=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-3427/short7
|storemode=property
|title=Culture-bound Representation in EcoLexicon (Short Paper)
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3427/short7.pdf
|volume=Vol-3427
|authors=Pilar León Araúz,Melania Cabezas García,Pamela Faber,Arianne Reimerink
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/mdtt/ArauzCFR23
}}
==Culture-bound Representation in EcoLexicon (Short Paper)==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3427/short7.pdf
Culture-bound Representation in EcoLexicon (Short Paper)
Pilar León-Araúz1, Melania Cabezas-García1, Pamela Faber1 and Arianne Reimerink1
1
University of Granada, Departamento de Traducción e Interpretación, C/ Buensuceso, 11, 18071 Granada,
Spain
Abstract
Culture permeates all aspects of life, and even influences our perception of the world. Culture
is also reflected in specialized communication. Since terms and their meanings are largely
dependent on culture, the issue is how to account for this cultural component in
terminological resources. This paper explains how this can be achieved in EcoLexicon
(http://ecolexicon.ugr.es), a multilingual terminological knowledge base on environmental
science. This involves specifying a set of cultural profiles or frames linked to culture-
dependent semantic categories, such as geographic landforms (e.g. creek), flora and fauna
(e.g. cookie-cutter shark), meteorological phenomena (local wind), and even named entities
(e.g. Mesoamerican Reef System). It also entails adding a cultural component to all modules
(definitions, semantic networks, terms, phraseology, and multimodal resources). Therefore,
new cultural parameters must be added to culturally expand or restrict contextual
representations. These parameters would refer to geographic location, domain, and degree of
specialization. Cultural representation in EcoLexicon will take the form of flexible
definitions, dynamic semantic networks, contextually-enriched term entries, and images
selected and displayed based on contextual criteria.
Keywords 1
Culture-bound terminology, EcoLexicon, definitions, semantic networks, images
1. Introduction
Culture is generally regarded as the characteristics and knowledge of a particular group of people,
encompassing religion, food, traditions, music, arts, and general language. As such, it permeates all
aspects of life, and even influences the way that we perceive the world [1]. Not surprisingly, culture is
also reflected in specialized language and terminology. Recently, the cultural facet of Terminology or
Culture-Bound Terminology [2] has been highlighted by Temmerman and Van Campenhoudt [3],
Faber and Medina-Rull [4], and Diki Kidiri [5]. In fact, today terms are acknowledged to possess an
expressive power of their own insofar as they are often steeped in the culture and ideology of the text
sender, and even encode metaphors that have an impact on the understanding of a specialized domain
[6]. Since terms and their meanings are culturally motivated, the issue is how to represent this cultural
dimension in terminological knowledge bases. This paper explains how this can be achieved in
EcoLexicon (http://ecolexicon.ugr.es), a multilingual environmental knowledge base.
2. Cultural representation in EcoLexicon
EcoLexicon represents the conceptual structure of the specialized domain of the Environment in
the form of a visual thesaurus in which environmental concepts are configured in semantic networks.
2nd International Conference on “Multilingual digital terminology today. Design, representation formats and management systems”
(MDTT) 2023, June 29–30, 2023, Lisbon, Portugal
EMAIL: pleon@ugr.es (P. León-Araúz); melaniacabezas@ugr.es (M. Cabezas-García); pfaber@ugr.es (P. Faber); arianne@ugr.es (A.
Reimerink)
ORCID: 0000-0002-8520-2749 (P. León-Araúz); 0000-0002-8622-1036 (M. Cabezas-García); 0000-0003-0581-0005 (P. Faber); 0000-
0002-7264-4580 (A. Reimerink)
© 2023 Copyright for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative
Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
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The objective is to convert EcoLexicon into an inclusive resource sensitive to cultural variation. This
involves specifying a set of cultural profiles or frames linked to culture-dependent semantic
categories, such as geographic landforms (e.g. creek), flora and fauna (e.g. cookie-cutter shark),
meteorological phenomena (local wind), and even named entities (e.g. Mesoamerican Reef System). It
also signifies adding a cultural component to all modules (definitions, semantic networks, terms,
phraseology, and multimodal resources). Since concepts in EcoLexicon can already be
recontextualized by domain (e.g. Geology, Coastal Engineering, etc., which reflect sociocultural
usage), new cultural parameters must be added to culturally expand or restrict contextual
representations. These parameters would refer to geographic location (e.g. United States vs. United
Kingdom, Spain vs. Spanish-speaking countries in the Caribbean), and degree of specialization
(expert, semi-expert, and non-expert). However, since not all domains are equally represented in
EcoLexicon, we will focus on those which are particularly subject to cultural variation (e.g.
Biodiversity). The integration of these parameters in each module requires different strategies as well
as an in-depth reflection on terminological equivalence, denominative variation, and culturally
specific concepts, terms and phrasemes. The data represented will be mined from English and Spanish
subcorpora of the EcoLexicon corpus [7] that are composed of texts representing each cultural
parameter.
2.1. Definitions and semantic networks
Cultural variation is usually reflected in multidimensional concepts, whose relational behavior
changes based on contextual parameters. For example, the concept WATER has an active role in
Geology (it causes erosion, reshapes the terrestrial landscape, etc.), while WATER in the Water
Treatment domain is a patient that receives actions (purification, filtering, etc.). This
multidimensionality will be reflected in the form of flexible definitions [8, 9] and dynamic semantic
networks in EcoLexicon.
Each concept in EcoLexicon is described by a definition, which is a natural language explanation
of its location in the conceptual structure of a domain. A definition not only specifies the properties of
a concept, but also links it to others [10], thus providing a blueprint for the concept and its semantic
network. The recontextualization of definitions and semantic networks involves creating contextual
constraints [11, 8]. This has already been done by applying domain-specific restrictions to certain
general concepts such as WATER and SAND [12, 13]. Table 1 shows how the definitions of SAND can
be adapted based on the domain where SAND is activated. For example, while SAND is a sediment in
Geology, it is regarded as a soil component in Soil Sciences. Specialized domains are thus indicative
of sociocultural usage/conceptualization since groups of people use language and relate concepts
differently.
Table 1
Definitions of SAND in different domains
SAND
Sediment consisting mainly of
Unconsolidated mineral
fragments of quartz ranging in
General material consisting
GEOLOGY size of 0.05-2 mm that is part of
environmental mainly of fragments of
definition the soil and can be found in great
definition quartz ranging in size of
quantities in beaches, river beds,
0.05-2 mm.
the seabed, and deserts.
Unconsolidated soil
Natural aggregate consisting
component consisting
mainly of fragments of quartz
mainly of fragments of
SOIL SCIENCES CIVIL ENGINEERING ranging in size of 0.05-2 mm that
quartz ranging in size of
definition definition is a component of diverse
0.05-2 mm that are the
construction material such as
result of weathering and
concrete and mortar.
erosion.
Accordingly, cultural recontextualization depends on a set of cultural parameters, based on
geographic location, historical time period, sociocultural usage, etc. which restrict the definitions to a
certain cultural context. The result will be a set of culturally-adapted, flexible definitions. For
example, the LIONFISH is present in different geographic locations, such as the Indo-Pacific and the
Caribbean Sea. A general description of LIONFISH based on its family, origin, and physical
characteristics is not the same as a Caribbean-specific definition, where it is a predator and invasive
species that has a negative impact on native species and their habitat.
Adapting definitions would necessarily entail expanding the set of semantic relations in the
knowledge base and providing dynamic semantic networks, which only display the relations encoded
in a particular context. Thus, users could choose a sociocultural restriction of interest (e.g. a particular
domain, geographic location, etc.) and only relations activated in that context would be displayed. For
instance, WATER causes EROSION in the Geology domain (Figure 1) rather than in the Water
Treatment domain, where other relations are encoded, such as PURIFICATION affects WATER. For that
purpose, contextual restrictions will be applied to conceptual propositions in the database.
Figure 1: WATER in the Geology domain
An example of restrictions in semantic networks for a concept that behaves differently according
to its geographical location is WETLAND. In Figure 2, the network to the left shows the general
network for WETLAND, whereas the network to the right is restricted for the Caribbean, with MARSH
and SWAMP as prototypical wetlands for the area, and SEAGRASS BED, which is only there considered
a wetland.
Figure 2: Non-restricted semantic network (left) and network restricted for the Caribbean (right) for
WETLAND
2.2. Terms and phraseology
Terms also reflect culture in a variety of ways. For example, certain terms metaphorically refer to a
familiar entity in a culture (e.g. cookie-cutter shark). The interest in such terms lies in their
correspondences in other languages. For example, in Spanish, the cookie-cutter shark is a tiburón
cigarro (lit. cigarette shark) because of its long thin shape and dark brown band around its gills,
which makes it resemble a cigar. In contrast, the English term focuses on the perfect circularity of its
bite and the process involved when it attacks its prey, which in English-speaking countries is a phase
of cookie making.
Terms can also reflect the sociocultural level, geographic location or historical period of the
speaker. At the very least, representing this type of information involves a set of pragmatic fields that
define the type of denominative variation. Pragmatic fields will include the following: i)
Use_Geographical (for terms that are used in specific geographic locations); ii) Use_Register (to
show variation based on the degree of specialization); iii) Use_Context (information related to
monolingual contexts different from register); and iv) Use_Translation_Context (usage information
found in parallel corpora, such as the preference for a certain translation). In Ecolexicon, these fields
will be visible in the information for each term (Figure 3). Furthermore, variants will also be
displayed in a contrastive view, which compares them based on their frequency, and formal, cognitive
and diachronic changes (Figure 4) [14].
Figure 3: Term information for ozono a nivel del suelo (ground-level ozone)
Figure 4: Contrastive view for contaminación de origen humano (anthropogenic pollution)
Moreover, in EcoLexicon, phraseological units are both verb collocations (e.g. CFCs destroy
ozone) and multiword terms (e.g. ozone depletion potential), which can exhibit a varying degree of
compositionality. Multiword terms are included in term entries, which will be enhanced with
pragmatic information (see Figures 3 and 4). Verb collocations are also included in the terms that they
include and will be annotated with sociocultural information. For instance, CFCs deplete ozone is a
phraseological unit of a formal register, whereas CFCs destroy ozone is more informal.
2.3. Multimodal resources
In EcoLexicon, concept entries also contain multimodal information for the sake of knowledge
acquisition because the combination of textual and visual material improves understanding [15]. With
a view to transforming EcoLexicon into a culture-sensitive resource, the selection criteria for
multimodal information, such as images, will also be based on the cultural context [6].
To this end, images will be tagged and displayed with one (or several) of the following contextual
parameters: i) geographic location; ii) level of specialization; and iii) domain. Figure 5 shows three
images for CORAL REEF differentiated by geographical location (the Caribbean [left] and Scandinavia
[middle]) and by level of specialization (right), since textual features and other graphical information
(eg. map) facilitate additional knowledge to lay users. Figure 6, on the other hand, shows an image for
WATER specific for the Chemistry domain (left) and another for the Geology domain (right).
Figure 5: Image for CORAL REEF in the Caribbean (left) and in Scandinavia (right)
Figure 6: Image for WATER in the Chemistry domain (left) and Geology domain (right)
3. Conclusions
Culture plays a central role in communication. It is also present in specialized discourse, in the
form of variation based on geographic location, specialized domain, and degree of specialization. This
paper analyzes how EcoLexicon, a multilingual terminological knowledge base, can be transformed
into a culture-sensitive resource. To this end, flexible definitions, dynamic semantic networks,
contextually-enriched term entries, and images selected and displayed based on contextual criteria are
proposed.
Given the socio-economic impact of environmental issues, the benefits of the descriptive
approach in EcoLexicon should be highlighted, with a view to disseminating knowledge and raising
awareness about environmental issues. The cultural design of EcoLexicon will describe a new vision
on the environment, which acknowledges different cultural identities and highlights environmental
problems around the world.
4. Acknowledgements
This research was carried out as part of the projects PID2020-118369GBI00 and A-HUM-600-
UGR20, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and the Regional Government of
Andalusia.
5. References
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