Anna Grynfeld Smith (asker) Jan 7, 2011:

I would trust people within the field to decide. Languages develop, and dictionaries are lagging behind when it comes to introducing new ways of using words and expressions (which also has its advantages of course). Within specific fields of science etc, words can be used in a way that outsiders might not understand, but makes perfect sense to a specialist. For example, molecular biologists who culture cells, harvest the cells when they collect them from a cell culture dish. This is an established way of using the word harvest in science journals etc, but it is not mentioned in e.g. Chambers dictionary. I think it is important to use the language that the specialists would use. Some words that are not so well established in texts today, might be perfectly acceptable in a few years. With that, I´m not saying that "populate" would be preferred by all PCB production specialists, but it certainly seems quite well established. I actually found it in one of the texts I translated (although it was spelt "poppulera"). Then of course, the target audience and the document type would dictate what words to use in a specific context. In my case, it was an internal doc about SMD manufacturing.

George Hopkins Jan 7, 2011:

Dictionaries Support can be found for many expressions in Google, Wikpedia, etc, and the greater number of hits seems to make a choice 'right', no matter how wrong it is.
Languages change, but why abandon dictionaries? Popoulate has to do with people, not bits and pieces!

Anna Grynfeld Smith (asker) Jan 6, 2011:

Thanks so much for your very valuable answers! My conclusions on how to use the different words are;
1. PCBs are populated with components (several refs, e.g. a Wiki article about PCBs).
2. Components are mounted onto PCBs.
3. The whole process would be called assembly; the cards and the components are put together. For example, P & P (pick and place) assembly machines are used in the production of PCBs.

Do you agree/disagree?

Btw, I found lots of interesting documents, but this was one of the most interesting ones: http://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/dspace/bitstream/1808/3592/1/Le...