1. Programmed computer apparatus for extracting a list of candidate multi-word technical terms from an input text file, a multi-word technical term being a string of at least two words having a particular meaning in some technical field, said apparatus comprising: means for storing a stoplist of tokens which are assumed to not occur in multi-word technical terms, a token being a word, character or string of characters delimited by blanks and/or punctuation; means for storing a maximum length parameter specifying a maximum number of tokens in any candidate multi-word technical term to be extracted; means responsive to the stored stoplist for extracting text fragments from an input text file by identifying delimiting tokens in the input text file, including means for identifying as a delimiting token each token in the input text file which is the same as a token in the stored stoplist, the identified delimiting tokens defining text fragments therebetween; means for deriving from the extracted text fragments all possible subsequences of tokens having a length of at least two tokens and not more than a maximum number of tokens specified by the stored maximum length parameter; means for testing each of the derived subsequences against at least one filtering condition; and means for creating a sublist of the derived subsequences which pass the at least one filtering condition, the created sublist being the list of candidate multi-word technical terms.
2. Programmed computer apparatus as defined in claim 1 and further comprising means for storing a list of allowable characters for candidate multi-word technical terms to be extracted, said means for extracting text fragments including means for identifying as a delimiting token each token in the input text file which contains at least one character not in the stored list of allowable characters.