This paper addresses the lack of a multimodal approach to specialized knowledge representation in terminology work. In particular, we introduce a new Multimodal Terminological Metamodel (MTM) for the design of terminology resources which introduces an explicit modality layer, enabling uniform modelling of different language modalities within domain-specific and concept-oriented resources. The metamodel is formalised via an entity-relationship schema and a systematic contrast with the baseline framework – the Terminological Markup Framework (TMF; ISO-16642 (2017)) – to specify revised entities, relations, and cardinalities. As case study, we instantiate the MTM for the signed modality by defining a minimal data-category module with level-placement constraints, and we provide a lightweight, TBX-inspired XML serialisation that packages modality-specific terminological data in a consistent structure. Together, these components deliver a reproducible specification for designing and exchanging multimodal terminology resources.

The process of standardization plays an important role in the management of terminological resources. In this context, we present the work of re-modeling an existing multilingual terminological database for the medical domain, named TriMED. This resource was conceived in order to tackle some problems related to the complexity of medical terminology and to respond to different users’ needs. We provide a methodology that should be followed in order to make a termbase compliant to the three most recent ISO/TC 37 standards. In particular, we focus on the definition of i) the structural meta-model of the resource, ii) the data categories provided, and iii) the TBX format for its implementation. In addition to the formal standardization of the resource, we describe the realization of a new data category repository for the management of the TriMED terminological data and a Web application that can be used to access the multilingual terminological records.