La conservació-restauració de béns culturals: proposta terminològica per al català

Abstract

Due to its short history in the academic field and the absence of terminological studies and lexicographical publications in the Catalan language, the conservation-restoration of cultural heritage is a field in which there is a large amount of terminology problems. In addition, in the more specific area of the conservation-restoration of mural paintings, which is the object of study of this paper, we find many Italian loanwords. That is because of the influence of the Italian culture, especially during the 19th century, on the techniques of conservation of mural artworks in the European scene. The terminological units of this field of studies often present conceptual problems as well as different variants for the same concept, since the majority of terms are not normalised in the Catalan language. All these factors influence the language of the art conserver-restorer and lead to the creation of a climate of imprecision which complicates the tasks of description and documentation of the state of conservation of works of art as well as the work of translators and interpreters. We selected three Catalan articles on conservation-restoration of mural paintings from three representative magazines in this field: bulletí Rescat, bulletí del MNAC and Unicum from which we completed a sample of terminology and the consequent selection of eight problematic terms to study. For each of them we presented an analysis based on the normalisation process proposed by the Termcat, the centre for Catalan terminology, which consist on the presentation of the term and the motivation of its study; the documentation of its variants in Catalan and its equivalents in the Spanish, Italian, French and English languages; the definition of the term and the analysis of the pros and cons of each variant based on linguistic, sociolinguistic and terminological aspects. This study has led to a terminological proposal for each term in the Catalan language. In conclusion, this paper is just a small contribution that underscores the need of further terminology studies in the field of restoration-conservation of cultural heritage.