Many countries have organized terminological research and have created either administrative agencies or complete centers for

work on special terms. The institutionalization of practical work on terminology has the advantage of allowing a better coordination of work and an increased rationalization of economic and human resources. Terminological activity, particularly if it aims at covering all specialized areas, requires a substantial investment of resources. If government agencies take charge of terminological activities, they can give new terms a legitimacy that they could never obtain from a non-governmental body, no matter how highly organized or well researched. In most countries with an active language planning policy the administrative agencies responsible for implementing it also take charge of terminology, whether directly or indirectly via the creation or support of a specialized centre. Despite the advantages of a government presence in terminological activities, official bodies cannot ignore academic institutions, semi-official centers or the private sector, because they expertise in special subjects. Allowing non-governmental bodies the direct users of terminology - to become separated from the terminology process does not benefit the standardization of a language, which requires the direct involvement of all speakers and a militant attitude towards using the language. Users of terminology must thus feel they are a part of the process in order to ensure the quality of work and the effective use of the terminology produced. End-users must be members of standardization committees; they should head research teams, and participate in the planning stages of future work.

Translation is a process aimed at facilitating communication between speakers of different languages. Multilingual terminology activity supports technical translation. Translation implies understanding the source text and this requires knowledge of the specific terms of the source and target language. This means, in turn, that technical translators must have some familiarity with the subject matter they are translating. A good technical translation not only has to express the same content as the source text, but it also has to do so in the forms that a native reader of the target language would use. In the case of a specialized translation, the reader would be a specialist in the field. As a result, good technical translators must choose the topics they want to work in and attain minimal competence in some specific field in order to be certain to respect the content and form of the languages they work in. The characteristics of scientific texts, including economic texts (doctoral dissertations, technical reports, formal lectures, specialized articles in learned journals, etc. ) reflect this tendency towards impersonalization and objectivity by using elements like: First person plural as a means of expressing modesty The present tense Absence of exclamations Short sentences Avoidance of unnecessary redundancy

Frequent use of impersonal formulae Noun phrases Other systems of representation, e.g. drawings, tablets, in the body of the text. Special language texts can also present some other features which distinguish them from general language: They often represent an implicit dialogue between the writer and the recipient of the message: They often represent an implicit dialogue between the writer and the recipient of the message. They do not implicitly present personal positions: when they do occur they are indicated by such phrase as e.g. according to the author, in our opinion, we believe that, etc.). They attempt to persuade the reader indirectly, although it might not be done explicitly, by providing arguments, citing data, providing examples, explaining, etc. They introduce metalinguistic elements such as explanations, definitions, parenthetical material, synonyms, etc. The number of these functional resources used in each text depends on the degree of specialization of the communication, and on the prior knowledge of the readers of the specialized communication. The less expert the reader, the more redundant the text will be and the more metalinguistic elements it will contain.