This eighth edition of the PIARC Technical Dictionary of Road Terms is an extract, taken in May 2007, from the multilingual terminology database made available to the worldwide highways community on the http://termino.piarc.org website. This database is constantly updated by PIARC Technical Committee on Terminology and Translation Assistance using contributions from all of the PIARC`s committees and technical working groups.

The extract here comprises 1,684 terms expressed in five languages (in the following order: English, French, German, Spanish and Portuguese). The languages which act as a reference are the technical English used in the United Kingdom and the French used in France. The synonyms used in other English-speaking countries (United States, Canada) or French-speaking countries (Belgium, Canada, Switzerland) are also given. Terms recommended by the International Standards Organisation (ISO) or the technical committees of the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) are included in this dictionary. However,due to restrictions on space, neither the national or international origin, nor illustrations nor the grammatical attributes of the terms are included in this work . The reader will find them on the website.

The following are given on each line: the term, its definition (or a reference to the main term related to the concept involved), the term's code and its translation into the four other languages, always set out in the same order.

This dictionary has not been compiled in an alphabetical "jumble", but in accordance with a rigorous methodical classification. Thus by searching for the code for a general term in the classification set out at the end of the work, all the terms will be found that are related to the context under which this general term is recorded.

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Online consultation of the http://termino.piarc.org website is far more comprehensive than this printed version. It allows you to search for one word or part of a word in one language and displays the results simultaneously in three languages, including the search language. Grammatical attributes, synonyms and their geographical origins, terminology classification and any illustration that accompanies the general term are displayed immediately.

In June 2007, the languages available on the internet were: German, English, Chinese, Spanish, French, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Dutch, Portuguese, Russian, Ukrainian, Serbian and Vietnamese. However, some of these languages only include partial translations due to the unavoidable gap between the updating of the terms in the reference languages (English and French) and their translation into other languages. Croat, Greek, Norwegian and Swedish are in preparation for this dictionary.

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The website comprises not just this PIARC Technical Dictionary of Road Terms , but also other works that are freely available, including the PIARC Lexicon of Road and Traffic Engineering (more than 14,500 general terms in English, French and Dutch),the dictionary prepared by the PIARC Technical Committee on Winter Maintenance (170 terms in German, English, Danish, Spanish, Finnish, French, Hungarian, Italian, Icelandic and Dutch) and also the Road Transport Informatics Dictionary (ITS) in Danish, German, English, French, Norwegian and Swedish.

Due to the interactivity provided by the internet, you can suggest the addition, amendment or deletion of a term directly through the website. Thus, due to the involvement of the PIARC's technical committees and everyone's contributions, this collective work can be made more valuable for the benefit of the greatest number of people.

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The main contributors to this eighth edition were: Mrs Paula Freire (Portugal), Mr Hermann Fritz (Switzerland), Mr René Gemme (Canada), Mrs Annelies Glander (Austria), Mrs Cristina Higuera (Spain), Mr Hans-Walter Horz (Germany), Mr David Powell (United Kingdom), Mr Patrice Retour (France, President of the Committee and database administrator) and Mr Daniël Verfaillie (Belgium, joint database administrator).