Limitations of Regular Terminology Development Practices: the Case of isiZulu Computing Terminology

Terminology development for a scientific discipline is an essential prerequisite for education in the chosen language. The young disciplines of Computer Science and Information Technology are lagging behind in this respect for many non-English languages. Between the few resources for isiZulu that exist, isiZulu computer literacy terms often differ. This suggests that any resultant terminology in an evolving scientific discipline will differ depending on who is consulted and how, affecting its quality and stability. We evaluated this with three experiments: an experts-only workshop, two online surveys, and voting on computer literacy terms. We obtained the, at present, longest list consisting of 233 terms for 146 entities. There are notable differences in preferred terms between experts and computer literate users, and while the passive voting yielded more results quicker than the surveys, some entities still have many different isiZulu terms. The results indicate that a broadly participative and inclusive collection and proposal stage yielding multiple contenders for an entity should be a compulsory and explicit stage before, and possibly also during, multidisciplinary terminology development workshops.