Informatics Glossary

Dean Tudor is a professor of Journalism at the Ryerson Polytechnical
Institute.

The previous edition of this book was titled Electronic Data Processing;
the shift reflects the changes in computers in only a decade. In fact,
of the 750 terms here, about 550 are brand new: they simply had never
existed before microcomputers. This glossary lists the “official”
words used by the Translation Bureau when it converts texts from French
to English and English to French (the Bureau manages to translate some
200,000 documents a year). Thus, there are no definitions—just
appropriate meanings in the other of Canada’s two official languages.
Other books in the glossary series concern such topics as diplomacy,
acid rain, human rights, pensions, records management, and graphic arts.
For each book the English language concentrates on British usage; hence,
one has disk, programme, and analogue. Each book also contains a short
bibliography of additional sources. The English words are given in blue
ink; the French words are in black ink. The sequence follows strict
alphabetical order, no matter what language one begins with. Typical
English words are “acoustic coupler,” “log-off,” and
“WYSIWYG” (which looks the same in both French and English, but
surely must be pronounced differently in French; no indication is
given). A useful book, but I cannot help wondering if it is
self-defeating since about 80 percent of all databases in the world are
in English and more are becoming so every day; soon English will be the
lingua franca of data communications (as it is in air traffic control).