Legal status

The Hellenic Society for Terminology (ELETO) is a scientific association established and operating under the law of the Hellenic Republic, having been recognized as a non-profit scientific association (Athens’ Court Decision No 2617/1992) (See Statutes).

Objectives

ELETO’s objectives are:

  • To study, coordinate, process, promote, collect, systematize, disseminate, validate and develop by any means the Greek terminology and terminological research.
  • To contribute to the continuous and symmetric development of the Greek language in order to cover the multi-faceted and imperative contemporary needs, and
  • To emphasize the fundamental role of the Greek language both as a valuable source and as a tool for the international terminological background, and promote this role in order to cover current and future needs of the international terminology.

Members

There are five categories of members in ELETO: full members, associate members, collective members, honorary members, and sponsoring members. Current figure (March 2022): 281 individual members. Current collective members and special groups are for telecommunications, information technology, acoustics, medicine, principles of terminology, public administration, and statistics.

Administration

ELETO is governed by an Administrative Board consisting of seven elected full or associate members . ELETO’s central scientific body is the General Scientific Board (GESY) consisting of both the members of the Administrative Board and the representatives of ELETO’s collective members . An Auditing Committee consists of three elected full or associate members .

Membership in international organizations

ELETO is a member of the following organizations:

  • International Information Centre for Terminology (INFOTERM)
  • European Association for Terminology (EAFT)
  • International Network for Terminology (Termnet)
  • International Institute for Terminology Research (IITF).

Activities

ELETO’s presence has been significant by organizing various kinds of events, participating in events organized by other Greek or foreign bodies, and offering notable consultation on terminology problems to bodies and individuals.

  • In the year of its establishment, 1992, ELETO was the major organizing supporter of the conference “Terminology Standardization” of the Technical Chamber of Greece .
  • In cooperation with several other organizations, ELETO organized, in Athens (1997, 1999, 2001, and 2003), the 1st , 2nd , 3rd , and 4th Conferences “Hellenic Language and Terminology”, and in Nicosia, Cyprus (2005) the 5th homonymous Conference, in cooperation with the University of Cyprus. The 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th Conferences were successfully organized in Athens again in 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017 and 2019 in Athens again, in cooperation with the University of Athens. In 2021, ELETO organized online the 13th Conference “Hellenic Language and Terminology”, in cooperation with the University of Cyprus.
  • ELETO has actively participated in various linguistic conferences concerning terminology in Greece, in Cyprus and in other European countries.
  • On March 23, 2006, ELETO organized a conference in Athens when Mr. Gabriel de Broglie, president of the General Commission of Terminology and Neology (France) analysed the system for the enrichment of the French language operating in France, and the chairman of ELETO’s General Scientific Board (GESY) Mr. Kostas Valeontis presented ELETO’s proposal for the establishment of an analogous system for the terminological enrichment of Greek.

Publications

  • Conference proceedings of all the above mentioned conferences “Hellenic Language and Terminology”, 1st to 13th, have been published.
  • Since 1993, ELETO issues the bimonthly leaflet “OROGRAMMA”, which is mailed or e-mailed for free to 2.000 ordinary and electronic recipients.
  • Copies of all texts of the lectures organized by ELETO are given to the respective participants.

Cooperation

ELETO actively participated (December 1999 – October 2000) in the Coordination Committee and the Working Group of the National Programme for Terminological Coordination (EPOS) and contributed substantially to the preparation of the “Strategic Study” and the “Terminology Business Plan” of EPOS, submitted to the 3rd Community Support Frame for funding, but not approved.

Additionally, ELETO has developed fruitful cooperation with bodies with similar purposes, both in Greece and abroad, i.e. universities, organizations and associations, specifically with Institute for Language and Speech Processing (ILSP).

Training

ELETO has organized lectures about various topics concerning language and terminology, such as with

  • Ionian University in its Postgraduate Programme of the Department of Translation and Interpretation (lectures on «Terminology standardization», years 2001-2002),
  • University of Athens, Technical University of Athens, and ILSP, in the Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Programme «Technoglossia» (courses of lectures «Principles of terminology and terminography», years 2003-2014).

Products

  • ELETO’s collective members have produced a lot of terminology works, bilingual or multilingual dictionaries or vocabularies of terms, or Hellenic Standards, including several thousands of Greek equivalent terms for the EU Term Bank EURODICAUTOM (now IATE).
  • Since November 2001 to 2011, ELETO had been cooperating with Athens University of Economics and Business in offering – on the Internet – free use of INFORTERM, a trilingual (GR, EN, FR) database of Information Technology terms produced by ELETO’s collective member ELOT/TE48/OE1 (Information Technology Terminology).
  • Since December 1, 2003, ELETO, in cooperation with the Hellenic Telecommunications Organization (OTE), has been offering free use of TELETERM, a quadrilingual (GR, EN, FR, DE) database of Telecommunications terms produced by ELETO’s collective member MOTO (Permanent Group for Telecommunications Terminology) (Web site: http://www.moto-teleterm.gr/).
  • On its website, ELETO offers the termbase TERMTERM (terminology produced by ELETO’s collective member ELOT-TEE/TE21). Since 2013, according to a Memorandum of Understanding signed by ELETO and Termnet, a lot of terms of the termbase TERMTERM are contained in the four-language (EN, FR, DE, EL) homonymous termbase “TermTerm”, which is offered for use by a larger part of the worldwide public (https://termterm.kaleidoscope.online/terminology/search).
  • On the webpage Dictionaries and Glossaries there are uploaded products of ELETO’s collective members or products of other bodies adopted by ELETO (GESY).