The Department of Maltese at the University of Malta is organising a public lecture in English on ‘Terminology and Minority Languages: The Case of the Catalan Language’ by Montserrat Serra Figueras.

The department has been working on the terminology of various subject fields, in particular traditional crafts and skills. A number of dissertations within the department have focused on collecting and documenting specific registers, whose terminologies are not necessarily codified by dictionaries. In addition, the department has an ongoing Research Seed Fund project, Ġabra Terminoloġika, with the aim of creating a terminological database for a large number of fields. 

Figueras is a lexicographer and terminologist at the Centre for Terminology Termcat, a public Catalan institution set up in Barcelona in 1985 to coordinate the research, standardisation and diffusion of Catalan terminology, which is actively engaged in different international terminology networks and organisations.

Figueras has a Bachelor’s degree in Catalan philology and Master’s degree in applied linguistics and language planning from the University of Barcelona. She has been working as a lexicographer and terminologist for a long time. As a lexicographer, she worked on the normative dictionary of the Catalan language. As a terminologist, she has been working at the Centre for Terminology Termcat for the last 20 years.

Figueras is now dealing with the terminology of the social sciences and food and gastronomy. She is also a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Language and Law.

This event is being coordinated by Michael Spagnol, head of the Department of Maltese and chairperson of the committee that deals with terminology within the National Council of the Maltese Language.

The lecture is being held today  at the Pietru Pawl Saydon Hall (Arts Lecture Theatre) located just outside the reception of the Faculty of Arts at the Tal-Qroqq campus at 6pm.