The first part of this study is theoretical in nature and aims at an overview of the various approaches concerned in the broadest sense with an definition of the linguistic features of technical terms in comparison with other linguistic categories. Eight such attemps at a definition of technical terms are discussed (diachronic, semantic, syntactic, lexical, pragmatic, contrastive, statistical and normative). This list should not be regarded as claiming completeness. Part two is statistical and contrasts two corpuses of French and German special language texts dealing with economic questions. These are analysed in terms of frequential segmentation on the one hand and grammatical and lexical categorization on the other. Finally, on the basis of a special language vocabulary of some 1400 units and with reference to further factors favouring text comprehension (e.g. international terms and composites/derivatives) special language texts in the two languages are mapped for cross-textual match, the rate achieved overall being higher than 90%.