Theterminological properties of texts known as international petroleum-related standards

Abstract

This paper describes a case study of some terminological properties of texts known as international petroleum-related standards, with a focus on ISO 13628-2 as a typical sample of specialized language text limited to design and operation of subsea production systems. This standard is analysed as a normative document and a bearer of technical information encoded in terms – special cognitive units serving to transfer and standardize information concerning unbonded flexible pipe systems for subsea and marine applications.
The article considers terminology models and proves that terms have a systametic relationship with the petroleum-specific concepts they represent. The standard’s terminology field includes units generally found in scientific and technical texts and those forming the core consisting of six sub-domains.
Analysis of the corpus of the text indicates various patterns of single word and multi-word terminological units. The most productive morphological way of term formation is adding suffixes. Various patterns of petroleum-specific abbreviations are singled out. Analysis of multi-word terms reveals availability of constituents ranging from two to eight. These are noun phrases, largely limited to those including adjectives and nouns only; occasionally containing prepositions and rarely including verbs, adverbs, or conjunctions.
This research might serve as a basis for developing algorythms for traditional and machine-based translation of the terms studied.