Specialist / Technical Terms and Translation for Specific

Purposes (Специальные / технические термины и перевод для

специальных целей)

A specialist term is a word, fixed group of words or abbreviation that has a precisely limited sense and is used in that sense in a particular branch of human knowledge or practical activity, such as science, technology, art, profession, or trade.

Ideally, specialist (technical) terms must have the following proper­ties. 1) They must be systemic, i.e. part of a clearly perceived termino­logical system (= a group of interacting, interrelated, or interdependent elements forming a complex whole - AHD). 2) They must be independent of context or context-resistant (their meaning must not change in different contexts within the same specialist field). 3) The semantic structure of a term must contain only one word-sense. 4) This single word-sense must allow of only one interpretation, i.e. different people should not understand it in differing, if only slightly, ways. 5) A term must have a precise definition accepted by the majority of specialists in a given field. 6) A term must be brief, or compact. 7)A term must be devoid of any connotations; it must only have a single denotative sense.

The accepted Russian terms for the above properties of specialist terms are, respectively,