Turkish is Growing Stronger in the Language of Science The Dictionary of Natural Science Terms
TÜBA initiated the Turkish Dictionary of Science Terms Program in order to establish Turkish as the language of science, and to ensure that concepts and terms become Turkish in the development of scientific thought and research, and published The Dictionary of Natural Science Terms prepared within this scope.
Scientific thought and language are becoming Turkish
Launched in 2000 and carried out in four main areas, the Turkish Science Terms Dictionary Project has so far published and made available online the Glossaries of Engineering, Health and Social Sciences, and most recently the Dictionary of Natural Science Terms.
In the process of creating the TÜBA Dictionary of Natural Science Terms, simplicity and common usage structures that can be easily followed and interpreted by all stakeholders in scientific studies, daily language use, industry and all stakeholders were taken into consideration. Unlike its counterparts, for example, it does not cover all chemicals, but rather terms used in industry, science and all fields that are more common, new and not easily found in sources.
The editor of the work, Prof. Bekir Salih, who stated that the work was carried out with the aim of preserving the structure of Turkish but enriching it by interacting with other languages and using this richness in the field of Natural Sciences, reminded that the dictionary was opened to electronic access in 2016 with the intensive work of the scientific boards. As a result of more than two years of intensive work by a board of approximately 30 experts in their fields, consisting of Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, Biology and Molecular Biology and Genetics sub-disciplines, led by Prof. Salih, The Dictionary of Natural Science Terms, consisting of 10,000 terms, was published and shared with the public, updated every day in the electronic environment and presented to the benefit of science.
Underlining that new scientific developments are dizzying, Prof. Bekir Salih said that all experts have agreed on the renewal of the dictionary in order to include the equivalents of the terms as they are updated periodically and some terms are added to Turkish from languages other than English. “In the preparation of The Dictionary of Natural Science Terms, special attention was paid to the translation of terms into Turkish in accordance with the language of science, and in cases where this was not possible, to take the terms faithfully to the essence of the languages in which they were produced. Care has been taken to express the explanations of the terms in a simple, plain and easily understandable manner. Synonyms are given by referring to each other to facilitate the use of the dictionary. In this latest edition of Natural Sciences Terms, the English equivalents of the terms, as well as the terms with the same name but different expressions in different sub-disciplines, were also included in the dictionary.”