The Terminology Interchange Format (TIF) has been designed to meet the growing need for electronic terminology interchange on the part of users and generators of terminology working within a wide variety of applications. Not only does TIF provide interchange capability for terminological data generated in many different software systems using divergent hardware configurations, it does not require users to modify existing terminological databases.

TIF was developed by the Text Encoding Initiative Working Group for Terminology (TEI) to replace earlier interchange formats (MATER, MicroMATER, and NTRF, for instance), none of which has proven universally applicable. TIF is SGML- conformant, i.e., fully SGML-based. It has been accepted as a working draft standard by the International Organization for Standardization Technical Committee for Terminology (ISO/TC 37) and as the official format for the Localisation Industry Standards Association (LISA). Support from a variety of other national and international organizations, institutions and projects promises to establish the format as a de facto standard within the next few years.

To emphasize its broad-based support, TIF is sometimes referred to as the &TEI/LISA/ISO Terminology Interchange Format& or &TEI/LISA/ISO-TIF&. A tutorial to help people understand how the format works is currently available.

The tutorial describes the TEI/LISA/ISO Terminology Interchange Format (TIF), which is designed for the electronic interchange of terminological data, including monolingual, bilingual and multilingual terminology files. TIF is an SGML format designed to facilitate data interchange without requiring potentially costly changes in the local systems participating in interchange activities. The tutorial provides short sample term files, illustrates how these files are represented as TIF documents and describes the structural organization of a TIF document.

Supplemental information is provided on alternate data naming conventions and on potential difficulties involved in data interchange. The text includes references to further resources that will be useful in preparing conversion routines and implementing data interchange using TIF.

Anyone interested in learning more detailed information about TIF is encouraged to contact one of the following sources: