IIW History 1948-1958

COMMISSION VI

TERMINOLOGY

r. CONSTITUTION AND TERMS OF REFERENCE.

One of the essential objects of the II\V being to promote the international exchange of welding literature, the Institute, from its foundation, attached great importance to the preparation of a multilingual collection of terms used in weld– ing and allied processes. The lack of understanding of technical terms in different languages consider– ably hampers technical progress because, to a large extent, it prevents the spread of scientific and technical knowledge which remains inaccessible to many engin– eers. In addition, if a term is not precisely understood, information is inaccur– ately interpreted. A ,,_,ide-spread circulation of technical information therefore necessitates the preparation of a multilingual collection of terms which enables its readers, by a comparison of the different languages, to grasp the exact sense of each term. But the difficulty of preparing such a collection for a process which is still young and quickly evolvi ng will be evident t o everyone. On its foundation, the II\i\T set up a Terminology Commission. At the be– ginning, this Commission, which is under the Chairmanship of lVIr F.lVI.L. V.-1.:N HORENBEECK (Belgium) included delegates from twelve countries. The num– ber of countries represented on it has progressively increased and numbered twenty in r957. The Vice-Chairman of the Commission has, from the start, been Prof. HERPOL (Belgium) and the Secretary Dr JVL-1.TTHEY (Switzerland), \\·ho, with J\fr H .-1.RDI)[G (United Kingdom), make up the Drafting Committee.