Conservation and Restoration

Cultural heritage as a concept in social legacy is meant to represent a culture and its significant achievements and artifacts to the rest of the world. Conservation-restoration helps keep and preserve that heritage for future generations and relies on international cooperation and sharing of research and experience for the betterment of the practice. However, an issue promptly arises if there is a lack of a unified terminological front when preparing to present the work done on the international stage. Translators who help promote that work may hit a wall while looking up terminology and encountering an abundance of different phrases relating to a single concept. This paper focuses on just a sample of vocational terminology issues the authors experienced while translating conservation restoration related material. Starting from the basic concept of cultural property (kulturno dobro) as cited in the Republic of Serbia's law and contrasted with cultural heritage (kulturno nasleđe), the binary system of terms zaštita vs konzervacija-restauracija, all the way to the instance of deciphering types of adhesives used in restoration and the confusion ensuing from the terms being loan-words from different languages. By using contrastive, analytical and descriptive methods, the authors wish to contribute to the ongoing debate bridging the fields of humanities and applied arts. The aim is to underline the importance of having a standardized glossary of terminology, and furthermore the need for participating in a national and transnational discourse between both art-field professionals and those aiding them en route to international presence.