Relationships in Multilingual Thesauri

Abstract

Because the multilingual thesaurus has a critical role to play in the global networked information world, its relational structure must come under close scrutiny. Traditionally, identity of relational structures has been sought for the different language versions of a multilingual thesaurus, often leading to the artificialization of all target languages. The various types of cross-lingual and intralingual relations found in thesauri are examined in the context of two questions: Are all types of thesaural relations transferable from one language to another? and Are the two members of a valid relation in a source language always the same in the target language(s)? Two options for resolving semantic conflicts in multilingual thesauri are presented.