Cover not available

Article published In: The terminological impact of pandemics: COVID-19 and beyond
Edited by Maria-Cornelia Wermuth and Paul Sambre
[Terminology 29:2] 2023
► pp. 306–350

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload EPUB
authorization required

Adherence to WHO’s terminology?

A multilingual analysis (EN/FR/ES) of COVID-19 terms in supranational (EU) and French and Spanish institutional settings and newspapers

 | Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), Estudis d’Arts i Humanitats, Barcelona
Published online: 26 October 2023
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/term.00072.mor
Abstract
What happens when terms are used, translated and coined under the pressure of a global pandemic? By analyzing ad hoc corpora from the leaders of the World Health Organization (WHO), European Commission (EC), Spain and France, as well as Spanish and French press, this corpus-based study aims to identify the extent to which the WHO influenced and contributed to the standardization of COVID-19-related terminology in French and Spanish during the pandemic.
Publicly available speeches from January 1, 2020 to September 30, 2021 delivered by these four institutional leaders were compiled and analyzed using corpus linguistics techniques. Use frequencies in the media provide contrasting data on term use in selected French and Spanish newspapers.
Results indicate that terminological variation was less pronounced for more established terminology and more widespread for terms coined during COVID-19. Furthermore, in some cases the analyzed supranational and national institutions and the press failed to adopt standardized WHO terminology. The study concludes that national institutions and the press did not rise to their potential as agents for the standardization and harmonization of WHO’s COVID-19-related terminology.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Research objectives
  • 3.Translation, information dissemination and terminological management during COVID-19
    • 3.1WHO’s linguistic policy and the role of institutional translation
    • 3.2European Commission’s supranational and France’s and Spain’s national institutional settings
    • 3.3Media and information dissemination
    • 3.4COVID-19-related terminological resources and analyses
  • 4.Theoretical framework
  • 5.Corpus design, compilation and methodology
  • 6.Analysis: Uses in supranational and national institutional settings
    • 6.1Terminology added to UNTERM in 2020–2021
      • 6.1.1COVID-19 pandemic
      • 6.1.2COVID-19 virus
      • 6.1.3Vaccine nationalism and vaccine equity
      • 6.1.4Physical distance/distancing & social distance/distancing
    • 6.2Terminology previously recorded in UNTERM
      • 6.2.1Personal protective equipment (PPE)
      • 6.2.2Pandemic preparedness
      • 6.2.3Herd immunity
      • 6.2.4Oxygen concentrator
  • 7.Discussion and conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Note
  • References
References (68)
References
Audureau, William. 2020. “Chronique. « Lundimanche », « apérue », « coronabdos »… Les Nouveaux Mots Du Confinement.” Le Monde, April 27, 2020. [URL]
Bailey, Stacy Cooper, Marina Serper, Lauren Opsasnick, Stephen D. Persell, Rachel O’Conor, Laura M. Curtis, Julia Yoshino Benavente, et al. 2020. “Changes in COVID-19 Knowledge, Beliefs, Behaviors, and Preparedness Among High-Risk Adults from the Onset to the Acceleration Phase of the US Outbreak.” Journal of General Internal Medicine 35 (11): 3285–92. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bainimarama, Frank and et al. 2021. “COVID-19 Shows Why United Action Is Needed for More Robust International Health Architecture.” Newsroom – World Health Organization, March 30, 2021.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
[BOE] Boletín Oficial del Estado. 1978. “The Spanish Constitution.” 1978. [URL]
Bowker, Lynne. 2020. “French-Language COVID-19 Terminology: International or Localized?” The Journal of Internationalization and Localization 7 (1–2): 1–27. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brezina, Vaclav, Pierre Weill-Tessier, and Tony McEnery. 2020. “#LancsBox v. 6.0. [Software].” [URL]
[BSGUO] Blavatnik School of Government. University of Oxford. 2022. “The Oxford Covid-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT).” 2022. [URL]
Cabré Castellví, M Teresa. 1998. “Do We Need an Autonomous Theory of Terms?” Terminology 5 (1): 4–19.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2000. “Elements for a Theory of Terminology: Towards an Alternative Paradigm.” Terminology 6 (1): 35–57.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2003. “Theories of Terminology: Their Description, Prescription and Explanation.” Terminology 9 (2): 163–99.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2016. “Per què és relativament fàcil de detectar neologismes i tan complicat de definir què són: breu apunt epistemològic.” In Mots d’avui, Mots de Demà, ed. by Observatori de Neologia, 127–31. Barcelona: Institut Universitari de Lingüística Aplicada. Universitat Pompeu Fabra; Documenta Universitaria.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
[CC] Conseil Constitutionnel. 1958. “Constitution of October 4, 1958.” 1958. [URL]
Dalloni, Michel. 2020. “Les Mots Du Covid : « Le lexique guerrier nous est imposé ».” Le Monde, October 12, 2020. [URL]
DeGooyer, Stephanie, and Srinivas Murthy. 2022. “Health Nationalism.” Dissent 69 (1): 69–75. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Domènech-Bagaria, Ona, and M. Amor Montané March. 2022. “Terminologia, neologia i COVID-19: anàlisi de la creativitat lèxica en català.” Revista de Llengua i Dret 771: 36–53. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
[EAGLES] EAGLES – Expert Advisory Group on Language Engineering Standards. 1996. “EAGLES Guidelines (1996).” 1996. [URL]
[EC] European Commission. 2014. The European Union Explained: How the EU Works. Your Guide to the EU Institutions. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2021. “Opening Address by President von Der Leyen at the Global Health Summit.” Press Corner. Speeches (blog). May 21, 2021. [URL]
Factiva. n.d. New York : Dow Jones & Reuters. [URL]
Fall, Papa Louis, and Yishan Zhang. 2012. “Multilingualism in the United Nations System Organizations: Status of Implementation. Note by the Secretary-General.” New York: United Nations. [URL]
Federal Chancellery. Switzerland. n.d. “Terminology Publications.” Accessed December 7, 2022. [URL]
Flores, Javier. 2020. “Glosario del coronavirus: todos los términos que rodean al Covid-19.” National Geographic. España, March 17, 2020. [URL]
Flowerdew, Lynne. 2013. “Corpus-Based Discourse Analysis.” In The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis, ed. by James Paul Gee, and Michael Handford, 174–87. Routledge. [URL]
Gross, Jenny, and Mariel Padilla. 2020. “From Flattening the Curve to Pandemic: A Coronavirus Glossary.” The New York Times, March 18, 2020. [URL]
[ICTV] International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses. 2020. “Naming the 2019 Coronavirus.” News Stories Posted in 2020 (blog). 2020. [URL]
INMATEC GaseTechnologie GmbH. 2020. “What Is the Difference between an Oxygen Concentrator and an Oxygen Generator?” FAQ. Frequently Asked Questions (blog). October 20, 2020. [URL]
Jelly, Christina A., Holly B. Ende, and Robert E. Freundlich. 2020. “Terminology, Communication, and Information Systems in Nonoperating Room Anaesthesia in the COVID-19 Era.” Current Opinion in Anaesthesiology 33 (4): 548–53. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Journal Regional. 2021. “Quels Sont Les Quotidiens Les plus Lus En France ?” Journalregional.Fr (blog). July 5, 2021. [URL]
Litmanovich, Diana E., Michael Chung, Rachael R. Kirkbride, Gregory Kicska, and Jeffrey P. Kanne. 2020. “Review of Chest Radiograph Findings of COVID-19 Pneumonia and Suggested Reporting Language.” Journal of Thoracic Imaging 35(6): 354–360. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lozinskiy, Nikolay V. 2020. “Multilingualism in the United Nations System : Report of the Joint Inspection Unit /.” Geneva: United Nations. [URL]
Maneo, Liz. 2021. “The Main Public Health Tool during 1918 Pandemic? Social Distancing.” The Harvard Gazette, March 25, 2021. [URL]
Marín Pérez, María José. 2019. “Exploring the Unexpected in Legal Discourse: A Corpus-Based Contrastive Analysis of Spanish and British Judgments on Immigration.” ESP Today 7 (2): 148–64. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2022. “A Corpus-Based Comparative Analysis of the Evaluative Lexicon Found in Judicial Decisions on Immigration.” In Law, Language and the Courtroom: Legal Linguistics and the Discourse of Judges, ed. by Stanisław Goźdź-Roszkowski, and Gianluca Pontrandolfo. New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Molloy, Sean. 2021. Emergency Law Responses to Covid-19 and the Impact on Peace and Transition Processes. International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. [URL].
Morales, Manuel. 2021. “Coronaplauso, covidiota... El virus también se extiende por el idioma.” El País, April 13, 2021. [URL]
Morales Moreno, Albert. 2022. “Exploració lexicomètrica del discurs sobre la COVID-19. Anàlisi de quatre contextos institucionals estatals i supranacionals.” Revista de Llengua i Dret, Journal of Language and Law 781: 155–176.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ormanova, Assel B., and Madina L. Anafinova. 2022. “А Linguistic Interference in Information Space Terms: A Corpus-Based Study in Kazakh.” Theory and Practice in Language Studies 12 (12): 2497–2507. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Perazzo, José María. 2010. “Bibliotecas de obras en español.” Naciones Unidas. Día Del Idioma Español. 23 de Abril (blog). 2010. [URL]
Prieto Ramos, Fernando, and Diego Guzmán. 2017. “Legal Terminology Consistency and Adequacy as Quality Indicators in Institutional Translation: A Mixed-Method Comparative Study.” In Institutional Translation for International Governance : Enhancing Quality in Multilingual Legal Communication, ed. by Fernando Prieto Ramos, 81–101. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Prieto Ramos, Fernando, and Albert Morales Moreno. 2019. “Terminological Innovation and Harmonization in International Organizations: Can Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth?” In Legal Translation: Current Issues and Challenges in Research, Methods and Applications, ed. by Ingrid Simonnæs and Marita Kristiansen, 87–110. Berlin: Frank & Timme. [URL]
Prieto Ramos, Fernando, Jiamin Pei, and Le Cheng. 2020. “Institutional and News Media Denominations of COVID-19 and Its Causative Virus: Between Naming Policies and Naming Politics.” Discourse & Communication 14 (6): 635–52. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
[RAE] Real Academia Española. 2020. “¿Es «el COVID-19» o «la COVID-19»?” Dudas Rápidas (blog). 2020. [URL]
Riaz, Mehr Muhammad Adeel, Unaiza Ahmad, Anmol Mohan, Ana Carla dos Santos Costa, Hiba Khan, Maryam Salma Babar, Mohammad Mehedi Hasan, Mohammad Yasir Essar, and Ahsan Zil-E-Ali. 2021. “Global Impact of Vaccine Nationalism during COVID-19 Pandemic.” Tropical Medicine and Health 49 (1): 101. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ro, Christine. 2020. “Why We’ve Created New Language for Coronavirus.” BBC Worklife, May 25, 2020. [URL]
Saladrigas, María Verónica, Laura Munoa, Fernando A. Navarro, and Paz Gómez Polledo. 2020. “Glosario de Covid-19 (EN-ES) Abreviado.” Panace@: Revista de Medicina, Lenguaje y Traducción XXI (51): 110–72.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sánchez Ibáñez, Miguel, and Joaquín García Palacios. 2014. “Semantic Characterization of Terms as a Trace of Terminological Dependency.” Terminology. International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Issues in Specialized Communication 20 (2): 171–97. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Secretaría de Estado de Comunicación. 2021. “Conferencia al inicio del curso político ‘Por una recuperación justa.’” La Moncloa. Intervenciones Del Presidente Del Gobierno y Comparecencias (blog). January 9, 2021. [URL]
Selznick, Philip. 1957. Leadership in Administration. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Statista. 2022. “Número de lectores diarios de los principales periódicos españoles En 2021.” Statista (blog). February 2, 2022. [URL]
Stefanowitsch, Anatol. 2020. Corpus Linguistics: A Guide to the Methodology. Zenodo. [URL]
The Global Fund. 2022. “Personal Protective Equipment.” COVID-19. Health Product Supply (blog). September 6, 2022. [URL]
[UNDGC] United Nations Department of Global Communications. 2020. “The United Nations Supports Frontline COVID-19 Response.” United Nations. COVID-19 Response (blog). March 27, 2020. [URL]
[UNDP] United Nations Development Programme. 2022. “Global Dashboard for Vaccine Equity.” UNDP. Data Futures Platform (blog). 2022. [URL]
UNICEF, World Health Organization, and IFRC. 2020. “Key Messages and Actions for COVID-19 Prevention and Control in Schools. March 2020.” New York: UNICEF New York. [URL]
[UNRICWE] UN Regional Information Centre. 2021. “Guterres Calls Failure to Share Vaccines a ‘Moral Outrage.’” UN Regional Information Centre (blog). February 22, 2021. [URL]
Wang, Peng. 2019. “Translation in the COVID-19 Health Emergency in Wuhan: A Crisis Manager’s Perspective.” The Journal of Internationalization and Localization 6 (2): 86–107. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
[WHA] World Health Assembly. 1978. “Documentation and Languages of the Health Assembly and the Executive Board (Tenth Plenary Meeting, 18 May 1978 (Committee B, Second Report)).” Governing Body Documents. World Health Organization. [URL]
[WHO] World Health Organization. 2011. “Pandemic Preparedness.” Newsroom. Fact Sheets (blog). March 25, 2011. [URL]
. 2015. “Technical Specifications for Oxygen Concentrators.” Geneva: World Health Organization.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2017. Communicating Risk in Public Health Emergencies: A WHO Guideline for Emergency Risk Communication (ERC) Policy and Practice. World Health Organization. Geneva. [URL]
. 2020. Basic Documents. Forty-Ninth Edition (Including Amendments Adopted up to 31 May 2019). Geneva: World Health Organization. [URL]
. 2020a. “Novel Coronavirus(2019-NCoV). Situation Report.” Situation Report 10. Geneva: World Health Organization.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2020b. “Technical Specifications of Personal Protective Equipment for COVID-19. Interim Guidance. 13 November 2020.” Geneva: World Health Organization.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2020c. “Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19): Herd Immunity, Lockdowns and COVID-19.” Newsroom. Questions and Answers (blog). 2020c. [URL]
. 2020d. “Herd Immunity, an ‘Unethical’ COVID-19 Strategy, Tedros Warns Policymakers.” UN News. Global Perspective. Human Stories (blog). 2020d. [URL]
. 2020e. “Liberia: WHO Donates Oxygen Concentrators to Boost COVID-19 Response.” Newsroom. Feature Stories (blog). 2020e. [URL]
. 2021. “WHO Director-General’s Opening Remarks at the Media Briefing on COVID-19 – 30 July 2021.” WHO Director-General. Speeches (blog). July 30, 2021. [URL]
. 2022. “Advice for the Public: Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19).” Diseases. Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19). Advice for the Public (blog). October 5, 2022. [URL]
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Valdeón, Roberto A.
2025. Journalistic translation research twenty-five years on: methods, topics and prospects. Perspectives 33:4 ► pp. 635 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 6 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue