Intresse och engagemang : Kungliga Tekniska högskolans insatser inom ett svenskt terminologiskt nätverk 1941–1983

Abstract

In this paper, we study how KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Kungliga Tekniska högskolan – KTH) has participated in and influenced terminology work coordinated by the national terminology centre, the Swedish Centre for Technical Terminology – the TNC, in Sweden during the period 1941–1983. The aim of this paper is to shed light on the development of Swedish (technical) terminology based on networking and experts’ efforts. Based on archive material, we analyze who have been the active KTH experts, in what ways they were involved in the development processes and what effects their efforts had on the term recommendations given by the TNC. The archive material consists of written documents relating to the work process developed by John Wennerberg, who led the TNC between 1941 and 1957. The process was carried out in the form of 373 formal survey letters representing 17 subject fields, with both the TNC and external parties participating. Our results show that the 31 identified KTH experts play a visible role in the processes by 480 received survey letters within 14 subject fields. The response rate, 80 percent, reveal the experts’ involvement in the process and their high esteem of TNC’s work. The analysis of the comprehensive survey letter R198 shows that Wennerberg has considered the experts’ answers regarding terms (selection, linguistic form, acceptance/discourage) and definitions when he has published TNC’s recommendations. Our study shows that networking and experts representing the educational sector and furthermore universities have been an inseparable part of the development of Swedish (technical) terminology during several decades when the national terminology centre in Sweden began to operate and the working methods were established.