Impact of automatic term extraction on terminology work

A crucial task in any type of terminology work is identifying and extracting terms from relevant sources, which can be done manually or via (semi-)automatic term extraction processes. Given the recent advances in automatic term extraction (ATE) research, this paper explores the impact of ATE on terminology work in institutional settings (academic institutions, administrations, European institutions and international organizations) based on qualitative data. The analysis of 15 semi-structured expert interviews conducted in 2023 shows that the newest advances in research in ATE have not had an immediate impact on terminology practices in institutional settings for the study participants. This paper aims to discuss the reasons for the slow uptake of ATE in institutional settings, such as the gap between ATE tools developed in research and ATE components integrated in off-the-shelf terminology or corpus management systems, the lack of integration into existing workflows, the lack of support for certain languages, especially for less-resourced languages, as well as reasons related to source materials.