Bringing IATE into the S emantic W eb Family (2025)

Abstract: This paper is an extension of previous work by the authors and other researchers that studies the application of the OntoLex-lemon model for representing the InterActive Terminology for Europe (IATE) database in the Semantic Web. While traditional XML-based approaches have been effective for multilingual terminological work, the Semantic Web enables richer, more interoperable representations. The study evaluates the suitability of OntoLex-lemon for modeling IATE’s complex structure and identifies limitations in existing vocabularies. To address these, this paper tries to identify orher existing vocabularies and ontologies that could satisfy those limitations, which include term reliability, regional usage, lifecycle statuses, lookup forms, and concept cross-references. Still, some representation requirements are not covered by existing vocabularies and may need to be further discussed within the community.

## introduction traditional computational formats to structure terminological resources, such as those based on xml, have proven effective in supporting multilingual terminological work within commercial and industrial settings. these standards enable terminology teams to enforce consistent terminology and communication clarity while reducing time and cost. despite these strengths, representing terminologies using semantic web principles offers significant additional benefits. unlike rigid xml hierarchies, semantic web standards such as rdf support more flexible, graph-based structures that facilitate incremental growth and easier integration. furthermore, they enable interoperability across diverse datasets regardless of their origin, providing robust mechanisms for linking terminological data across languages and resources, enhancing reuse and connectivity in ways that traditional formats cannot easily achieve. among the semantic web models for representing terminologies and language resources, skos foot_0 and ontolex-lemon foot_1 (hereforth, ontolex) @xcite are the most widely adopted. the skos model has been successfully applied to large-scale thesauri such as eurovoc @xcite , unesco thesaurus (pastor-sánchez, 2016), agrovoc @xcite , the-soz @xcite , and stw thesaurus for economics @xcite . in contrast to skos, ontolex offers a wider linguistic framework as it provides a standardized model for representing lexical information. in fact, it has been widely applied to model lexical resources, such as the apertium dictionaries @xcite and k dictionaries @xcite . however, the potential of this model has also been thoroughly studied to represent terminological resources @xcite . in this line, the most representative and widely exploited terminological database in the european union is the interactive terminology for europe (iate) foot_2 , which is the object of this study. ## iate in the semantic web iate, now iate2 @xcite , is the official terminology database of the european union. its primary purpose is to promote clarity and accuracy in the drafting and translation of eu documents, and it is freely accessible to the public. developed collaboratively by eu bodies and maintained by the translation centre for the bodies of the eu, iate contains millions of entries covering a wide range of domains, from law and finance to agriculture and science. the entries registered in this database can offer a wide range of information, not only terminological, but also lexicographical and conceptual. the representation of this resource has already been addressed in the literature. first, @xcite proposed the representation of an iate dump following the lemon vocabulary (foundation for the later ontolex model) @xcite and complementary rdf properties from the tbx (term base exchange) format, which was afterwards integrated in the terminotecardf project @xcite , a platform to integrate semantically published terminological resources in spanish. this first conversion of iate was also the object of another work that aimed to enrich this resource with automatic translations @xcite . this first attempt by @xcite to represent iate in rdf was further extended by the creation of terme-à-llod, a platform to convert and host terminological data based on tbx2rdf (di @xcite . given this context, in this paper we explore the potential of ontolex to meet the representation needs of iate, identifying limitations of this standard and proposing complementary vocabularies to fill such void. ## representation requirements of iate as mentioned in the introduction, the potential of ontolex to represent terminological resources has previously been analysed by the authors in @xcite . this work revised a set of authoritative terminological resources, including iate, and proposed an extension for the ontolex model, termlex foot_3 . some of the requirements reported, that may require further discussion, are as follows: to accommodate these requirements, we proposed the classes termlex:definition and termlex:source. continuing with this work, in the following sections we propose newly identified elements that need further discussion. ## conclusion and future work in this paper, we have explored the application of the ontolex model to the representation of iate. while this task has been addressed in previous studies-primarily focusing on parameters such as definitions, notes, sources, and reliability codes-our work has concentrated on modelling other distinctive features of iate. these include regional usage of terms, the life cycle of entries, lookup forms, and concept cross-references. on the one hand, we have encountered limitations with certain existing properties, such as in the representation of antonymic relations between concepts. on the other hand, some features of iate currently appear to be beyond the scope of representation. this is the case, for instance, with the source attribution for regional usage, or the treatment of lookup forms. as for future work, the representation of several cross-reference types remains an open issue. likewise, the modelling of the lifecycle of terminological entries is ongoing and may benefit from further discussion. beyond iate, we also aim to examine other terminological resources and assess their modelling requirements. one such example is termdat 12 , a database which considers the validation status foot_10 of a term record. cross-reference type property proposal is narrower than skos:broader is broader than skos:narrower is related to skos:related is not to be confused with owl:differentfrom is antonym of lexinfo:antonym is part of dcterms:ispartof, rico:isorwaspartof, dul:ispartof has as part dct:haspart, rico:hasorhadpart, dul:haspart is capital city of has as capital city dbo:capital is currency of has as currency dbo:currency is demonym of has as demonym wdt:p1549 is caused by dbo:causedby is cause of is predecessor of rico:precedesintime is successor of rico:rico:followsintime is seat of dul:haslocation has as seat dul:islocationof