Press release

The Basque Government and the three provincial governments publish the “Dictionary of Social Services”

- The dictionary is a specialized resource for the social services sector that collects 4,000 terms in Spanish and 3,165 in Basque, classified in 9 areas.

- The social services departments of the four administrations have compiled terminology, with the collaboration of experts in terminology of the Language and Technology unit of Elhuyar.

- Available to download also the mobile app on Google Play Store and iTunes

The Provincial Councils of Araba, Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa and the Basque Government have included in the network the Dictionary of Social Services. You can consult http://gizartekintza hiztegia.eus/ and if you want also on your mobile by downloading the Elhuyar GZ hiztegia app (from Google Play or iTunes).

This dictionary was developed from the Dictionary of Social Work edited by the Provincial Councils of Álava, Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa in 1998 together with Elhuyar. The first work has been to update the vocabulary that has turned 17, adapting it to the terminology currently used in the area of social services.

The Social Services Dictionary is the specialized dictionary for the social services sector. In this sector new terms are continually emerging, and in our daily work we have clearly seen the need to collect and analyze them. For this reason, we have merged the Departments of Social Services of the Provincial Council of Álava, the Provincial Council of Bizkaia, the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa and the Basque Government, and, under the advice of experts in terminology of the Language and Technology unit of Elhuyar, we have created the following dictionary. We wanted to collect the terms we use in our work and make them available to society.

We have created the Social Services Dictionary as a useful tool for daily work. Each area has its own terminology that responds to its needs and functions, and if this is not combined, there is a risk that certain problems of understanding and interpretation arise. At the same time, our objective has been to promote and normalize the use of Basque in this area.

For this reason, we have created the Social Services Dictionary to respond in a simple and effective way to the communication needs among the people who work in this field of work.

Dictionary Features

In it, for the first time, we have collected about 3,000 concepts that are used in the social services sector, both in Basque and Spanish. These concepts are classified in the field of social services, and for the creation of a field tree we have based on the classification of the Universal Decimal System in social services and the knowledge of experts in social services.

To complete this dictionary, in addition to the Dictionary of Social Work, the information obtained from the translation memories of the Provincial Council of Álava, the Provincial Council of Bizkaia, the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa and the Basque Government has been used. To do this, we have selected the 1,000 most significant and used pairs of terms we have selected from translation memories. When searching for a term, in addition to the corresponding translation, it will show the context in which the word has been used, both in Spanish and in Basque. Also, the user can know the source of each term.

Dictionary data:

The Social Services Dictionary collects the basic concepts in this area. The dictionary contains approximately 3.ooo concepts that are distributed according to the language as follows:

- 4,000 Spanish terms

- 3.165 terms in Basque

All these concepts and terms are classified into 9 areas:

- Applied knowledge

- Reasons for intervention

- Support bases

- Agents

- Recipients

- Facilities and resources

- Services and services

- Key concepts

- Organization

Preparing dictionaries

- Concept selection: the lists of terms and translation memories of each entity have been used to elaborate this dictionary. The collection of documentation and statistics of the entities participating in the project has been carried out by Elhuyar.

- Elaboration of concepts: Elhuyar's terminology team has been in charge of developing the terminology and area of each concept. Various sources of consultation have been used for this work.

- The whole process has been supervised by specialists of the social services of the Provincial Council of Álava, Provincial Council of Bizkaia, Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa and Basque Government.