Abstract

This article describes the constitution and exploitation of a monolingual textual corpus in Chilean Spanish, with the aim of detecting and collecting terminological variation extracted from the different textual genres that are part of the corpus. This research work is carried out within the framework of a project for standardizing the terminology in the field of conservation and restoration of patrimonial heritage, between the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and the Chilean Center Conservation and Restoration (Centro de Conservación y Restauración de Chile). In this subject domain, there is a wide concern about the proliferation of terminological variants of different types that make communication among specialists difficult and has been observed and described in Spanish and other languages. The overall goal of the project is to collect the existing terminological variation in the corpus, to describe the types and causes of this variation, and to build a terminological database that will serve as a basis for the final stage of standardization of that vocabulary. In this paper we present some results of the terminological extraction from the corpus, which allow us to observe interesting phenomena of terminological variation in the field, and which provide valuable information for standardization decisions. In some cases, different variants can be correlated according to the textual genre in which they are documented.