Eurodicautom / IATE access restricted

Robin Stocks wrote on May 15:

bq. Eurodicautom, up to now the EU Commission’s multilingual terminology database, is no longer being updated. It is being replaced by IATE, which describes itself as “an interactive terminology database system for the collection, dissemination and shared management of terminology between the Institutions, Agencies and other bodies of the European Union”.

It now appears that access to IATE is limited to translators working for the EU, and translators who are given passwords have to agree not to use it for non-EU texts.

You’d think the EU would appreciate its database being used widely.

(Thanks to Petra on the juristische_uebersetzer list at Yahoo)

LATER NOTE: (see comments)
Here is an email Paul Thomas received from IATE Support – it’s a wonderful example of EU English:

bq. Hello,
The IATE database has been put into production in the EU’s translation services in summer last year. It is not yet accessible to the public. The URL you have used is a link to a test database; when we noticed that this url has been published in various newsgroups on the internet we had to block the access to avoid performance problems. The system is today simply not ready to be used by the public. However, the development that are necessary IATE available to external users with a satisfying level of service are ongoing. We hope that you will be able to use IATE from the first quarter of 2006.
Until then Eurodicautom will remain accessible (http://europa.eu.int/eurodicautom/Controller). Please note that Eurodicautom had some technical problems recently. The system is, however, up and running again.
Best regards,
IATE Support Team
Translation Centre for the Bodies of the EU

7 thoughts on “Eurodicautom / IATE access restricted

  1. It sounds like the EU is now consciously promoting mistransation at all levels. Don’t they realise that reference is made to their legislation and procedures in a host of other documents, not necessarily directly from them? I wonder why they are doing this?

    Paul

  2. I have since read someone else’s message saying that the terminology is to be open to everybody, but not until next year, and all they’ve done now is close a loophole. So if it is accessible next year, all we need is for its contents to be reliable!

  3. Reliability is perhaps the key issue here, Margaret. Eurodicautom was pretty awful: most of the EU terminology I need (mainly from directives, other legislation, white papers, reports, etc. in the banking and finance fields) wasn’t in Eurodicautom in the first place, and most of the terms they took over from commercial dictionaries were simply wrong. Certainly in the fields I work in, the Eurodicautom terminology was extremely – sometimes dangerously – unreliable.
    I know that terminology is an expensive business: back in the mid-1990s, a bilingual term entry cost the Commission around 40 ecus (POINTER report), and I don’t suppose it’s become any cheaper in the meantime. So that’s one (but only one) of the reasons why Eurodicautom is so awful.
    Personally, I use Eur-Lex and ScadPlus for EU-related terminology research. Any time I’ve tried to research something in Eurodicautom over the past couple of years, I’ve almost always been disappointed.

    So if they’re blocking public access to IATE until they know they have a good quality termbase, I’m all for it…

  4. But even if it were more reliable, we still couldn’t trust it. All these bilingual resources just throw up ideas that need to be researched further (and no, I don’t use Eurodicautom – on the occasions when it might help, I forget it exists – and I tend to use the Eur-Lex site for legal translations).

    I remember when I was first teaching terminology in the 1990s and we were told in a course that Eurodicautom was free – it couldn’t be copyrighted because there had been no system of recording who contributed what, and in general the whole thing was a complete mess.

  5. It looks like our fears are misplaced:

    >>Good morning,

    As a freelance translator of 26 years standing, I have found EURODICATOM to be a crucial tool in ensuring consistency of terminology in relation to
    legislation and procedures of the EU when tackling translations of general and technical texts not necessarily tasked by EU institutions themselves.
    Now I learn that EURODICATOM is not to be updated and is to be replaced by IATE which will not be generally accessible. What logic can you possibly be following in this? Do you not you realise that this will lead to proliferation of mistranslations above all in manufacturers’ documentation?
    It is essential that ALL translators dealing with texts making reference to EU legislation and procedures have access to this invaluable database. I would be pleased to receive your comments on your restricted-access policy.

    Thanks you
    Regards
    Paul Thomas>Hello,

    The IATE database has been put into production in the EU’s translation services in summer last year. It is not yet accessible to the public. The URL you have used is a link to a test database; when we noticed that this url has been published in various newsgroups on the internet we had to
    block the access to avoid performance problems. The system is today simply not ready to be used by the public. However, the development that are
    necessary IATE available to external users with a satisfying level of service are ongoing. We hope that you will be able to use IATE from the
    first quarter of 2006.
    Until then Eurodicautom will remain accessible
    (http://europa.eu.int/eurodicautom/Controller). Please note that Eurodicautom had some technical problems recently. The system is, however,
    up and running again.

    Best regards,

    IATE Support Team
    Translation Centre for the Bodies of the EU

  6. Thanks, Paul. That confirms the message I quoted in an earlier comment.
    The only question remaining is: will our terminology be better or worse for Eurodicautom.

    I like their use of ‘satisfying’ rather than ‘satisfactory’! Nearly time for lunch…

  7. Like Paul, I’ve used Eurodic for years and found it invaluable though, of course, not infallible. I managed to access IATE for 10 days or so (they’ve taken away that link now), and even though it may not have been finalised, it was still a v. useful resource for translators of community related docs. I think making us wait for 6 to 9 months is very inconsiderate …

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