Researching the meaning of neologisms in emerging technologies
The following explains how to find other documents that refer to the same neologism and hopefully contain its definition or references in other languages.
Sources of this type are archived in large quantities in the proceedings of international conferences, such as IEEE, ASME. These sites are paysites, but it should be mentioned that the membership fee is very reasonable (~USD 30/year). Very fortunately the site database can be efficiently searched using the usual keywords filter query methods.
As an example let us assume that we did not know the meaning of the expression "smart dust" in a "wireless communication" context. In order to research for this meaning we will query the IEEE archive website:
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/DynWel.jsp
a keyword search of the site returns 16 articles containing the expression "smart dust". By inspecting those abstracts we find a very interesting sentence:
"The miniature wireless sensor nodes, or motes, developed from low-cost off-the-shelf components at the University of California, Berkeley, as part of its smart dust projects, establish a self-organizing sensor network when dispersed into an environment."
BINGO! "smart dust" refers to a wireless network, which sensor nodes are intentionally designed to be very small, such as to eventually be carelessly thrown into the environment.
Understanding what is meant is of course only a first step towards the translation of neologisms. But finding the right document can be a difficult and fruitless hunt. Typically, these articles are written by academic researchers a few years before their findings (if any) are patented (if ever) ...
Good hunt!