Terminologija / Terminology 2025, Nr. 32, p. 1–7 Turinio nuoroda / Contents link ISSN 2669–2198 (elektroninis / online)

6TH INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC CONFERENCE ON TERMINOLOGY “SCIENTIFIC, ADMINISTRATIVE AND EDUCATIONAL LEVELS OF TERMINOLOGY”

6th International Scientific Conference “Scientific, Administrative and Educational Dimensions of Terminology”

EGLĖ INGELEVIČIŪTĖ-JABLONSKIENĖ

Institute of the Lithuanian Language

Email: [email protected]

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0009-0006-2644-4920

https://doi.org/10.35321/term32-11

On October 16–17, the Institute of the Lithuanian Language hosted the 6th International Scientific Conference on Terminology, “Scientific, Administrative and Educational Levels of Terminology.” This conference can be considered an anniversary event: the first conference under this title was held ten years ago, in 2015.

The conference was held in a hybrid format: participants and listeners attended in person or joined remotely. A total of 34 presentations were delivered, presenting a wide range of scientific research and terminology tools and reviewing various directions in terminology. The speakers represented no fewer than 18 countries. As in previous years, researchers from Spain, France, Georgia, Poland, Hungary, Latvia and, of course, Lithuania actively participated in the conference, while presentations were also given by terminologists from such distant countries as Canada and Mongolia.

The first day began with an important topic that has been discussed at this conference more than once: terminological variation. Invited speaker Judit Freixa, representing Pompeu Fabra University, delivered a presentation on terminological variation and her analysis of terms related to climate change. She examined how the form and meaning of terms in this field differ

Copyright © 2025 Eglė Ingelevičiūtė-Jablonskienė. Published by the Institute of the Lithuanian Language. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. // Published by the Institute of the Lithuanian Language. This article is open access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction of the content in any medium without restriction, provided that the author and source are credited.

Received: / Received: 2025-11-10. Accepted: / Accepted: 2025-11-14.

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in different contexts, and argued that these differences reflect both linguistic and semantic changes, revealing the flexible nature of environmental terminology. A variant of the term world climate warming (English global warming) such as climate heating (English global heating) reflects attempts to adapt terminology to communicative, ideological, and cultural needs. According to the scholar, variation in climate-change discourse is not a shortcoming—the term can serve not only as a label but also as a means of communication. The topic of variation was also touched on by other speakers: Fátima Noronha, representing the University of Algarve, spoke about diastratic variation in terminology in the field of the Mediterranean diet, where traditional communities appear to assume the role of specialists, and explored the influence that different discourse communities have on the terminology of this field.

Variation was also mentioned in discussions of another increasingly topical subject—artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models. Although AI had already been discussed at the previous conference, this time it was examined in much greater detail. This is unsurprising: the rapid breakthrough in AI technologies is significantly changing many fields, including terminology research, where AI tools are increasingly used to create, analyze, and systematize terms. This was also evident from the presentations. The first to speak on the topic of AI was invited speaker Mojca Pecman, representing Université Paris Cité. The scholar surveyed the use of AI tools in terminology, specifically the integration of generative AI (GenAI) into ARTES, the terminology analysis system used at the University, particularly with regard to new terms and variation. Having discussed the relationship between terminology, corpus linguistics, and AI, M. Pecman presented a protocol for evaluating GenAI tools in the context of analyzing new terms, as well as a survey of master’s students on their use of GenAI tools. In the students’ view, AI makes terminology work easier. Barbara Heinisch of the University of Vienna took a more negative view of AI: she argued that, although large language models can facilitate some terminology tasks, they also pose a risk of language homogenization. The Austrian scholar presented a case study. She investigated how ChatGPT handled university terminology in three varieties of German: Austrian German, South Tyrolean German, and Standard German. ChatGPT typically supplied terms from the most popular Standard German, despite the prompts, and in some cases even produced pseudo-terms.

Other speakers also discussed the practical use of AI in terminology. Egidijus Zaikauskas, who works at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Translation, examined terminology management using AI tools. He argued that AI enables the Directorate to handle exceptionally large volumes of text more efficiently, since AI tools help extract terms from texts, analyze and describe them, and select equivalent terms in different target languages; he also raised the question of how reliable the terminological data obtained using AI tools are and whether AI can be trained to observe the rules and traditions of terminology management. Dace Šostaka also expressed doubts about the reliability of terms obtained using such tools. Representing a group of researchers from the University of Latvia—Maksims Čižikovs, Juris Borzovs, and Jānis Zuters—she presented a specialized large language model that had been developed with the aim of automatically generating

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Latvian equivalents for English information and communication technology terms, since new terms are emerging rapidly in this field, particularly English ones. The topic of knowledge models, reviewed by Piotr Nagórka of the University of Warsaw, can also be linked to AI; he explored whether such models could be used as tools for testing hypotheses. In conclusion, the use of AI tools in terminology offers many prospects but also poses challenges.

The issue of synonymy is also inseparable from variation. It has been raised at this conference for several years, but this time it was addressed only in a presentation by Asta Mitkevičienė, a researcher and head of the Terminology Centre at the Institute of the Lithuanian Language. Having examined the minutes of meetings of the VLKK Terminology Subcommittee—around 600 comments related to synonymy in all—she concluded that the number of synonyms in the terminology dictionaries under consideration is usually reduced, though sometimes increased, and that in certain cases the status of synonyms is also changed. The phenomenon of polysemy received broader coverage at the conference. On the second day, the third invited speaker, Hendrik Kockaert of KU Leuven, who joined remotely, opened the proceedings with this topic. He examined the opposition between context and polysemy, as well as the complex relationship between terms and concepts, which is particularly relevant in relation to the ISO 704 standard. Using examples related to trawlers, the scholar sought to show that the choice of terms and the writing of definitions are closely linked to the contextual dimensions of conceptual systems. According to him, given the fundamental role of polysemy and context in terminology, special attention should be paid to them in the ISO 704 standard. Igor Kudashev of Tampere University in Finland also spoke about polysemy. He discussed the concept of nomenclature and compared various interpretations of it.

A relatively new topic at this conference, little discussed at previous conferences, was inclusive language—a phenomenon examined in detail in three presentations. The first to review this topic was Mylène Larivière, from the Université de Montréal in Canada, who presented a developing resource on gender-neutral language for creators of health-sector texts and health-sector workers. According to her, this need arises from the binary grammatical gender of French, since grammatical gender is connected to extralinguistic realities and can shape power relations. The scholar developed the resource using corpora and planned to have it tested by both non-binary people and health-sector professionals. The topic of inclusive language continued in a presentation by Vasiliki Chelidoni, representing the Ionian University. She argued that multilingual parallel corpora of EU administrative texts could be used to create gender-neutral terminology databases that would not only reflect the values of diversity, equality, and inclusion promoted by the EU, but could also help improve the quality of machine translation and large language model outputs. These two presentations were brought together particularly well by a presentation from Elena Chiocchetti, representing Eurac Research, and her co-author Oliviero Tolszczuk-Jalbert, who joined remotely and works at the Translation Bureau of the Government of Canada, on the terminologist’s role with respect to inclusive terminology. The speakers argued that inclusion can be an objective of terminology work and that terminologists should act as

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advisers: identify non-inclusive term forms, suggest alternatives, explain when which terms should be used, and promote inclusive terms.

As at previous conferences, this year several presentations reviewed the state of national terminology. A group of researchers from the ELTE Centre for Linguistic Research—Veronika Lipp, Dóra Mária Tamás, and Gábor Prószéky—presented a draft national Hungarian terminology strategy. As part of this project, the National Terminology Harmonisation Centre was established at the Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics, with the aim of creating a central terminology portal and a multilingual national terminology database. Also related to the Hungarian language was a presentation by Ágota Fóris and Ádám Rixer, researchers at Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary, on the status and terminology of Hungarian legal and administrative language. Their research highlighted three closely related aspects: the importance of developing a common national and domain-specific terminology policy, the requirement for comprehensibility in legal and administrative documents, and bilingualism in Hungarian and English in legal and administrative academic language. The presenters argued that a strategy for legal and administrative terminology should be aligned with the general Hungarian terminology strategy, and recommended a model of additive bilingualism.

Georgian researchers Lia Karosanidze and Linda Giorgadze, who work at the Arnold Chikobava Institute of Linguistics at Tbilisi State University, gave a presentation on developing a terminology bank in their country, presented its online version, and discussed work related to the bank. They also addressed the state of terminology in Georgia. According to them, “terminology is a reflection of national policy.” Meanwhile, Albina Auksoriūtė, a researcher at the Terminology Centre of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, spoke about terminology policy and its legal regulation in Lithuania: she reviewed laws on the state Lithuanian language, the activities of the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language, and laws and legal acts regulating the Terminology Bank. She stressed that terminology policy in Lithuania is one of the components of state language policy, and that there is no separate document regulating terminology policy. According to her, language programmes funded by the state and administered by the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language raise the prestige of Lithuanian and increase public interest in the language, while contributing to Lithuanian-language research and the development of language resources. However, there are also problems: the number of dictionaries published each year is declining, and specialists in various fields are unwilling to undertake this work because it is not considered scholarly research. In addition, many scholarly articles are published in English, a trend that is worrying because Lithuanian terminology is neither used nor developed. The excessive use of English seems to cause problems not only in Lithuania: Daria Protopopescu, representing the University of Bucharest, examined domain loss in Romanian cybersecurity terminology and said that translators have difficulty finding suitable equivalents when translating texts in this field, since cybersecurity is a relatively new field and Romanian specialists mostly use English terms.

Translation was also a prominent theme in other presentations—after all, translations have a considerable impact on the development of language. Maria Crina Herteg from the “1 December 1918” University of Alba Iulia,

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using English and Romanian corpora consisting of business contract texts, highlighted the difficulties involved in accurately integrating business terminology into translation. Meanwhile, Munkhtsetseg Namsrai, a researcher at the Institute of Language and Literature of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences, examined the translation of metaphorical economic terms from English into Mongolian. Using examples such as informal investor (English angel investor), the researcher explained that such metaphorical terms cannot be translated directly into Mongolian, since English-speaking and Mongolian cultures are very different and some concepts, such as angel, may not be understood. Translating metaphorical terms requires a thorough understanding of the cultural and cognitive aspects of both the source and target languages, as well as adapting the terms being translated to the target language.

As usual, the conference discussed not only new but also traditional terminology management tools, such as terminology dictionaries. Isabela Pizarro Sánchez, representing the University of Valladolid, discussed food allergen terminology in lexicographic and terminological sources, drawing on a comparative analysis of English and Spanish. She found that definitions of such allergens are usually one-dimensional (for example, celery is defined only as a vegetable, without mentioning its potential allergenicity), terminology is often fragmented (in Spanish, a term may be labelled obsolete even though it has official status on the EU allergen list), and pragmatic contextualisation is limited (usage notes or references to legal regulations are rarely provided). Marlies Alber, representing Eurac Research, spoke about terminology work in the legal field, drawing on existing legal texts, and stressed the need to combine text-based terminology work with a systematic approach and to take stakeholders and users’ needs into account. Regina Kvašytė, a researcher at the Latvian Language Institute of the University of Latvia, examined multilingual dictionaries that include terms in both Latvian and Lithuanian. The oldest such dictionary is Ekonomikos terminų žodynas, published in 1946 at the Baltic University in Germany, while the corpus of contemporary terminography (since 1990) includes nine such sources, the most recent being Dešimtkalbis gamtinės geografijos terminų žodynas, published in Lithuania in 2019. Meanwhile, Aušra Rimkutė-Ganusauskienė, a researcher at the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, examined the structural features of definitions of specific geographical terms. She concluded that in the Aiškinamajame geografijos terminų žodyne the most common definition pattern is to name the logical superordinate at the beginning of the definition and then, after a comma, give the essential distinguishing features.

More than one presentation explored historical aspects of terminology, for example, by analysing groups of terms in older sources. Alvydas Umbrasas, a researcher at the Terminology Centre of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, spoke about designations of persons in a legal terminology dictionary project (1920)—a field in which a person is both subject and object, making designations of persons particularly relevant and widely used. A similar topic was addressed by Palmira Zemlevičiūtė, a researcher at the same centre, who discussed anthroponymic designations in the first Lithuanian interwar psychiatry textbook and how they become common terms. Many terms, for example, daltonism, parkinsonism, derive from renowned scholars in medicine and other fields, who were the first

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described the relevant phenomena or were otherwise connected with them, for example. Beatrice Ragazzini of the University of Bologna examined the history of scientific debates among experts in the 19th century in order to investigate the role of terms in the development of science; she concluded that there is a close reciprocal relationship between the history of science and naming and classification. Dalibor Vrgoč, representing Croatia and the Institute of Croatian Language, spoke about Israel’s 2006 war against “Hezbollah”: one of the key reasons for Israel’s defeat was poor terminology: because of its excessive abstraction and lack of clarity, soldiers receiving orders did not always understand them correctly.

Of course, several presentations beyond those already mentioned focused on the scientific level and on theoretical and methodological issues. Ramunė Vaskelaitė, a researcher at the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, discussed the evaluation and application of the principle of brevity in terms, which receives less attention in terminology work than other principles applied to terminology. Jana Levická, representing the Ľudovít Štúr Institute of Linguistics of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, spoke about determinologization, drawing on a corpus-based study of the term naratyvas. She examined the term’s use in specialized and journalistic texts and studied its collocations in these texts, thereby also revealing differences in usage. Corpora featured in more than one study presented at the conference, but in the presentation by Mykolas Romeris University researchers Olga Usinskienė and Sigitoc Rackevičienė, corpora themselves were the object of study. They presented a parallel English–Lithuanian corpus compiled from EU migration documents using Sketch Engine, along with tools available for working with it in this program, including part-of-speech tagging and lemmatization functions, which have been available since December 2024. Although, according to the researchers, these functions have opened up new possibilities for analyzing Lithuanian-language data, further improvements are needed to extract Lithuanian terms more effectively.

Some presentations by researchers at the Institute of the Lithuanian Language stood out for their interdisciplinarity: they are difficult to assign to a single thematic area because they intertwine several levels of terminology and other branches of linguistics. Lina Rutkienė presented semantic and grammatical changes in substantivized nouns and words used as nouns. According to her, one semantic change worth noting is the shift from one categorical meaning to two: a single linguistic unit begins to encompass two categorical meanings, which become constituent elements of a new word meaning. Rima Bakšienė, Agnė Čepaitienė, and Jolita Urbanavičienė reviewed the Lithuanian equivalents of the terms of the International Phonetic Alphabet. The International Phonetic Alphabet, first published in 1886 and used to study units at the phonetic level in various languages, began to be applied more widely in Lithuania only at the beginning of the 21st century. At present, however, there is an official set of IPA symbols for standard Lithuanian, approved by the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language and prepared by the presenters, systematically adapted also to Lithuanian dialect sounds.

Among the many presentations focused on the scientific and administrative levels, this time only one was directly related to the educational level of terminology. Vesna Lušicky,

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representing the University of Vienna’s Centre for Translation Studies, discussed the CLARIN ERIC system, which connects numerous universities and research centres, and the resources it contains, which can be readily integrated into teaching. However, the educational level was touched on more subtly in other presentations as well, and it arose repeatedly in questions asked by participants in the audience.

Over these two days, conference participants became acquainted not only with scientific discoveries and new research, but also with Lithuanian culture and language: on the first day, they were invited on a virtual journey through the work of Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, and on the second, they visited the Lithuanian Language Institute’s interactive language museum, “Lituanistikos židinys” (“The Hearth of Lithuanian Studies”).

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