Taxonomy

THE INTERINSTITUTIONAL TAXONOMY GROUP (ITG)

The group is made up of seven translators — three from the Commission (Nikolai Chernev, Gaëlle Clément and Arnolds Žubeckis), three from the Council (Sylvaine Bereder, Barbara Turk and Martin Ciesko) and one from the European Parliament (Egle Staskuniene). Its main task is to set writing rules for updating Latin and MUL entries (abbreviations) on biological species (fish, animals, plants, micro-organisms, etc.) in IATE and update these rules whenever necessary.

These rules have been approved by the central terminology coordination units of the Commission, the Council and the Parliament, and should be complied with whenever creating or updating a taxonomic entry (i.e. an entry identifying a biological species or group of species and its position in a hierarchical classification system).

The ITxG also helps to consolidate the IATE database, with the ultimate aim of having a single entry for each taxon.

Translators from any of the EU institutions, as well as terminologists, drafters, lawyer linguists, etc., may contact the group about the content of any taxonomic entries in IATE. Write to the functional mailboxes
DGT-TAXONOMY@ec.europa.eu and ling.taxonomy@consilium.europa.eu or if necessary contact members of the group individually.

Take a look at this list of examples of IATE entries that closely follow these writing rules and can serve as a guide for your work..
INTERINSTITUTIONAL WRITING RULES FOR TAXONOMY ENTRIES IN IATE

Basic principles

  • Purpose: to facilitate the correct and consistent translation of EU documents. Latin is used as the reference language for taxonomy, with The International Code of Virus Classification and Nomenclature allowing for non-Latinised names at species level. The Latin part of the entry should include:
    • (a) correct information on the accepted scientific name (normally the name used in EU legislation); and
    • (b) relevant information on any other name(s) used in EU legislation1 (where these differ from the accepted scientific name).
  • Content: entries in IATE must cover only one concept, meaning that there should be an entry for species ‘XXX’ and a separate entry for ‘XXX spp.’2 (see notes concerning ‘spp.’ in LIL, Latin and MUL).
  • Structure: in principle, an entry should contain only one term. Additional term fields are justified if the terms included have also been used in EU legislation3.
    • First displayed term: the scientifically accepted name, whether the one used in EU legislation or not.
    • Subsequent terms: the names used in EU legislation if not the scientifically accepted names, along with a language usage note (read more about language usage references in term level).
    • Other names can be inserted as a lookup form along with relevant information in the note or language usage fields (read more about lookup forms and language usage at term level).
  • Sources: Whenever possible, information about a taxon is taken from the list of recommended taxonomic databases, which is drawn up and updated by the Interinstitutional Taxonomy Group (ITxG)4. If no useful information is found in the recommended sources, look for information in other web-based or print sources (preferably scientific publications). Avoid using EU documents (legislation and internal documents) as primary sources for taxonomic entries.
FOOTNOTES
  1. For various reasons, a certain number of IATE entries still contain names of taxa which have never been used in EU documents. ↩︎
  2. Consideration must be given to how the term is used in EU legislation (for example, the use of a genus name by itself in EU legislation is extremely rare). Generally, a documentary entry is in LA only and is created for a genus name appearing by itself (‘XXX’), whereas a complete entry (in multiple languages) is created for ‘XXX spp.’, with a cross-reference to the entry explaining the abbreviation ‘spp.’ and a cross-reference to the entry, created for documentary purposes, containing only the genus name in LA. One such example is Ammodytes spp., which has a cross-reference to entry ‘spp.’ and to Ammodytes. ↩︎
  3. See Amblyraja radiata. ↩︎
  4. The latest version was published in 2020. ↩︎

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