Verso un modello di variazione terminologica: un'analisi della terminologia della gestione dei rifiuti in testi normativi

The industry of cross-border waste-shipment is growing considerably in the EU economy. As a result, there is an increasing need of specialized translations in this field. With the aim of designing a translation-oriented glossary to help professional translators, the terminology extracted from an ad-hoc multilingual corpus has been analyzed to identify terminological variation. The results provided by this analysis prove that terminological variation is found on multiple levels, thus challenging Wüster's principle of monosemy. Following the traditional definition of term as relationship between concept and denomination, this paper proposes a model for the description of terminological variation explained through examples taken from the previously examined terminology. Here, concept and denomination are seen as two components that are subject to variation. Conceptual variation includes polysemy and homonymy, while denominational variation includes synonymy, i.e. diastratic, graphic and geographic variants, as well as complex term reduction. These variations do not appear to be completely independent from one another, as denominational variation inevitably implies at least a slight conceptual shift.