Iš Valstybinės lietuvių kalbos komisijos veiklos

Activities of the State Lithuanian Language Commission 277 REVIEWS, INFORMATION FROM THE STATE LITHUANIAN ACTIVITIES OF THE LANGUAGE COMMITTEE (Prepared according to the 2010 report of the Language Commission) Language Programs & Courses The main objectives and tasks of the Language Commission are implemented through the implementation of language programs approved by the Government of the Republic of Lithuania. In 2010, the Programme for the Standardization, Use, Education and Dissemination of the State Language 2006-2015 and the Programme for the Preservation of Dialects and Ethnic Place Names 2001-2010, as well as the Programme for the Legal and Administrative Supervision of the State Language, were continued. Most of the work carried out under the programmes is ongoing. Several electronic databases have been completed – the database of historical ethnic (border and outlying) place names of Lithuania, the database of the “Lithuanian Language Atlas” cards, the textbook of Lithuanian language dialects and the database of dialect material of the North-East Vilnius area. According to the program, dialect publications were prepared and published by the Lithuanian Language Institute – Vytautas Kardelis Dūkšto apylinkių tekstai, Vytautas Kardelis and others. Eastern Highlanders of Vilnius and Asta Balčiūnienė and others. Eastern Highlands. In 2010, further expeditions were organized to collect dialect data, a Digital Dialect Phonotheque was created, and dictionaries and texts of various dialects were prepared for research and teaching purposes. In 2010, 1778 publications of 48 titles – scientific journals and collections of scientific articles, dictionaries of terms, dictionaries of place names, texts and dictionaries of dialects, monographs, editions of ancient writing monuments, textbooks, etc. – were purchased and handed over free of charge to the public libraries of higher university schools, colleges, counties, public libraries of national importance and municipalities. From the funds of this program further supported the preparation of dictionaries of terms and ancient writing monuments, teaching of specialty language in higher education institutions. 278 LANGUAGE CULTURE | 84 se schools, scientific research projects, state language courses for non-Lithuanian residents, filling the term bank of the Republic of Lithuania with electronic term dictionaries data. A proposal was submitted to the Education, Science and Culture Committee of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania to include in the draft of the new version of the Education Act a provision that teachers must use correct Lithuanian language in the educational process (the provision was included in the law). The Secretariat of the Language Commission prepared a draft of Decree No. 998 of the Government of the Republic of Lithuania of 7 July 2010 “On the harmonization of terms in draft European Union legislative acts in Lithuanian language”1. The purpose of this Decision is to ensure the clarity and accuracy of the provisions of draft legislative acts of the European Union (hereinafter referred to as the EU) in the Lithuanian language, the harmony of the terms of these drafts with the terms of the legislation of the Republic of Lithuania. The description of the procedure for harmonization of terms of draft EU legislative acts in Lithuanian has been approved. In accordance with it, state authorities must coordinate terms received from EU institutions with the Language Commission. The Ministry of Culture has received comments on the draft of the Government of the Republic of Lithuania Decision “On the approval of the concept of legal regulation provided for in the National Minorities Act of the Republic of Lithuania”. The provision of the concept, according to which it would be possible to provide traditional names in the languages of national minorities alongside the official names of topographical objects in the state language, was not approved. In the opinion of the Language Commission, such provision of unofficial names would narrow the scope of use of official names in the state language. The Committee on Education, Science and Culture of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania has received proposals on the draft regulations on the doctoral degree in science: the text of the doctoral dissertation must be written in correct Lithuanian language, the dissertation summary must be in Lithuanian language (if the dissertation is written in a foreign language), in cases where the dissertation defense takes place in another language, it must be translated into Lithuanian language. All suggestions have been taken into account. By the resolution of the Language Commission on October 8, 2011, the Study on the Functioning and Change of the Lithuanian Common Language, Dialects and Other Language Variants 2011– 1 was approved. 2010-2011 National Language Programme of the Republic of China. The purpose of the programme is to develop and promote research on the functioning of Lithuanian language in multilingual environment, Lithuanian common language, dialects and other language variants change and interaction processes. IMPLEMENTATION OF THE TERM BANK OF THE REPUBLIC OF LITHUANIA STATUTE The work of filling in and managing the online Lithuanian language terminology source – the Lithuanian Republic Terms Bank was continued. During the year, 1122 approved articles of terms used or proposed for use in legislation were published in the Terms Bank. In total, at the end of 2010 there were 154,131 terms in the Terms Bank: 6,240 approved, 146,770 to be offered, 1,121 not to be offered. There were 7 meetings of the Language Commission. 93 meetings of subcommittees were held: Terminology subcommittees – 51, Textbook subcommittees – 14, Dictionary subcommittees – 11, Nomenclature subcommittees – 10, Pronunciation and spelling subcommittees – 3, Provisional “Translation Manual” working group – 2, new program draft working group – 2. About 300 expert opinions were prepared for various institutions and individuals on personal names, place names, terms and concepts, names of companies and institutions, language of documents, etc. Termination. The manuscript of the Explanatory Dictionary of Electrical Engineering Terms was discussed and positively evaluated at the meetings of the Language Commission, 2 Lithuanian terminology standards, over 1000 legal terms were approved. 4 protocol decisions2 on Lithuanian names of some plants were adopted. 4 glossaries of terms, 2 standards of terms, plant names from various EU documents, problematic names of ornamental plants, crustaceans and molluscs were discussed at the meetings of the subcommission. Individual terms offered by various institutions and organizations were also considered. 2 Decision shall be published on the website of the Language Commission and in the database of legislative acts of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania. 280 LANGUAGE CULTURE | 84 About 700 consultations were provided by e-mail and telephone on terminology, foreign word replacement, botany, zoology nomenclature. Mainly consulted translators, editors, terminologists of EU institutions, as well as Lithuanian civil servants, employees of private institutions, other interested parties. Localities. The list of “Trakai Lakes Place Names” prepared by the Trakai Historical National Park Directorate was approved. There are not many toponymic data of Vilnius region, so this work is extremely valuable. More than 200 conclusions were submitted to municipalities regarding place names, mainly regarding the correctness of street names (more than 1000 names were assessed). Lists of names of countries, their capitals, provinces and lands, and the inhabitants of countries have been revised by the language commission. The third volume of the dictionary World Placenames, prepared on behalf of the Language Commission, has been published. Antarctica. Australia. Oceania (Science and Encyclopedia Publishing Center). The expert meetings discussed issues of adaptation of place names for the future volume Asia. Personalities. In 2010, more than 200 requests for change of personal names were processed. Most of the time the shortening of the surname was desired by giving up the Slavic patronymic suffixes -evič- (-avič-) (25) and -ausk- (10), in other cases the surnames were shortened by dropping the formants -ajev-, -eck-, -ėn-, -in-, -insk-, -ov (-ovič, -ovsk-), -unsk-, -ušk-. Together with the information solutions company UAB „NTSG“ the database of names of citizens of the Republic of Lithuania and the website of the Language Commission vardai.vlkk.lt were created. Grammar, spelling and punctuation. The Temporary Subcommittee on the Translation Manual has begun consulting the authors of the Translation Manual for the Institutions of the European Union. The task of the Pokomisė is to advise the editors to ensure that the publication complies as much as possible with the provisions of the common Lithuanian language. A subcommittee of grammar, terminology, translation specialists and legal text editors considered the standard formulations used in EU documents and recommended the most suitable variants. Spelling. On 9 December 2010, a protocol resolution approved the recommendation “On the pronunciation of the short forms of the singular and plural masculine noun of the present tense participants of the active kind”: the pronunciation of such short forms as kalbąs, kalbą, tyliais, tylįs, vaidinąs, vaidiną was regulated. The protocol resolution “On the use of variants of spelling” emphasizes that approved variants of spelling are considered equivalent. 281 Lexikon der deutschen Sprache. On 28 October 2010, the recommendation list of foreign words was approved by a protocol decision. Evaluation of textbooks. The textbook evaluation subcommittee considered 47 general education textbooks (some textbooks in several parts, in total 74 textbook manuscripts were considered). 53 books were immediately awarded a mark confirming their language correctness, 17 books were returned to publishers for correction (three books were returned three times). In 2010, there were no textbooks rejected altogether (which were not in compliance for the third time). Such textbooks have been lacking for the second year, so the production of textbooks has improved considerably compared to 2007 and 2008. OTHER WORK Letters have been prepared and sent to the Ministry of Justice, the Seimas Committee on Law and Legal Order and the Seimas Legal Department regarding the not always justified language complexity of legislative acts, which sometimes makes legal norms incomprehensible. The working group of the Lithuanian computer font “Palemonas” commissioned by the Language Commission, in cooperation with the Medieval Unicode Font Initiative, has created a font variant for collecting and publishing ancient writings called “Palemonas MUFI” (see http://www.mufi.info/fonts/). Approximately 36 000 language consultations were provided, of which about 13 200 online and about 22 800 by telephone. The database of the online Language Consultation Bank has been supplemented with more than 450 new entries over the past year and now contains over 9,000 headings. On 22-26 February, the third Lithuanian language competition “Clean language – clean head” was held (organizers - AB Tilde IT, Ministry of Education and Science, State Lithuanian Language Commission, public relations agency Strategic Communications Center). The aim of the competition is to encourage students to use Lithuanian characters and correct Lithuanian language in electronic media. In 2010, eight and a half thousand students from grades 6-10 from all over Lithuania took part in it. Received 21/11/2011 JURATĖ PALIONYTĖ State Lithuanian Language Commission Gedimino pr. 60, LT-01110 Vilnius [email protected]