About the Dictionary

The Multilingual Dictionary of Indexing Terms is a tool for bilingual and multilingual indexers who index in languages other than English. It may also be helpful to those who are interested in improving their foreign language skills.

The dictionary does not claim to include all terms and their variants, nor is it a controlled vocabulary. For each concept, we have limited the number of alternate terms to three per language. Languages differ and so do the number of terms for a specific concept. Also note that in some cases a particular language uses one term for two different concepts.

This dictionary is a work-in-progress. Inaccurate terms can be corrected. New terms can be added and so can new languages. The dictionary can also be extended by expanding the number of terms and their variants.

How the indexing dictionary began

The idea for the dictionary came about in a group discussion on the theme of bilingual indexing at the 2021 online conference of the Indexing Society of Canada/Société canadienne d’indexation (ISC/SCI). Early in the discussion, the topic shifted to multilingual indexing and the lack of knowledge about the indexing terminology used in various languages.

After the conference, the interest continued. In a matter of months, thirteen distinguished indexers contributed to a glossary of 127 concepts with over 900 terms, over six languages. The initial collection was published in The Indexer (Vol. 39, No. 4, December 2021), in the article “Dictionary of Basic Indexing Terminology” by Jochen Fassbender.

Today, the dictionary consists of 179 concepts for the large collections and 35 concepts for the basic collections. Altogether there are over 1,800 terms in 14 languages.

Contributors

28 individuals from 11 countries have contributed to 14 languages so far (profession indicated unless indexer).

  • Sam Arnet (Switzerland): English, German
  • Silvia Benvenuto (Italy): Italian
  • Pierke Bosschieter (The Netherlands): Dutch
  • Michelle Brumby (UK): French
  • Carla DeSantis (Canada): English, Spanish
  • Caroline Diepeveen (The Netherlands): Dutch
  • Jochen Fassbender (Germany): German, English, Spanish, Japanese
  • Fujita Setsuko (Japan): Japanese
  • Carlos Garcia-Jane (UK): Catalan
  • Alexandre Grandmaître (Canada): French
  • Stephanie Hoyet (UK, librarian): French
  • Christine Jacobs (Canada): English, French
  • Dafydd Jones (UK, Welsh lexicographer): Welsh
  • Jolanta N. Komornicka (Canada): Polish, Czech
  • Lam Lai Heung (New Zealand): Chinese
  • Sergey Lobachev (Canada): Russian
  • Maureen MacGlashan (UK): English
  • Geneviève Mangerel (Canada): French
  • Susie Marques (UK): Portuguese, English, French, Welsh
  • Francesco Mosetti Casaretto (Italy, Latin professor): Italian
  • Ann Parry Owen (UK, Welsh professor): Welsh
  • Natalia Pérez Ramos (Spain, translator): Spanish
  • Janet Perlman d. 2026 (USA) : Spanish
  • Arthur Perret (France, assistant professor of information and communication sciences): French
  • Jacqueline Pitchford (Germany): Dutch
  • Rosalba Putrino (The Netherlands): Italian
  • François Trahan (Canada): French
  • Pilar Wyman (USA): English, Spanish

Contact

  • For more information about the dictionary, contact Jochen Fassbender (jf@indexetera.de)
  • For questions about using this website, contact JoAnne Burek (joanne@wordbeats.com)