The Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety terminology website is an experimental service of the terminological project Linguaggi e attività Produttive of the Advanced School of Modern Languages for Interpreters and Translators (SSLMIT), University of Bologna in Forlì. It was financed by ISPESL (the Italian Institute for workplace prevention and safety) in the framework of its 2003 research activities (B17/DOC/03).

Due to the constant evolution of the legislation on Health and Safety at Work (HSW) at both the national and European level, many linguistic and conceptual difficulties arise when different legal systems are compared. The project aims at providing a contribution to the correct management of HSW terminology, by means of a multilingual specialised knowledge base which can be used as a reference tool by all people working in the HSW domain.

The project aims at comparing how four different legal systems (Italy, UK, Germany and France) regulate the domain of Health and Safety at Work. Our analysis is not therefore limited to the linguistic level, but it also focuses on the cultural differences originated by the different legal traditions involved.

Thanks to such twofold nature, the knowledge base should be of interest to a wide range of users working in the HSW domain: workplace communication managers, jurists, domain experts, managers, trainers on HSW issues, translators, interpreters and students alike.