As seen in the first course of the Terminology Module (Basic Principles), usually translators have the "concept" as their fundamental entity when designing and working with termbases - in other words, they use the concept-oriented (onomasiological) perspective.
When designing terminological databases, there are particularly two components that have to be taken into account:
- the terminology data elements, and
- the terminology data categories
On the one hand, terminology data elements are the smallest units with an independent meaning. According to ISO, a data element can be defined as "the smallest separately identifiable portion of a record used for the description and/or representation of terminological and/or lexicographical data".
On the other hand, a class of terminology data elements of the same type is known as terminology data category. A data category is defined by ISO as "a uniquely defined type of a terminological/lexicographical data element used to describe terminological and/or lexicographical data".
In terms of a terminology database this means that data categories are implemented as fields in the databases – e.g. GENDER – and the specification or content of a field is a data element – e.g. MASCULINE and FEMININE (data elements in the data category "GENDER").