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When entering a new term into IATE, you must fill in specific mandatory fields and keep in mind the rules and recommendations on this page.
This page contains the following sections:
HOW TO INSERT A TERM
To add a new term in a language not yet included in the entry, right-click on the relevant language code and select ‘Add new language’. Then, fill in all the relevant fields. Alternatively, you can click the ‘Add new language’ button at the end of the language bar.
To add a new term to an existing language (i.e. synonym or abbreviation), right-click on the language code and choose ‘Add term’, or click the ‘Add term’ button below the last existing term level (TL). You can also select ‘Add term’ from the Quick edit panel.
TERM FIELD
Each term field should have only one term, representing a single concept (as defined in the anchor language). Complex expressions containing multiple concepts should be split into separate entries.
You should follow these general grammar rules:
- Use singular forms for nouns and adjectives unless the term is habitually used in plural.
- Avoid articles or capital letters unless required by the language.
- Use the canonical form (e.g. nominative case) and specify the part of speech if needed.
In addition, adhere to the following rules and recommendations:
- Special language vs. everyday language: Do not add words from everyday language, unless they need to be harmonised in EU documents, or including them in IATE provides added value compared to dictionaries.
- Document titles: Do not create entries for the titles of secondary legislation, unless an instrument has acquired a short name that differs from its official title (e.g., ‘VAT Directive’). An entry created for such an instrument should have elements in the following order:
- Short form and/or abbreviation (e.g. ‘Groundwater Directive’ and ‘GWD’).
- Full title: Official title (e.g. ‘Directive 2006/118/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 December 2006 on the prevention and control of groundwater pollution’).
- Obsolete titles: Older titles marked as ‘obsolete’ in reverse chronological order.
- Incorrect terms: Commonly used incorrect terms should be included in the entry, so that they can be found when they appear in a source text. They must be marked as ‘Deprecated’ to ensure that they are not used in translations.
- Neologisms: Propose well-founded solutions, following appropriate processes in your language community, and indicate in a note that they are neologisms.
- Provisional solutions: When an organisation or an instrument does not yet have an official or definitive name (or any name at all) in your language, propose a provisional harmonised solution to prevent excessive variation in usage. Mark this term as ‘proposed’ in the ‘Evaluation’ field. Provide an explanation in the ‘Note’ field and update the entry when official information becomes available. If the organisation or instrument itself is only proposed and not yet established, label the entire entry as ‘proposed’ (via the ‘Lifecycle’ field at the language-independent level).
TERM REFERENCE
A term reference should always originate from a credible and authoritative source.
You can add several references to the same term by opening the term reference field for editing and clicking the ‘Add term reference’ button.
Use the ‘Add link’ icon to ensure links work properly and are created correctly. Look up and insert EUR-Lex references via the EUR-Lex reference module (click on the ‘EUR-Lex search’ icon).
For more details on referencing, see References.
TERM TYPE
To update the ‘Term type’ field:
- double-click on the ‘Term type’ field and
- select a value from the drop-down list.
The available values are:
- Term (default): A word or set of words which designates a general concept or an individual concept in a particular language.
- Abbrev: Abbreviation (acronym, initialism, contraction or truncation), to be written according to the rules applicable in the language in question (regarding capitalisation, punctuation, etc.).
- Short form: e.g. the common name of an agreement or the short, unofficial name of a country; any accepted shorter version of a title or name. Terms that contain an abbreviation should also be considered short forms.
- Phrase: Phraseological units that are not strictly speaking ‘terms’ (i.e. they do not denote a definable ‘concept’), but which nevertheless have a standard translation – and must therefore always be translated in the same way – or which occur repeatedly in our texts and pose real translation problems. When they are full sentences, typographical rules (i.e. on capitalisation and punctuation) should be followed.
- Formula: Chemical formulae, or mathematical and other scientific expressions, to be written wherever possible in accordance with international standards.
- Lookup form: A variation of a term (e.g. alternative spelling, common misspelling, plural, or inflected form) or an exceedingly rare synonym that shouldn’t be displayed as a term in the results page but should still lead to the correct entry when searched. You can only insert a lookup if the language contains at least one non-lookup term. Insert each lookup form in its own TL, underneath the non-lookup terms. For this term type, the term and term type field are mandatory and all other fields are optional. Terms stored as lookups are only retrieved when they match the search string exactly. A ‘Redirected from’ message in the results page informs the user that the entry has been retrieved because of a match to one of its lookups.
RELIABILITY
Reliability indicates the degree of the match between a particular term and the concept as defined in the anchor language, as well as the reliability of the sources used. Select the reliability value according to the following table:
| Code | Description | Explanation |
| ☆ | Downgraded prior to deletion | Assigned by a terminologist to indicate that a term can be deleted, e.g. as part of a consolidation project. |
| ★ | Reliability not verified | Automatically assigned to terms added by users in their non-working languages. The code will not change until the reliability is assessed by a user with editing rights for the language (usually a terminologist). All lookup forms have this reliability value, and it cannot be changed. |
| ★★ | Minimum reliability | Automatically assigned to terms added or updated by non-terminologist users in their working languages. Terminologists should change this value to three or four stars, unless they have doubts as to the reliability of the term because: – no relevant sources are available; – there are doubts concerning the reliability of the sources used; – the term is a neologism and has not been sanctioned by a competent body or source; – the sources available, though apparently reliable, present conflicting solutions. |
| ★★★ | Reliable | Automatically assigned to terms added by terminologists in their working languages, or manually assigned by a terminologist following a reliability assessment. Reliable terms should satisfy at least one of the following criteria, i.e. they should be: – obtained from a trusted source; – agreed on by a representative body of terminologists working in that language; – the common designation of the concept in its field. This code is usually sufficiently high for a well-researched term. |
| ★★★★ | Very reliable | Manually assigned by a terminologist following a reliability assessment. Very reliable terms are: – well-established and widely accepted by experts as the correct designation, or – confirmed by a trusted and authoritative source, in particular a reliable written source. Four stars indicate that the terminologist was absolutely certain of the choice, e.g. for the original-language name of an organisation (as defined in its constitution or founding instrument) or for a legal concept created by a legislative act (in all authentic language versions of that act). |
 The value ★★★ ‘Reliable’ was automatically assigned to terms on many entries following the merge of existing databases to create IATE. Therefore, some entries marked as ‘reliable’ do not necessarily satisfy the criteria for this reliability value. |
TERM DISPLAY ORDER
You can change the order in which terms are displayed within a given language. You can do this by dragging and dropping them into their desired positions (see detailed steps in the ‘Data modification’ page). Changing the display order does not trigger an unvalidation.
The recommended display order is as follows:
- Order by term type: term, short form, abbrev, formula, lookup
| An entry for a concept should not include a phrase. An entry for a phrase should contain a single phrase per language and no other term types. |
- Order by evaluation: preferred, no value, admitted, deprecated and obsolete
- Order by reliability: place higher reliability terms at the top
- Order by validation status: place validated terms at the top.
Terms from IATE 1 are sorted as follows:
- Term group
- Term type
- Evaluation
- Reliability
- Validation status