ISO 23185:2009

Overview

ISO 23185:2009 - Assessment and benchmarking of terminological resources defines general concepts, principles and requirements for evaluating terminological data and the resources that host them. The standard establishes a flexible model to assess terminological resources by describing usability attributes and by providing guidelines for assessment and benchmarking projects that consider user objectives. It is aimed at ensuring terminological data are fit for purpose in multilingual, knowledge-driven environments.

Key Topics and Requirements

• Model for assessment: A framework that groups usability attributes into four sets related to terminological data, data management, data output, and data input. Not all sets apply to every resource; assessment is context-dependent.
• Usability attributes: Core properties that determine how effectively a terminological resource supports users. Examples include data structure specification, data category coverage, subject-field coverage, language coverage, coherence rules, use of authoritative sources, and intellectual property indicators.
• Data structure specification: The standard requires that the terminological data model be explicit so users and tools can extract, transform or integrate terminology reliably.
• Measurement and benchmarks: Distinguishes measurable and non-measurable attributes and provides guidance for setting benchmarks (reference metrics) and carrying out benchmarking and assessment workflows and test-case evaluations.
• User-centred assessment: Emphasizes evaluating resources in relation to the user’s goals (e.g., translation, knowledge management, search) rather than only on technical completeness.

Applications and Who Uses It

ISO 23185:2009 is practical for organizations and professionals who create, manage or consume structured terminology:

• Terminologists and lexicographers assessing quality and completeness of termbases and dictionaries.
• Translation and localization teams deciding suitability of terminology resources for translation-oriented terminography.
• Localization engineers, NLP and AI practitioners integrating terminological data into MT systems, ontologies or knowledge graphs.
• Content managers, information architects and librarians evaluating resources for taxonomy, metadata and semantic web services.
• Standards bodies, terminology institutes and language service providers benchmarking terminological assets for interoperability and reuse.

Using ISO 23185 helps ensure terminological resources are interoperable, discoverable and fit for automated processing, translation memory integration and semantic applications.

Related Standards

• ISO 12616 - translation-oriented data categories (referenced as an example of benchmark use)
• ISO 12620 - data categories for recording terminological data
• ISO 1087-1 and ISO/IEC 2382-17 - foundational terminology and definitions referenced by ISO 23185

Keywords: ISO 23185:2009, terminological resources, assessment, benchmarking, usability attributes, data structure, terminological data, terminology management.