MOKSLO KALBOS KULTOROS IR TERMINOLOGIJOS PROBLEMOS

LIETUVIŲ KALBOTYROS KLAUSIMAI, XXIV (1985)

ТАТЬЯНА ЛЕОНИДОВНА КАНДЕЛАКИ

ON TYPES OF TERMINOLOGICAL FUNDS

In the process of developing terminologies in the national languages of the peoples of the USSR, the terminological fund of the Russian language is of great importance.

Russian is the language of our interethnic communication. It also serves as a means of official, governmental, diplomatic, scientific, cultural, commercial, and other relations with other countries.

Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations and represents Soviet science, literature, and art abroad. It belongs to the global systems of communication (radio and television broadcasts, aviation and space communications).

Russian has thoroughly developed conceptual and, accordingly, terminological systems associated with the study of nature and society, the natural, technical, and social sciences, literature, and art.

Russian terminological systems are documented in Russian scholarly and educational literature, in Russian terminography, and in standardized terminologies—collections of recommended terms and state standards for terms and definitions.

D. S. Lotte, founder of the Soviet school of terminology, postulated an approach to a foreign-language term (whether borrowed, standardized, or simply used) as a member of a specific terminological system.

He extended his ideas about the systematic nature of terminologies (in terms of both content and expression) to the process of borrowing in the creation and standardization of terminologies.

He viewed the process as an interaction between two terminological systems: the first is the terminological system of the source language (of which the borrowed term, with a specific “grid” of meanings and term elements forming its lexical-semantic structure, is a member), while the second is the receiving, borrowing terminological system of another language.

In the receiving terminological system, around the future meaning of the borrowed term, the author seems to outline a “sphere” of meanings associated with it and of terms already existing in that language (one

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of a classificatory series, the whole and its parts, and other types of relations between the objects being named).

When evaluating a borrowed term, the following are taken into account:

1) the lexical-semantic structure of terms associated with the given concept;

2) the structure of synonyms and doublets correlated with the given term;

3) the degree to which the given term or term element is “unique” or “multiple” in the borrowing terminology;

4) the nature of the term elements that make up the term (“already established” or “not established” in the language), and certain other factors.

D. S. Lotte’s concept is set out in detail in his monograph “Issues in Borrowing and Standardizing Foreign-Language Terms and Term Elements,” published by Nauka in 1982.

In the two interacting terminological systems—the Russian system and the languages of the peoples of the USSR—contemporary researchers have identified subject-conceptual groups of terms that serve different purposes on a national scale.

When developing and standardizing terminologies in the languages of the peoples of the USSR, their composition and scope, which determine the different approaches to one or another group of terms, must first be identified.

In this connection, apparently, three terminological funds can be distinguished:

A. A fund common in scope to all the peoples of our country, comprising terms that reflect the socialist system (the way of life, economy, and culture shared by all the peoples of the Soviet country—these are concepts related to defense, transport, communications, the press, state trade, medical care, public education, the arts, literature, and sports).

B. A fund of terms for science, production, and industrialized agriculture—different in scope for each republic; its composition depends on the specific fields of science, branches of industry, and types of industrialized agriculture developed in each individual republic, and on their degree of development.

C. A fund characterizing the distinctive features of a given people—the national way of life, traditions, rites and customs, folk creativity, traditional sports, etc.

In the interaction between the two terminological systems—the Russian and the national—the principle of minimizing differences between terminologies is manifested first and foremost in the semantic identity of their content and in the adoption of a unified conceptual basis for all terminological systems.

The national languages of the peoples of the USSR differ greatly in their forms of expression, in their written traditions and historical experience of development as literary languages, in their structural-typological features and origins, and in the scope of their social functions.

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Therefore, the traditions of term formation are quite diverse. Terms belonging to Fund A and terms of Fund B also naturally tend to converge in terms of expression.

Therefore, in addition to the use of national lexical material, all national terminologies may contain, to varying degrees: 1) borrowings from Russian terminologies (including Russian terms formed from Greco-Latin elements; Russian borrowings from modern foreign languages; and terms of originally Russian origin, with varying degrees of adaptation); 2) calques of Russian terms; 3) descriptive translations of Russian terms.

Terminological systems for science, industry, and industrialized agriculture, as is well known, are developed for fields characteristic of a given republic. However, current day-to-day practice shows that the social functions of the national languages of the peoples of the USSR already require a larger, additional fund of terms across a wide range of fields of knowledge, extending beyond the fields of knowledge and types of production for which terminology is being developed.

At the meeting “Problems of Developing and Standardizing Terminology in the Academies of Sciences of the Union Republics” (Moscow, March 1981), A. Ya. Blinken addressed this phenomenon. Drawing on evidence from Latvian, she showed that Latvian terms for production sectors which do not exist in Latvia are widely used in fiction, the press, radio, and television.

Thus, in addition to Fund B, which includes the system of terms for science and production, individual terms are incorporated.

Terminologists in the Union republics face a new task: to develop principles for introducing into national languages not only entire terminological systems (as has been done until now), but also individual terms, which often have no basis in existing terminologies.

The only correct approach in this case is to proceed from D. S. Lotte’s idea of the interaction of two terminological systems.

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