TS ISO 12620

TS ISO 12620 addresses how data categories used in terminology and other language and content resources are defined, selected, and managed. Its central concern is to provide a shared conceptual framework for representing terms, features, and descriptive elements consistently across different language-resource environments through a Data Category Registry (DCR) approach.

What a data category registry organises

In general technical use, a data category is a meaningful unit of information that can be attached to a language resource, such as a grammatical property of a term, a type of definition, a usage label, or a source note. A registry structure of this kind helps align terminology databases, dictionaries, corpus-based systems, and machine translation environments. The standard specifies mechanisms for creating, selecting, and maintaining such data categories, and it also includes an interchange format for representing them.

Scope of application

• Terminological resources
• Lexicographical resources
• Corpus-based language resources
• Resources related to machine translation
• Management and interchange of data categories for language resources

The standard helps reduce confusion that arises when the same concept is represented differently across systems or at different levels of detail. In that sense, it provides a common reference logic for data modelling, terminology management, and language technology infrastructures. This edition of TS ISO 12620 is withdrawn, but its title and scope still show the technical problem it was designed to address: consistent definition and registry management of data categories for language resources.