RAILWAY DICTIONARY

This portal combines two resources in the field of railways: the Railway Dictionary, jointly prepared by different institutions in the Basque Country, and the set comprised of the Diccionario del tren and the Diccionario políglota del tren, by Mario León. In addition to the contents of both resources, search results will automatically display the contents of Wikipedia and a direct link for looking up the term in other dictionaries (see Help).

RAILWAY DICTIONARY

Presentation

The Railway Dictionary is a specialised dictionary for the automotive sector. New terms are being coined in this sector all the time, and we are convinced of the need to compile and analyse them. That is why we brought together various companies in the sector (CAF, Bizkaia Transport Consortium, Euskal Trenbide Sarea, Euskotren and Metro Bilbao) and with the help of the advisory service provided by terminology experts in the Elhuyar Language & Technology Unit we have produced this dictionary, in which we have gathered the terms we use in our everyday work, and which we are making available to the general public.

So, properly managing languages and setting up a language strategy at work is a key aspect for competitiveness, as it allows us to display greater proximity to the client. Bearing this aim in mind, there is no doubt that managing the terminology of our sector and our companies has been a very important step.

This dictionary seeks to gather the multilingual terminology of the railway sector and thus meet the terminology needs of companies, professionals and experts in this field.

We have produced the Railway Dictionary to be able to effectively meet the communication needs of automotive sector users. The dictionary has started off with 5,200 items used in the automotive sector in 4 languages (English, Basque, Spanish and French). The items have been classified into the different areas of railway engineering. 100 concepts of those 5,200 mentioned items will go accompanied with images. This content has been provided by Euskal Trenbide Sarea, Euskotren and Metro Bilbao.

To complete the project, terminology from the railway section of the Elhuyar Dictionary of Science & Technology has also been included.

Continuation of the project

This dictionary is no more than the start of a bigger project. In order to improve relations with clients and internal communication in the companies in the automotive sector, we are aiming to build a website that includes not only terminology but also other types of content like definitions, images, documentation, etc. which will be of tremendous use to us in our daily work.

To turn this new website into a showcase and source of information for railway companies, it is vital for more companies in the sector to join the project.

If you would like to receive further information about the project, please get in touch with us at: trengintzahiztegia@elhuyar.eus, and we will explore the various possibilities for collaboration.

Aim of the dictionary and general features

Our aim with this is to offer, in a precise and clear way, reliable, up-to-date basic terminology pertaining to the railway sector.

To produce it, we based ourselves on the documentation we use in companies, so it is a dictionary based on in-house terminology. It is a compilation of terms that companies in the sector use on a day-to-day basis and which seeks to help to clarify any doubts that may arise.

Features of the Railway Dictionary:

    • English: 5,239 terms
    • Spanish: 5,365 terms
    • Basque: 5,334 terms
    • French: 5,578 terms
    • 100 images
  2. All these terms are divided into the following 15 areas:
    • Organization - Data processing - Information
    • Organization
    • Finances
    • Transport - Marketing - Product development
    • Human resources and safety
    • Mechanical engineering (rolling stock)
    • Civil engineering
    • Communications
    • Accounting
    • General
    • Planning - Control - Audits
    • Production - Transactions - Infrastructures - Planning
    • Buying and sellings - Transactions - Services
    • Workshop
    • General technology
  4. We have linked the languages used in the automotive sector worldwide (English, Spanish and French) with Basque. That way the dictionary may be consulted in any of these 4 languages.
  5. We took into consideration the trends in current dictionaries and applied the technologies developed in Elhuyar’s Language and Technology unit to produce a useful, attractive dictionary.

Lexicographical work

  • Selecting the items: lists of terms, documents, catalogues, etc. provided by each company were used to produce this dictionary. Elhuyar undertook to gather the documents and produce statistics on the basis of them.
  • Processing the items: Elhuyar’s terminology working group undertook to establish the terminology and the area to which each item belongs. A range of sources were consulted to be able to carry out this work (Consult Sources).
  • Images: the choice of images to be included in the dictionary has been made by railway experts of the mentioned companies together with technicians from Elhuyar. The images have been obtained from the archives owned by Euskal Trenbide Sarea, Euskotren and Metro Bilbao.
  • The whole process was supervised by the railway experts in the companies.

Working Group

DIRECTION AND COORDINATION

  • CAF, Euskal Trenbide Sarea, Euskotren y Metro Bilbao

TECNICAL DIRECTION (Elhuyar):

  • Garbiñe Alkiza Lopez de Samaniego

EDITING (Elhuyar):

  • Garbiñe Alkiza Lopez de Samaniego
  • Klara Ceberio-Berger

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  • Bizkaia Transport Consortium
  • Joxe Begiristain CAF
  • Gorka Eraña Euskal Trenbide Sarea
  • Joseba Barrena Uribe Euskotren
  • Uxune Iriondo; Aitor Uribarri Metro Bilbao

COMPUTING (Elhuyar):

  • Mari Susperregi Indakoetxea Elhuyar

DESIGN:

SOURCES:

DICTIONARIES BY MARIO LEON

Mario León’s dictionaries are great collections of multilingual terms from the railway world. Both works reflect 8585 items and terms have been published in 9 languages, one of them Euskera. Both dictionaries are:

  • León, Mario (1997). Diccionario Políglota del Tren. Ed. Díaz de Santos.
  • León, Mario (1999). Diccionario del tren: vocabulario de términos ferroviarios definidos en español con traducción al alemán, francés, inglés, italiano y portugués. Luna Publicaciones.

For this portal, we have unified the contents of both works into a single collection. We would like to thank Mario León for the possibility of consulting his two dictionaries.