Introduction

Technical terms mean words or expressions used by a particular profession or group of people who share same interest in a particular subject. In a broader sense they mean any words or expressions used in general professional circles, but in a narrow sense, they mean the terminologies used and understood by particular professionals such as artists, scientists, doctors, lawyers and technicians, etc. They are also called as scientific terms, academic terminologies or professional terms, and often subdivided into literary terms, legal terminology, medical terminology and so on. In the Standard Korean Dictionary, technical terms are classified into a total of 48 subdivisions excluding proper nouns.

However, the fact is that in Korea even people in a same profession show a wide gap in their understanding of the term, often causing confusions and misunderstanding in the course of communication. This confusion often causes more grievous results particularly in translation of terms in a foreign language into Korean. It has even been pointed out as something representing inferiority of Korean culture and tradition. From practical point of view, the lack of unified use of the terms has been led to a huge waste of national resources, for example, in international trades as well as communication between individuals and groups.