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From: timos@ucbingres
Newsgroups: net.nlang.greek
Subject: Re: english to greek csc terminology
Message-ID: <552@ucbvax.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 2-May-84 20:42:22 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.552
Posted: Wed May  2 20:42:22 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 4-May-84 02:30:39 EDT
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Organization: U.C. Berkeley
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From: timos@ucbingres (Timos Sellis)

	To my knowledge the problem of building a greek terminology
for computer science terms has not been attacked to a large extent
by anybody in Greece. The only person that might have something
to say on the problem is Christos Papadimitriou who has faced the
actual problem when he first tought computer science courses in
Greece (EMP or NTUA). 

	It seems yo me that there is an inherent difficulty in trying
to come up with one word translations of one word terms in english.
This seems to be a general aspect in language translators and has been
a research question for many years (actually still open). Even if this
becomes simpler in a scientific environment. The difference with engi-
neering (as pointed out by Panos) is that it has a long history and
the words used to express the basic ideas were simple . On the other
hand there are still engineering terms not easily expressable in
Greek and I can assume that these terms refer to more recent ideas
(recent -- last 30 years). Also the difference with computer science
seems to be the non-engineerish nature of it. So words from the theory
and software disciplines have a very broad range (and more "abstract")
while in hardware things tend to be more technical.

	It would be interesting though to see something done in this
area. The "start up" university in Crete (Kriti) seems to be a per-
fect candidate . It would be very interesting to give lectures in
Greek on all these areas and have the students build in them the ide-
as considering only Greek words. The problem though will be with text
books which inevitably will make people start talking in English , es-
pecially in the case of papers. And I am really very concerned of the
professors which will have to talk and write in Greek for their stu-
dents, talk and write in Greek-English with their colleagues (becau-
se this will makes things easier and they will be able to express
themselves without difficulties) and finally they will have to write
their papers in English in order to be submitted to conferences.
Let us hope that after some transient period there will be some ba-
sic terminology which will at least serve the purpose of building
the basic ideas of computer science.

		timos sellis
		(timos%ucbingres.BERKELEY)