THE ICELANDIC LANGUAGE INSTITUTE
Íslensk málstöð (The Icelandic Language Institute) opened on January 1, 1985. It is the secretariat of the Icelandic Language Council, which was founded in 1964, under the aegis of the Ministry of Education, as the official body responsible for language planning and preservation and operates in accordance with Icelandic law no. 2/1990, amended May 4, 2000.
The Institute formulates answers to, and offers advice and provides instruction on questions of language and usage, mainly by telephone, e-mail and postal communication with the Icelandic authorities, the public, firms, institutions etc. A special advice service has been installed for translators.
NEOLOGISTIC AND TERMINOLOGICAL WORK
The Institute is the official coordinator of all neologistic and terminological endeavours in Iceland. A number of terminologies is maintained at the Institute, providing material for developing data bases. Thirty-six active terminology committees are presently in Iceland, and in a host of different fields. The Institute concentrates its efforts on providing the committees with linguistic advice and technical assistance.
In 1997 the Institute opened a word bank on the World Wide Web. This data base now contains 38 special language glossaries from various fields, a spelling dictionary and a small neologistic dictionary, that are all accessible to the user in a single search. All glossaries contain terms in Icelandic. Beside Icelandic, the most common language represented in our glossaries is English, but many of the glossaries are multilingual and the most frequent additional languages are Danish, German, Norwegian, Swedish and French.
Another project at the Institute is making neologisms, language-usage tips and advice available on the World Wide Web.
The Icelandic Language Council cooperates with other Nordic language councils and is a full member of the Nordic Language Council, which was founded by the Nordic Council of Ministers and took over the activities of the Nordic Language Secretariat in Oslo on January 1, 1997. In addition the Icelandic Language Council participates in Nordterm , the Nordic Institute for Terminology, in whose governing body and committees the Council is represented.
The Icelandic Language Institute participates in the TDCnet Project. Its
role in this Project is to give information on demand with regard to terminology
data holdings and services in Iceland. The Institute is also making a contribution
to developing, organizing and optimizing co-operation between existing and
emerging European TDCs.