DG Translation’s Anna Fotos, John Kirby, and Riitta Majaniemi have contributed to the book ‘Terminology throughout History: A Discipline in the Making’
From 2022 to very recently, three terminologists from DG Translation (DGT) of the European Commission, Anna Fotos, John Kirby, and Riitta Majaniemi, were involved in the drafting process of the newly released book Terminology throughout History: A Discipline in the Making. They contributed their extensive knowledge of the platform Interactive Terminology for Europe (IATE), the interinstitutional terminology database of the European Union.
‘Terminology throughout History’ gathers contributions from international scholars, documenting the historical developments of terminology as both a discipline and a practice. The book contains a chapter on IATE, which explains the European Union's main system for managing terminology. This chapter goes through the history of IATE, starting from when it began in 1998 up until now, discussing both the difficulties and achievements of building and improving the system. It also talks about how IATE has grown through the cooperation between different EU institutions, using feedback from translators and users to help manage the challenges of translating EU documents.
‘We are so happy that our work is finally published and the results of our research are now available,’ the three terminologists said with a smile upon completing the work. ‘It’s crucial to capture IATE's full history in one article, and now we'll have a handy reference for the future.’
If you are interested in knowing more about this chapter, read the skeleton for the chapter, the ‘author submitted manuscript’. Additionally, if you have a general interest in the European Commission's work with terminology, consider visiting terminology across EU languages.
This article has been published in Terminology throughout History, edited by Kara Warburton and John Humbley, by John Benjamins (2025). The final version is available via the DOI and on the publisher’s platform at, as part of Terminology throughout History: A Discipline in the Making.