning how to use available resources with a view to producing optimal translations. In this context, a truly effective Terminology course program must be adapted to fit new professional profiles. Such a program would target terminology management against the backdrop of specialized language translation. The specific characteristics of the translation process are what determine the type of terminological competence required.

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This article describes a framework for definitional analysis that presents definitions as dynamic entities encompassing both conceptual relations, following a category template pattern, and its formalization in the terminological definitional structure. The definitional analysis accounts for various levels of complexity, depending on how detailed the understanding is or needs to be in a specific contextual situation. We are presently using this methodology in a research project called OncoTerm. One of the objectives of this project is to elaborate a bilingual terminological database, whose conceptual structure is an extension of an existing resource, the Mikrokosmos Ontology. In our termbase, medical concepts are organized in categories represented by templates, which are systematically applied to all category numbers. The application of the template to more specific concepts generates values that show the inheritance of knowledge structures within a specialized domain. The definitional information within each term entry is thus totally coherent with the information regarding other terms within the same conceptual category. This approach leads to the specification of a language of terminographic definition, which is concise, consistent and applicable not only to the domain of oncology, but to other medical domains and other languages.