Proposal to be considered at the OneGeology Workshop Linguistic base of the OneGeology project Oleg Petrov Grigory Brekhov Evgeny Kiselev Viktor Snezhko

Linguistic compatibility of geologic-map databases was set as one of the major problems in the providing of efficient harmonization and international exchange of geodata within the frame of the OneGeology Project. In this respect, the right choice of appropriate terminological base for the Project comes to be of significant value. What are, in our opinion, the basic requirements to linguistic core of the Project ?  Multilinguality. Linguistic base should be a tool for the exchange of geologic data, described in different languages of member countries of the Project. Of great importance is a possibility to apply the national language terms while describing data in the database.  Wide scope of geological lexicon.  Standardized terminology. Linguistic standardization has to assign a system of uniform terms applicable to the description of geologic-map data. Approach to the problem

Linguistic base of the OneGeology project  Our Proposal  To use the Multilingual Thesaurus of Geosciences (MTG; J.Gravesteijn, C.Cortman a.o., 2nd edition, 1995) as a terminological base of the OneGeology project  Reasons  We believe, that an efficient interchange of information between member countries of the Project is to be ensured by uniform terms, which are adopted by national schools of geosciences and are related to each other as an equivalent concepts  Lexicon of the Multilingual Thesaurus enables to apply it as the terminological core for the description of documentary, geologic-map and factographic information, and also for the international data exchange

Some chronicle of the MTG …  The Multilingual Thesaurus of Geosciences has been developed under the patronage of IUGS (UNESCO) and the Commission on Geological Documentation (COGEODOC) as the language for indexing, retrieval and international exchange of bibliographic information in the field of geosciences  The work on MTG began in 1970, with participants from various international and national geoscience documentation centers  As a terminological base, the american Glossary of Geology was assigned  Since the Geological Congress in Montreal of 1972, the full multilingual version of Thesaurus of geosciences has been developed  The MTG was compiled in 8 languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Czech and Finnish  Twice published: in 1988 and 1995

Based on MTG, the Asian Multilingual Thesaurus was published in It includes entries in 9 languages of East and Southeast Asian region, related to the English key words, held by the “European" MTG. Multilingual Thesaurus – now in Asia too Spanish German French English Italian Russian Czech Finnish Chinese Japanese Khmer Indonesian Korean Lao Malaysian Thai Vietnamese

MTG for the OneGeology Project  Why use MTG ?..  wide coverage of languages: 8 European languages + 9 languages of East and Southeast Asia  lack of language barriers: ability to index and to describe geodata in the national languages of the member countries of the Project  a unique linguistic resource: about standardized terms adopted by national geological surveys  meets the requirements of international standards for the development of monolingual and multilingual thesauri (ISO 2788, 5964)

MTG for the OneGeology Project  Why use MTG ?.. Wide experience of application to the international geoscientific information projects:  AGI American Geological Institute, GeoRef data exchange system (to the end of 1998, over bibliographic references have been exchanged using the MTG)  GEIXS European metadata portal for Eurogeosurveys members  SANGIS and PANGIS networks geoscientific data networks for African and Southeast Asian countries  others

Experience of adjustment of the Russian version of MTG to factographic and geologic-map information systems (VSEGEI, Russia) National Russian version of the MTG was successfully applied by VSEGEI (Russia) to develop the geologic-map information systems, which are used, since 1994, by russian producers of geologic maps for the description of primary field observations, analysys, map legends, etc. To adjust the Russian version of the MTG to the requirements of factographic and geologic-map information systems, lexicon of the Thesaurus was divided into single groups of terms (i.e. vocabularies).  Developing a new macrostructure of the Thesaurus Russian version of the MTG

Proposal to be considered at the OneGeology Workshop Linguistic base of the OneGeology project