towards-a-glossary - Documentational approach to didactics - Multilingual

The design of a DAD multilanguage glossary could be conceive as the result of the translating process, facing semantic issues for denominating the essential concepts of the theory. 

Trouche (2019) evokes his experience in teaching, in English, in China: explaining a definition in a very different language provides opportunities to deepen the corresponding concept, to give examples and counter-examples. For example, what could be a Chinese explanation, and, if possible, translation, of critical term of DAD such as instrumentation and instrumentalisation? And, reciprocally, what could be an English explanation, and, if possible, translation, of the Chinese expression Mo ké? The process of denominating concepts is essential for the development of each scientific field (Rousseau and Morvan 2000).

Such work has existed in other emergent fields, for example, in the field of TEL (technology-enhanced learning), with two meta-projects, intending to create an intellectual platform to support the conceptual and theoretical integration in this research area: a TEL Thesaurus and a TEL Dictionary. “Both tools are fully interdisciplinary, multilingual and take into account the multicultural and epistemological roots of research on learning”. Far from hiding the difficulty arising from translation processes, this platform profits from these issues for enriching the concepts at stake. For each language taken into account by the platform, a list of terms is proposed. An editor is in charge of each of them, and proposes for it: a definition, comments on its history, related terms, the translation issues, the disciplinary issues, and some key references. The editor is also in charge of accepting and managing the contributions proposing complementary or alterna- tive views on each aspect of the “identity card” of this term in a given language.

A perspective for the DAD-Multilanguage project: developing in. this direction a DAD living and multi-language glossary, "a condition for developing a scientific community, its concepts, and methods. It is also a condition for each researcher to express his/her analyses and write papers in his/her own language, necessary for both the dissemination of a new theoretical frame and its enrichment in encountering other cultures of teaching and of research” (Trouche 2019, p. 455)"