The Terminology Working Group of the Bureau of Language Services thoroughly reviewed the whole IMF terminology database, which currently contains approximately 65,000 terms. The fifth revised edition of the IMF glossary contains some 4,500 records, which are believed to be the most useful to translators dealing with IMF material.
The main body of glossary consists of words, phrases, and institutional titles most commonly encountered in IMF documents in areas such as money and banking, public finance, balance of payments, and economic growth. A number of entries are followed by a “usage” field, indicated by square brackets [], denoting the origins of the term [OECD], a context [trade], or a cross reference [see also…]. A list of origin codes may be found on the following page.
Term relating to IMF organization, structure and senior staff titles are included in the body of the glossary. In appendix I and II, color-coded French and Spanish indexes are provided for the convenience of users who work from those languages. Appendix III contains a color-coded multilingual acronyms index directing the user to English title. Currency units of countries and territories of the world are contained in Appendix IV. An IMF Organizational Charts is found as appendix V, in all three languages.