Standardisation has been a key factor of industrialisation since the XIX century. The beginning of this development is illustrated by the metre replacing other traditional units of measure. The standardisation of specific languages, such as technical or scientific languages, has been the necessary companion of this development, although on occasions more explicitly than at other times. I would like to mention Eugen Wüster, the founder of terminology as a discipline, who was also an industrialist and an electrical engineer. In 1936, he founded the ISA/TC 37, precursor of the ISO committee governing language and terminology standards: the ISO TC37.
Wüster’s goal was clearly pragmatic: to overcome the ambiguity and variances of natural languages to obtain a universal and unambiguous language, to be able to share technical and scientific knowledge, all this framed within the Vienna Circle. Over time, this goal was enhanced and changed, influenced by other linguistic movements, technical developments and economic factors. Nowadays the scope of ISO TC37 includes the standardisation of descriptions, resources, technologies and services, not only related to terminology, but also to translation, interpreting and other language-based activities in the multilingual information society.
The ISO TC37 has five subcommittees responsible for the different topics related to terminology and language resources. These committees have produced a number of standards that govern terminology and terminography activities and practices from different perspectives.
For instance, there is the ISO 22128:2008 standard. It outlines some generally-accepted terminology procedures to provide a common basis to the suppliers of these products and services, as well as their customers, so they may agree services. This standard focuses on specialised and controlled languages, i.e. corporate languages. The opposite are general language resources.
It is also worth mentioning the ISO 12616-1:2021 standard, which specifically sets out term collection requirements for translation purposes. This implies a radical simplification of their structures and terminography procedures.
And of course we need to mention the ISO 30042:2019 standard, which defines the XML format used for exchanging terminological data.
However, this is also a small part of them. Please refer to the ISO TC37 website for further information here.