Terminology, normalization and communication Categories of olive oil in Spanish, English and Chinese

The existing language of oliviculture and elaiotechnics makes evident the significant development of this specialised field over the past decades. The progressive industrialisation and professionalization of this sector has progressively given rise to a new terminology that is updating the old jargon and is undergoing important normalisation processes. The present work focuses on the normalisation of the designations and definitions of olive oil categories. We also consider the usefulness of such actions and evaluate the differences between the currently marketed types of olive oil in order to reduce the difficulties in their analysis, classification, control and marketing. This study finally brings forward a denominative and definitional proposal for olive oil categories based on the theoretical assumptions of the project Olivaterm. Our proposal is directed at making information clear to the consumer as well as at facilitating the retrieval of specialised knowledge.