Methodological approaches to creating a Russian-language version of the AGROVOC thesaurus

Abstract

The article considers the methodological principles used in the creation of the Russian-language version of AGROVOC, the multilingual thesaurus of the international information system for agriculture and food of the UN FAO AGRIS. The stages and content of the works on the creation of the Russian version are considered. The results of the work done are presented: studying the lexical composition of the AGROVOC thesaurus; comparative analysis of approaches to assigning the status of a term in the dictionary entries of national thesauri; researching in solving issues of lexical polysemanticism and disambiguate in the AGROVOC thesaurus; analysis of the meaning of synonymy relations; studying the functions of the “Note” field. When creating the Russian-language version, the methodology of translating terms directly by agricultural specialists was used, ensuring thereby a high-quality selection of equivalents to English terms of the English-language version of the thesaurus and with the minimal revision needed. The work started with finding equivalents for the descriptors, then proceeded to translating synonyms. Word combinations and relators were used to eliminate lexical polysemanticism and disambiguate of terms. When selecting an equivalent to an English AGROVOC term, the developers of the Russian-language version were guided by the following basic rules: the undesirability of literal translation; the differentiation of concepts and the use of relators to emendate terms; artificial formation of equivalents when accurate translation was impossible. For precise selection of the Russian equivalent of a term of the thesaurus we analysed all its relationships with the other terms – broader and narrower, synonyms, associated terms, as well as the text of notes, which could indicate limitations of the scope of use of the term, emendation of a concept, etc.