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doi.org/10.35321/term30-7
The Term Bank of the Republic of Lithuania: 20 Years After the Adoption of the Law
Term Bank of the Republic of Lithuania: 20 Years After Passing the Law
ALVYDAS UMBRASAS
Institute of the Lithuanian Language
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5184-0056
ABSTRACT
The Term Bank of the Republic of Lithuania is being developed pursuant to the Law on the Term Bank of the Republic of Lithuania, adopted 20 years ago. On the occasion of this anniversary, the article examines the history and development of the Term Bank, focusing both on its legal regulation and on the contents of its database. It examines the contribution of state institutions to the Term Bank and the characteristics of entries for terms from approved legal acts.
KEYWORDS: Term Bank of the Republic of Lithuania, terminology management, term base, terms in legal acts, termhood.
ABSTRACT
The Term Bank of the Republic of Lithuania was established in accordance with the Law on the Term Bank of the Republic of Lithuania adopted twenty years ago. On the occasion of the anniversary, the article examines the history and development of the Term Bank, focusing on both the legal regulation and the content of the database. The contribution of public institutions to the Term Bank and the characteristics of the legal term entries are examined.
KEYWORDS: Term Bank of the Republic of Lithuania, terminology ordering, term database, terms of legal acts, termness.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
On 23 December 2003, the Law on the Term Bank of the Republic of Lithuania was adopted; thus, at the end of 2023, it will have been 20 years since the management of legal-act terminology in Lithuania was regulated by a separate law. On this occasion, it is worth
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looking both to the past and to the present in order to assess the work accomplished. The concept, structure, content, and legal framework of the Term Bank of the Republic of Lithuania, established on the basis of the Law, have already been examined (see Umbrasas 2013). Using a descriptive-analytical method, this article seeks to supplement earlier research with historical, factual, and terminological data. The aim of the article is to show the development and implementation of the Law on the Term Bank, changes in the Term Bank, particularly over the past 10 years, the dynamics of the activities of institutions working with the Term Bank, and the distinctive features of the content of this database. The main focus is on the terminology of legal acts. The material is based on data from the Legal Acts Information System and the Term Bank, the annual activity reports of the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language, the minutes and appendices of the working group responsible for drafting the bill on the Law on the Term Bank, as well as the literature cited.
GENESIS OF THE LEGAL FRAMEWORK
At the initiative of the Language Commission, the idea of a state term bank began to be considered when the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language for the 2002–2007 term, chaired by Dr Irena Smetonienė, began its work. As early as 2002, representatives of the Language Commission held meetings with information technology and other specialists (from the Office of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania, the Lithuanian Standards Board, the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, etc.), at which they discussed the possibility of creating an entirely new term database, debated its concept and structure, its links with databases already in existence at the time, and also the coverage of terms (for example, whether to include or exclude non-recommended terms). In November 2002, the Language Commission sent approximately 30 inquiries to institutions in order to assess the situation and learn about the terminological databases already held by them. Since the Seimas was then in the process of managing the Eurovoc European terminology dictionary database, IT specialists proposed its structure as the foundation for the future term bank, also bearing in mind the possibility of later integration. As the discussions developed, the Seimas Committee on European Affairs proposed that the Language Commission’s idea of creating a state term bank be implemented through legislation. To this end, in mid-2003, by decision of the Seimas Board, a working group was established to prepare a draft Law on the Term Bank of the Republic of Lithuania. Vytenis Povilas Andriukaitis, then Deputy Speaker of the Seimas and Chair of the Seimas Committee on European Affairs, was appointed to lead it. The working group included a total of 14 people, not only from the Seimas but also from other interested
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institutions1. The group was tasked with preparing the draft by 15 September of that year—in effect, over the summer. The work was expedited because Lithuania’s accession to the European Union was approaching (it took place on 1 May 2004), and the Term Bank was associated with the challenges of managing the terminology of legal acts that had been and would be addressed at the time, especially the terminology of the acquis of the European Union being translated into Lithuanian.
As can be seen from the minutes of the working group responsible for drafting the bill on the Law on the Term Bank, the group held its first meeting on 27 June 2003 and met at least six times in total over three months, also inviting other specialists to its meetings (from the Seimas Information Technology Department, among others). At the first meetings, discussions focused on issues of cooperation among institutions in organizing the Term Bank’s activities; the possibilities of both centralized and decentralized systems were considered, as were the aspects of obtaining, combining, reviewing, approving, and publishing data. The Language Commission, the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, and the Lithuanian Standards Board, as well as IT specialists from the Seimas Information Technology Department, put forward their concepts. The concept proposed by the Language Commission received the most support: under this concept, various entities submit terminological data to the Language Commission for evaluation (primarily to its Subcommission on Terminology), and the data are entered into a single database, while their preparation is handled by working groups established in various institutions. A survey conducted by the Language Commission at the end of 2002 showed that 16 of 21 state institutions had or were developing databases of one kind or another (including term databases), and had appointed people responsible for this work2; consequently, the foundations for potential working groups were already in place.
The initial draft Law on the Term Bank was prepared and considered in August 2003. Among other things, during the first consideration of the draft
1 In addition to the aforementioned head of the working group, its members included Irena Smetonienė (Chair of the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language), Loreta Raulinaitytė (Senior Adviser to the Seimas Committee on European Affairs), Aušra Bodin (Head of the Legal Acts Systematization Division of the Seimas Information Technology Department), Justinas Žilinskas (Senior Adviser on European Union and International Law at the Seimas Legal Department), Kęstutis Kaminskas (Adviser to the Seimas Committee on Education, Science and Culture), Regina Narutienė (Senior Specialist in the Seimas Documents Division), Kristina Kačkuvienė (translator in the Translators’ Group attached to the Chancellor of the Seimas), Jūratė Drevinskienė (Deputy Director of the Translation, Documentation and Information Centre of the European Committee under the Government of the Republic of Lithuania), Živilė Liekytė (Director of the Department of Legislation and Public Law at the Ministry of Justice), Valentina Karazienė (Head of the Classifications Subdivision of the Statistics Development Division of the Department of Statistics under the Government of the Republic of Lithuania), Nijolė Dudlauskienė (Head of the First Standardization Division of the Lithuanian Standards Board under the Ministry of Environment of the Republic of Lithuania), Rimantas Miknys (Deputy Director of the Lithuanian Institute of History), and Jolanta Zabarskaitė (Acting Director of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language) (Decision No. 1576 of the Board of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania of 18 June 2003 “On the Establishment of a Working Group to Prepare a Draft Law on the Term Bank of the Republic of Lithuania”).
2 Data are taken from the explanatory memorandum to the draft Law on the Term Bank of the Republic of Lithuania.
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The use of the word bankas (“bank”) in the name of the law and the database was discussed. It was proposed that it be called registru (“register”) (by analogy with registers of legal acts), since bankas is not commonly used in the legislative context. Nevertheless, it was agreed that bankas is used in international terminology standards, so this is nothing new. In mid-September (on the 12th), the second version of the draft was considered; the revised draft was submitted for consideration to the Language Commission’s Subcommittee on Terminology (which met on September 23) and amended in response to its comments. At the end of September (on the 26th), having reviewed and improved the third version, the working group concluded that it had considered all the proposals and completed the drafting of the bill. After the explanatory memorandum had been prepared, the bill was registered in the Seimas’ legal acts database at the very beginning of November (on the 3rd). A few minor amendments were also made in response to comments from Seimas committees, and by December the final version was ready.
A review of all versions and the development of the draft Law on the Terms Bank shows that formal aspects of expression, some provisions, and their scope changed—as the process moved forward, the formulations gradually became more concise and general. Some terms and their meanings also changed. For example, the terms privalomas terminas, rekomenduojamas terminas (“mandatory term, recommended term”) were replaced by aprobuotas terminas, teiktinas terminas (“approved term, recommended term”). The term termino straipsnis (“term entry”) emerged; initially, this was called terminologiniu įrašu (“terminological record”), while terminologinių duomenų rinkinys (“set of terminological data”) was replaced by terminų straipsnių rinkiniu, ekspertinis vertinimas – ekspertize, specialiosios žinios – terminologo kompetencija (“set of term entries, expert assessment – expertise, special knowledge – terminologist’s competence”), and so on. The definitions of terms were also repeatedly changed, refined, and rephrased. The development of the definition of the Lietuvos Respublikos terminų banko (abbreviated as Terminų banko) (“Terms Bank of the Republic of Lithuania”) itself across the different versions of the draft (from the first to the final) illustrates this:
“a system for managing (organizing, accumulating, storing, and using) terms and related information; the entirety of sets of Lithuanian-language terms organized according to the established procedure and published online”;
“the entirety of sets of Lithuanian-language term entries organized according to the established procedure and published online”;
“the entirety of sets of approved and recommended Lithuanian-language term entries, and non-recommended terms, organized according to the established procedure and published online”;
“a state information system comprising the entirety of sets of approved and recommended Lithuanian-language term entries, and non-recommended terms, organized according to the established procedure and published online.”
As can be seen, the concept moved from simply a system for managing information to a state information system, while the scope of the terms included was gradually clarified.
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It is also worth noting the term apibrėžtis (“definition”), which is not defined in the law. The minutes of the working group that drafted the bill and their appendices show that the first technical descriptions of the system prepared by IT specialists mentioned definicija (“definition”); it was proposed that this term be replaced with apibrėžimas (“definition”), and it was indeed changed in the descriptions, but it was not mentioned in the first versions of the bill. Only during the preparation of the third version of the bill was the definition of termino straipsnio (“term entry”) refined, and the term apibrėžties (“definition”) was included in it. It may be argued that the Law on the Terms Bank itself contributed to the spread of the term apibrėžtis (“definition”) not only in administrative contexts but also in Lithuanian terminology studies, and effectively brought to an end the previous tradition of using the term apibrėžimas (“definition”).
Alongside the initial bill, work began on drafting the specification for the Terms Bank information system (prepared by the Seimas Information Technology Department), and it was also agreed that a methodology for the Terms Bank was needed. The latter was approved by a resolution of the Language Commission a couple of months after the Law on the Terms Bank was adopted (on February 2, 2004). As is typical of legal acts of this kind, the law set out only the most general matters concisely—the creation, management, use, and funding of the Terms Bank, as well as the duties, rights, and responsibilities of legal entities and natural persons who manage the Terms Bank, provide data to it, and use it. The methodology discussed in greater detail the structure of the Terms Bank, the composition of a term entry, the requirements for the information system, the functions of the entities that govern and manage the Terms Bank, and the functions and obligations of unregistered and registered users, among other matters.
Over the past 20 years, the Law on the Terms Bank has been amended only once: on July 4, 2017, the Law Amending Article 4 of the Law of the Republic of Lithuania on the Terms Bank No. IX-1950 was adopted (it entered into force on January 1, 2018), under which the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language became the sole governing and managing body of the Terms Bank. Until then, the Language Commission had been responsible only for the content of the Terms Bank, while the Seimas Chancellery provided and maintained the technical and software infrastructure required for the Bank to operate. In view of the amendment to the law and the obligations it established to prepare implementing legal acts, the Methodology of the Terms Bank of the Republic of Lithuania was approved (and updated) by Resolution No. N-3 (162) of the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language of October 5, 2017. Shortly afterward, by Order No. V-21 of the Chair of the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language dated April 11, 2018, two further documents were approved—the Regulations of the Information System of the Terms Bank of the Republic of Lithuania and the Information System of the Terms Bank of the Republic of Lithuania
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system data security regulations. The entirety of the methodologies and regulations defines in even greater detail the Terminų bankas operating mechanism, the information system’s purpose, tasks, organizational, informational, and functional structure, etc., with considerable attention also devoted to data security.
DATABASE
The first Terminų bankas information system was developed by the Information Technology Department of the Seimas Chancellery as early as 2004 (data entry began and the data were made publicly available in January 2005). The database was created using Oracle software; the internal system intended for registered users (see Fig. 1) was accessible only after the necessary software package had been installed on a computer. At the beginning of Terminų bankas’s existence, this was a fairly conventional technological solution, but over time the programs became outdated and ensuring their compatibility became more difficult. In 2018, after the Language Commission took over management of the Terminų bankas information system, a new Terminų bankas information system was developed at its request on the basis of PostgreSQL and began operating in November 2019; registered users could access it online without installing any additional programs (Fig. 2). The public term-search module was also updated. For greater convenience and simplicity, a minimalist, single-field simplified search window was introduced, along with an advanced search window (Fig. 4), developed on the basis of the previous search window (Fig. 3), with additional functions (for example, the option to search term definitions). The Terminų bankas website was designed according to responsive-design principles, making it more convenient to use on mobile devices (the address has not changed – http://terminai.vlkk.lt).
Terminų bankas was created primarily as a shared information system for state institutions to manage the terms used in legislation (for more on the concept, see also Ivanauskienė 2005, 2008), but it is also intended to disseminate various reliable terms; terms from legislation account for only a relatively small proportion of the entire database (about 7 percent). In November 2023, approximately 278,000 term entries were publicly available in Terminų bankas, most of them—about 225,000 (roughly 81 percent)—entries from terminological dictionaries. In total, data from 53 terminological dictionaries have been added to Terminų bankas. Over the past couple of years, substantial dictionaries of psychology, geography, and mechanics terms have been added; in the preceding two years, smaller dictionaries of public relations, project management, and catering-industry terms were added (the exact list of dictionaries available in Terminų bankas
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Fig. 1. Window of the Terminų bankas information system (internal), operational from 2005 to 2019
Fig. 2. Window of the Terminų bankas information system (internal), operational since 2019
with bibliographic data can be found on the Language Commission’s website3). In cooperation with the Lithuanian Standards Department, in 2015 the Terminų bankas began publishing those terms that had received a positive evaluation from the Language Commission
3 Available online: https://www.vlkk.lt/aktualiausios-temos/terminija/terminu-banke-skelbiamu-terminu-zodynu-sarasas.
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Fig. 3. Public term search window of the Term Bank (2005–2019)
Fig. 4. Public term search window of the Term Bank (since 2019)
Data on Lithuanian term standards—about 8,700 term entries from 66 standards are published in total4 (including terms from the International Valuation Standards submitted by the Ministry of Finance) (about 3% of the database). A substantial part of the Term Bank (about 24,000 terms
4 Includes term standards assessed by the Language Commission from around 2005 onward, but a few that have not been included are also present.
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entries (about 9%) is made up of data prepared in accordance with the Language Commission’s recommendations (including around 80 recommendations approved by the Language Commission in resolutions over the past two decades). These cover biological and zoological nomenclature and related names—the names of plants, their fruits, and some products made from plants; names of algae, lichens, fungi and similar organisms, and the diseases they cause; and names of beetles, amphibians, molluscs, crabs, and others. To increase the diversity of terms published in the Term Bank, in 2019 it began publishing terms selected from higher education textbooks (the terms and definitions were reviewed and refined by the authors of those textbooks and considered by the Language Commission and its Terminology Subcommission). In total, about 1,300 terms from 13 textbooks are published, covering a wide range of fields: accounting, auditing, financial markets, international economics, microeconomics, macroeconomics, European Union internal market law, non-governmental organizations, career development, construction materials science, chemical technology of ceramic materials, and computer architecture. Although the number is not large (it accounts for less than half a percent of the entire database; on average, 100 terms per textbook), this is nevertheless significant data, especially given the lack of terminology dictionaries in some fields.
It should be noted that trends in the publication of terminology dictionaries are not encouraging. The surge in the publication of terminology dictionaries of varying quality that began after independence was restored—driven both by practical needs and natural demand, and by financial support (particularly under the 1996–2005 Programme for the Use and Development of the State Language of the Republic of Lithuania, approved by Resolution No. 1525 of the Government of the Republic of Lithuania of 4 December 1995 and coordinated by the Language Commission, as well as under later support measures)—has clearly subsided over the past decade. The number of different dictionaries published annually can now be counted not in dozens, but in single digits; the scale of terminology-dictionary publishing at the end of the Soviet period is returning (see Fig. 55).
5 The graph shows changes in the number of terminology dictionaries published each year. Figures for 1980–2005 are based on bibliographic data published in a work devoted to terminography (see Gaivenytė-Butler, Keinys, Noreikaitė 2008: 70–228); later data were taken from the latest annotations of terminology dictionaries published in the journal Terminologijos, compiled by Jolanta Gaivenytė-Butler (some publications included in the lists are not genuine terminology dictionaries, but have been conditionally classified as such). As can be seen, the first surge in the publication of terminology dictionaries occurred precisely in the year independence was restored (22 terminology dictionaries and glossaries were published in 1990; of course, at least the larger ones had begun to be compiled at the end of the Soviet period), and the peak was reached in 2008, when 29 terminographic publications appeared. A clear decline in numbers followed. The graph does not show qualitative changes; a very large proportion of the dictionaries were not submitted to the Language Commission for assessment (cf. Gaivenytė-Butler 2009: 254), and, in general, they do not meet the concept of a terminology dictionary and such
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Fig. 5. Publication of terminology dictionaries in Lithuania since 1980
In terms of quality, the poor quality of terminology dictionaries used to be a cause for concern (Klimavičius 2003: 27; Gaivenytė-Butler 2009: 259–264), but now the numbers are also troubling: given these trends, it may soon have to be concluded that not a single dictionary was published in a year. On the one hand, this may indicate that a considerable number of terminology dictionaries have already been published (terminography in some fields is indeed quite rich); on the other hand, the paucity or complete absence of terminography in some fields cannot be overlooked6. The older generation of terminographers, who accomplished significant work, certainly left room for new projects, but few seem willing to continue that work. The retreat of Lithuanian from academic publications, driven by science policy, should in time create increasing terminological challenges for university lecturers teaching in Lithuanian and their students. This is also a challenge with regard to adding dictionaries to the Term Bank. One hopes that terminology dictionaries (not necessarily printed ones; nowadays, electronic versions are more expected)
žodynams keliamų reikalavimų (žr. Umbrasas 2008). Dėti į Terminų banką atrenkami tik kai kurie Kalbos komisijos įvertinti (paprastai verčiamieji aiškinamieji) terminų žodynai. Kėlima į duomenų bazę riboja ir finansinės galimybės (žodynų duomenų struktūrinimui skirtos lėšos nėra didelės). Paties Terminų banko, kaip terpės terminų žodynams rengti, potencialas iš esmės liko neišnaudotas. Tiesa, jo vidinė sistema labiau pritaikyta palyginti nedideliems duomenų rinkiniams tvarkyti, o didelių žodynų rengimo etape reikalingi kiek kitokie įrankiai.
6 It should be added that, at the beginning of independence, the publication of small glossaries, often of little terminographic value, later ceased to be relevant once it became possible to publish various lists of terms directly online; bibliographically, these do not attain the status of terminology dictionaries.
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The need will be met in one way or another. Compiling a dictionary is a lengthy undertaking, so it would also be useful for terminology management and the needs of the Term Bank to prepare smaller collections of terminology entries. For example, in autumn 2023, the Term Bank published a list of piano mechanism part names prepared by the Lithuanian Piano Tuners Association, headed by Audrius Blažiūnas (82 terminology entries). Collections of at least the most important terms in other fields lacking terminographic resources would also be useful, as would the involvement of research institutions7.
TERMINOLOGY MANAGEMENT IN LEGAL ACTS
The Law on the Term Bank of the Republic of Lithuania, together with subsequent implementing legal acts, established an organizational mechanism that has been operating for nearly 20 years. Under this Law, terminology commissions were set up in state institutions to provide data to the Term Bank. These commissions first inventoried the terms in legal acts in force and subsequently undertook the ongoing management of terminology in draft legal acts. Terms from legal acts, which may be regarded as the functionally most important part of the Term Bank, comprise almost 19,000 terminology entries. Approximately one quarter of the approved8 terminology entries are in the fields of agriculture, fisheries, and food. This reflects both the activity of the Terminology Commission of the Ministry of Agriculture since the very beginning of the Term Bank’s development (although the State Food and Veterinary Service has supplied about a tenth of the terms in this field) and the fact that we are an agricultural country in which a considerable number of legal acts in this field are drafted. A relatively large number of terms have also been approved in the fields of finance, environment, health, and energy (see Table 1).
The activity of terminology commissions in state institutions varies. Over the past 10 years, the Ministries of Agriculture, Environment, Finance, and Health have submitted the largest numbers of terms from various legal acts to the Term Bank (each contributing more than 1,000 terms); the contributions of the Ministries of the Economy and Innovation (formerly the Ministry of the Economy), Energy, and Transport and Communications are half as large, while those of other ministries are smaller still (most likely because they draft fewer legal acts, although in general legal
7 Under implementing legal acts (a Government resolution) adopted pursuant to the Law on the Term Bank, as early as 2008 state research institutions were required (and state universities were recommended) to establish terminology commissions and submit the collections of terminology entries they prepared to the Term Bank. Although such commissions were established, their results are not visible in the Term Bank.
8 In the Term Bank, the status approved under the Law on the Term Bank is granted only to terms in legal acts.
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Table 1. Number of approved terminology entries from legal acts published in the Term Bank, by field
Agriculture, fisheries, and food
4662
Finance
2712
Environment
2205
Health
2127
Energy
1484
Economy
871
Public safety
756
Transport
630
Communications
577
Defense
527
Law
435
Social protection, employment and working conditions
392
Politics
285
Culture
244
Education and science
186
Statistics
150
Standardization and metrology
149
Gambling and lotteries
116
International relations
114
Physical education and sport
105
Other
99
acts whose terminology has still not been included in the Term Bank). Among the institutions subordinate to ministries, the State Medicines Control Service is the most active (see Table 2 for more details). Comparing the data with those from 10 years ago (cf. Umbrasas 2013: 102–104), it is clear that the activity of institutions has changed. The gap between the activity of the Ministry of Agriculture and that of other institutions has narrowed considerably (10 years ago, it alone had submitted one third of all approved terms); an increase in the activity of the Ministry of the Environment is also evident, as is a particularly sharp rise in the activity of the Ministry of Health, especially over the past few years (10 years ago, only 194 term records from the Ministry of Health had been approved, whereas 1,026 were approved in 2013–2022). Over the course of 10 years, only a few or a few dozen term records were approved from some institutions, but 10 years ago there were even more such institutions.
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Table 2. Number of term entries approved over the past 10 years, by year and institution
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 TOTAL Total 896 1289 1287 1090 841 1062 911 954 723 853 9906 Ministry of Agriculture 157 326 237 184 118 125 71 106 56 93 1473 Ministry of Environment 120 151 112 238 101 109 126 210 87 91 1345 Ministry of Finance 76 229 138 48 129 180 42 31 91 143 1107 Ministry of Health 34 46 153 92 80 124 122 108 120 147 1026 Ministry of Economy / Ministry of the Economy and Innovation 35 13 140 58 67 50 31 44 94 27 559 Ministry of Energy 78 42 7 63 41 55 48 125 54 36 549 Ministry of Transport and Communications 88 35 44 29 29 50 86 84 56 20 521 State Medicines Control Agency 108 81 0 69 4 18 10 71 15 12 388 Office of the Seimas 0 6 78 16 13 38 10 55 65 94 375 Bank of Lithuania 17 63 71 55 15 58 63 0 10 0 352 Ministry of Social Security and Labour 17 41 34 19 10 19 17 20 17 65 259 State Food and Veterinary Service 15 36 16 83 27 9 25 2 15 7 235 Ministry of the Interior 14 19 89 53 3 4 0 18 0 4 204 Ministry of Justice 34 30 16 14 14 61 1 1 12 9 192 State Nuclear Power Safety Inspectorate 22 3 32 31 11 14 34 9 1 34 191 Radiation Protection Centre 0 5 0 0 121 4 51 8 1 0 190 Communications Regulatory Authority 9 29 27 4 4 0 97 0 3 7 180 National Commission for Energy Control and Prices / State Energy Regulatory Council 0 70 29 9 20 16 0 4 3 0 151
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2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
TOTAL
Ministry of National Defence
1
3
28
3
16
26
23
4
1
9
114
Police Department under the Ministry of the Interior
12
15
0
3
0
78
0
0
0
0
108
Ministry of Culture
7
6
22
10
1
6
12
8
16
12
100
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
40
2
0
3
14
9
0
15
0
0
83
Statistics Lithuania
4
25
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
26
55
Government Office
0
0
0
0
0
0
21
19
0
13
53
Fire and Rescue Department
0
9
11
0
0
9
0
0
6
0
35
Special Investigation Service
8
4
1
1
0
0
11
0
0
4
29
Financial Crime Investigation Service
0
0
0
5
0
0
10
3
0
0
18
Audit, Accounting, Property Valuation and Insolvency Management Authority
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
9
0
0
9
Office of the President
0
0
2
0
3
0
0
0
0
0
5
The activity trends over the past decade for at least some institutions are best seen in graphical form (see Fig. 6). If all institutions submitted the same number of terms for approval each year, the graph would show a single, combined straight line. The divergence and irregularity of the lines indicate that the intensity of terminological activity varied from year to year. It should be noted that the graph and Table 2 present new term entries published in the Term Bank, while several hundred terms from draft legal acts are also harmonised each year simply by updating previously published data (usually definitions); therefore, the terminological contribution of some institutions to the Term Bank is greater than the table indicates.
When considering the number of term entries, it should be borne in mind that there are fewer distinct terms than term entries, because the same term
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Fig. 6. Monthly dynamics of activity among institutions submitting the largest number of approved terminology entries over the past 10 years
with more or less differing definitions may enter the Term Bank both from different legal acts in the same field and from legal acts in different fields. Definition models may also differ in different contexts. As is known, when necessary, the same term may be defined by specifying its characteristics, listing the objects that make up the concept, or referring to an article of the same or another legal act (Umbrasas 2022: 130–134). Practice shows that at least some terms (e.g., those related to funding) are needed in various fields and are defined according to the needs of a particular legal act. The term applicant is perhaps the record holder in the Term Bank—no fewer than 39 definitions have been submitted from legal acts. Here are some of them9:
“a natural or legal person of the Republic of Lithuania seeking to receive support under a European Union programme”;
“a natural or legal person who submits a complaint to the intelligence ombudsman”;
“a natural or legal person submitting an application for the registration of a veterinary medicinal product”;
9 To avoid making the text cumbersome, exact sources (legal acts and specific drafts thereof) are not cited here or below, since the data are viewed as models.
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“a person or several persons who have filed an application to register a trademark”;
“a person who has applied, in accordance with the procedure laid down by legal acts, for a licence, permit or certificate”;
“a natural person who has applied to participate in the certification process for energy workers”;
“a public or private legal person, a branch or representative office of a legal person, submitting a project implementation plan and seeking to obtain European Union and/or state budget funds to achieve the objectives set out in the project implementation plan”;
“a municipality submitting an application for project financing, an administrative unit of the Ministry of Environment of the Republic of Lithuania or an institution subordinate to the Ministry, or another entity”;
“a citizen of the Republic of Lithuania aged at least 16, a foreigner permanently residing in the Republic of Lithuania, or a group of such persons, who have submitted an appeal in accordance with the procedure laid down by the Constitutional Law on Petitions of the Republic of Lithuania”;
“one of the parents with whom the child’s place of residence has been established by a court decision or agreement between the parents, or a guardian (custodian) applying to the benefit administrator for payment of benefits”;
“a public drinking water supplier and wastewater manager submitting an application for a subsidy to implement an investment project for connecting residential buildings to existing centralized wastewater management systems”;
“a member of the Lithuanian Rural Network operating at national level who has submitted an application for support to implement a communication project under the Lithuanian Rural Development Programme for 2014–2020 and is responsible for the proper implementation of that project”;
“an economic operator or group of such operators that has submitted to the European Commission an application under a simple programme for informing about agricultural products and promoting their sale on the internal market and in third countries, and that meets the requirements laid down in Article 7(1) of Regulation (EU) No 2014/1144”;
“A natural person, legal person, entity without the status of a legal person, its branch and representative office of the Republic of Lithuania, a Member State of the European Union, or a State of the European Economic Area.”
As can be seen, although the concepts share the feature of making an application or request (they can be defined in general terms in a general dictionary), the legislation differs both as to the entity specified and the purpose of its application (only the last example is a list without defining features). In similar cases, the question of the precision of the term is usually raised. One or another more precise term has also been approved (e.g.: applicant for the project under the “New Generation Lithuania” Recovery and Resilience Plan,
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applicant for the communication project under the Lithuanian Rural Development Programme for 2014–2020), but it is often very difficult to refine a term, or the refined term becomes too cumbersome; therefore, a universal term is retained, with its specific meaning indicated by a definition.
The Term Bank also records data on different drafts of the same legal act. For example, over the past decade it has contained the following definitions of the state treasury recorded in various drafts amending the Law on the State Treasury (in chronological order10):
“a system managed by the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Lithuania, which comprises its general account at the Bank of Lithuania and other systems through which the functions of this system are implemented”*;
“a fund of state resources, whose funds consist of state budget revenue, funds received or borrowed by the state, funds received from the temporary investment of the fund’s resources, and other funds acquired”;
“a system managed by the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Lithuania, which comprises the state treasury general account managed by that Ministry at the Bank of Lithuania and systems enabling the following functions to be performed: accumulating state monetary resources in the state treasury general account and disbursing them, keeping records of these operations, carrying out control, preparing and submitting reports on these operations, managing obligations assumed on behalf of the state through the issuance of securities of the Government of the Republic of Lithuania, the signing of loan agreements and other debt instruments, forecasting state monetary resource flows, and investing or otherwise using temporarily available state monetary resources on a repayable basis”*;
“a system managed by the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Lithuania, which comprises organizational and technical measures enabling the functions specified in Article 7 of the Law on the State Treasury of the Republic of Lithuania to be performed”.
Recording different definitions of the same legal act can make the Term Bank more difficult to use (which is why new definitions are often entered in place of earlier ones rather than alongside them), but it can also be useful, since it allows different conceptions and changes in concepts to be seen. Furthermore, when terms from draft legal acts are submitted for approval, it cannot yet be stated with certainty that the draft will actually be adopted. This applies particularly to initiatives to amend laws, which sometimes take the form of parallel drafts that are revised over a number of years. The development of definitions and concepts sometimes also leads to changes in terms. For example, over a period of approximately a decade, the following terms from the Law on the Management of State Information Resources and its amendment drafts were approved (in chronological order):
10 Definitions marked with asterisks have been replaced and are no longer displayed in the Term Bank.
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state information system manager – a ministry or another state institution or state establishment that sets the objectives of a state information system and manages it;
manager of a register or state information system – a state institution within whose head’s management or operational remit a register or state information system falls, and which sets the operational objectives of the register or state information system and coordinates its functioning;
information system manager – a state or municipal institution or establishment, another public administration entity, a public institution or a state-controlled enterprise that sets the objectives and means of operation of an information system.
The growing volume of data in the Term Bank encourages users to assess and select information. A considerable number of terms have entered this database from various sources. For instance, the term waste appears in 15 term records. It was approved from the Law on Waste Management, included from 4 terminology standards (two in environmental protection, one of them in a military context, as well as fuel and packaging standards), and from no fewer than 9 dictionaries (of clothing, chemistry, ecology, physics, geography, catering establishments, mechanics, timber, and thermal and nuclear engineering). Some sources define it in general terms (e.g., “a substance or object which its holder discards, intends to discard or is required to discard”), while others define it by field, including more specific characteristics (e.g., “residues of raw materials or semi-finished products left unused when processing raw material into a product”; “product residues generated in food preparation”). Different definitions in sources do not necessarily indicate differences between concepts; the wording of a definition may be determined by the dictionary compiler’s perspective and expertise, and by the literature they used. A different case is that of polysemous terms: for example, program occurs in 20 term records (dictionary meanings are distinguished and presented in separate records), drawn from various legal acts, standards and dictionaries. The data show that in finance, military affairs, computing, communications, sport, education, technology and other fields, this term can have entirely different meanings.
TERMINOLOGICALITY OF LEGAL ACT TERMS
The variety of terms drawn from different sources into the Term Bank makes it possible to note differences between terms in legal acts and those recorded in traditional terminography. For example, the traditional view is that the dative case is unsuitable for forming terms that designate a type; instead of tepalas batams, prekės turizmui, forms such as batų tepalas, turizmo prekės are recommended (Sintaksė 2003: 47–48). Nevertheless, a considerable number of terms with a dative of purpose have been approved in the field of pharmacy, since constructions with this case and with the genitive are needed to designate different concepts, cf.:
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quite a few terms with a dative of purpose, since constructions with this case and the genitive are needed to designate different concepts, cf.:
powder for tissue adhesives – a loose, sterile preparation consisting of one or more types of powder, including lyophilized powder, which, when dissolved in a particular liquid, produces tissue adhesive;
tissue adhesive powder – a loose, sterile preparation—a powder or powder mixture applied directly to the required site (e.g., a wound) so that, by interacting with a particular liquid (e.g., blood), it forms a haemostatic agent and/or tissue adhesive.
Interestingly, in pharmacy even the word order (sequence) in a term can conventionally determine differences between concepts, cf.:
suspension and effervescent powders for oral suspension – a suspension and effervescent powders intended for preparing an oral suspension by dissolving or dispersing the effervescent powders in the suspension, or by dissolving or dispersing the effervescent powders in the specified liquid and mixing it with the suspension. The suspension contains the active substance(s), while the effervescent powders do not. When the active substance(s) are contained in both the effervescent powders and the suspension, the term “effervescent powders and suspension for oral suspension” is used. When the active substance(s) are contained only in the effervescent powders, the term “effervescent powders and solvent for oral suspension” is used;
effervescent powders and suspension for oral suspension – effervescent powders and a suspension containing the active substance(s), intended for preparing an oral suspension by dissolving or dispersing the effervescent powders in the suspension, or by dissolving or dispersing the effervescent powders in the specified liquid and mixing it with the suspension.
The terminology of legal acts and other sources can be compared in terms of termhood. The term termhood is rare in Lithuanian terminological works and seems not to be precisely defined; it is generally used to denote the degree or qualitative value of being a term. Termhood is relevant in research on the automatic recognition of terms; there, the termhood score is incorporated into formulas: “a score determined by certain computational methods that assesses the degree to which a word belongs to the set of terms” (Bielinskienė et al. 2015: 171). In some works, termhood is associated with a definition; it is considered to be determined by termhood, and the more information required to reveal a concept, the greater the termhood of that unit (Shelov 2005: 123). Termhood can be discussed from a functional-semantic perspective; for example, the termhood of names of persons is discussed (Zemlevičiūtė 2020: 306–307); elsewhere, attempts are made to determine whether a unit is a true term or a component added to a term
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kartu įvardija sąvoką, ar žymi tik laikiną denotato ypatybę (Zemlevičiūtė 2021: 248–250). Terminiškumas vertintinas ir raiškos aspektu, pavyzdžiui, akivaizdu, kad daiktavardžių terminiškumas didesnis nei kitų kalbos dalių (terminų žodynuose dažnai pateikiami tik daiktavardžiai ir jų junginiai). Net ir sudaitavardėję būdvardžiai ir dalyviai yra apibūdinti kaip turintys neterminiškumo žymę (Zemlevičiūtė 2020: 315). Skirtingų junginių terminiškumas taip pat yra nevienodas. Teigiama, kad termino ilgis yra atvirkščiai proporcingas jo vartosenos dažniui, kartu daroma prielaida, kad termino ilgumas turėtų rodyti jo naujumą ar nepakankamą sunorminimą. Vadinasi, norminimo rezultatas tarsi turėtų būti terminų trumpėjimas (Kaulakienė, Makariūnienė 2014 [1999]: 36), o trumpumas – didesnio terminiškumo požymis. Vis dėlto jau anksčiau atkreiptas dėmesys, kad terminų žodynų terminai yra gerokai trumpesni už Terminų banke aprobuotus teisės aktų terminus ir būtent tikslinimu pasireiškiantis norminimas, tikėtina, prisidėjo prie terminų ilgėjimo (Umbrasas 2013: 113–117). Žinoma, daug tų terminų jau pirminiuose projektuose nebuvo trumpi. Be to, ilgų terminų konstrukcijos yra nevienodos ir jų terminiškumo laipsnis, tikėtina, taip pat yra nevienodas. Tarkime, jei palygintume aprobuotus kaip terminus teisės aktams teikiamus ilgus junginius vyriausybės vertybinio popieriaus, banderolės, keleivinio transporto bilieto, oficialiojo žymėjimo ženklo, dokumento blanko privalomoji forma ir žmonių sveikatai ir (arba) aplinkai pavojingi geriamojo vandens tiekimo ir nuotekų tvarkymo infrastruktūros elementai, galėtume teigti, kad pastarojo junginio terminiškumas didesnis bent jau todėl, kad junginyje apibūdinamas vienas objektas, nėra išvardijimo. Jei palygintume aprobuotus terminus asmuo, atsakingas už radioaktyviųjų šaltinių fizinę saugą ir už išplatintos informacijos apsaugą atsakingas asmuo, taip pat galėtume teigti, kad antrojo terminiškumas didesnis, nes nėra skyrybos ženklų, pažyminys teikiamas terminams įprastesnėje prepozicijoje. Tiesa, postpozicinė raiška kartais taip pat gali būti parankesnė, pavyzdžiui, iš esmės nevartojama įtariamas padaręs nusikalstamą veiką asmuo, aprobuota asmuo, įtariamas padaręs nusikalstamą veiką. Kas kita yra tokie kaip terminai aprobuoti junginiai, pvz.:
a person who, because of their health condition, cannot be considered capable of reasonably assessing their interests – an adult recognized by a court as lacking legal capacity in the field of health care or as having limited legal capacity in the field of health care, or an adult or a minor recognized by a court as fully legally capable (emancipated), whose health condition does not allow them to assess their interests or prevents them from assessing them reasonably;
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application for partial satisfaction of debts owed to agricultural activity entities by a legal entity being wound up due to bankruptcy or by a natural person against whom bankruptcy proceedings have been initiated – a document completed by an agricultural activity entity, on the basis of which funds are allocated to provide aid of negligible amount (de minimis) in the agricultural products production sector, in partial satisfaction of debts owed to agricultural activity entities by a legal entity being wound up due to bankruptcy or by a natural person against whom bankruptcy proceedings have been initiated;
foreigners granted subsidiary protection or temporary protection in the Republic of Lithuania – foreigners granted subsidiary protection or temporary protection in the Republic of Lithuania on the grounds and in accordance with the procedure established by the Law of the Republic of Lithuania on the Legal Status of Foreigners;
life insurance contract under which occupational pensions are accumulated – a life insurance contract concluded by a life insurance undertaking entitled to carry out occupational pension accumulation activities and a financing entity (policyholder), under which the financing entity (policyholder) undertakes to pay the occupational pension contribution specified therein, while employees of the financing entity (or a self-employed person, when they themselves pay occupational pension contributions) acquire the right to occupational pension benefits in accordance with the procedure and conditions laid down in the insurance contract and the Law of the Republic of Lithuania on the Accumulation of Occupational Pensions;
losses from providing periodical delivery services to subscribers in rural residential areas and towns located in sparsely and moderately populated residential areas – the negative difference between the revenue from providing periodical delivery services to subscribers in rural residential areas and towns located in sparsely and moderately populated residential areas and the costs incurred in providing that service over the same period;
insurance linked to an index and investment units, where the insurance risk is negligible – life insurance where the insurance undertaking or branch assumes negligible insurance risk and, during the term of the insurance contract, the investment risk associated with the accumulated funds, or part thereof, is borne by the policyholder, and the accumulation of those funds is linked to changes in the value of investment funds or a particular index. The significance of the insurance risk is determined with regard to the accounting policies of the insurance undertaking and branch;
specialized treatment of acute myocardial infarction with ST-segment elevation – treatment of a patient suffering from acute myocardial infarction with ST-segment elevation using percutaneous myocardial revascularization and/or fibrinolytic treatment methods.
Because of the presence of a subordinate clause, the terminological character of the phrases is very weak. Such expression is characteristic of definitions. Essentially, these are descriptive terms used in the absence of a true term. It is not always possible to create more convenient terms for specialists, in which case a descriptive construction is justified. Perhaps more convenient means of expression will be found in the future. For example, instead of how
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the proposed term combination fats consisting of vegetable and/or animal fats was approved as spreadable fat blend. A couple of decades ago, the term used in legal acts, land plots that cannot be formed into separate individual amateur garden plots, was replaced by the term an area of land that cannot be designed as separate amateur garden plots; later, the term intervening area of state-owned land emerged in its place, and later still, intervening state-owned land plot.
Including information of a commentarial nature in a term also significantly reduces its terminological character, for example, constructions with “except” (constructions with “including” have not been recorded):
error in the practice of personal health care, except for medical practice, dental practice, oral care practice, nursing practice and midwifery practice – an act by a personal health-care professional, other than a physician, dentist, oral-care professional, nurse or midwife, which, through the professional’s own fault, has endangered or harmed a patient’s health but has not caused the patient’s disability or death;
personal health-care professional, other than a physician, dentist, oral-care professional, nurse or midwife – occupational therapist, physiotherapist, massage therapist, medical psychologist, medical geneticist, medical biologist, biomedical technologist, radiology technologist, dietitian, optometrist, paramedic, emergency medical paramedic, advanced-practice pharmacist;
branch of a legal person or other organisation established in a party to the Agreement on the European Economic Area, other than the Republic of Lithuania – a branch, representative office or other subdivision without such legal form of a legal person or other organisation established in a party to the Agreement on the European Economic Area, other than the Republic of Lithuania;
tender for the use of mineral resources, excluding hydrocarbons, and subsurface cavities – part of the procedure for issuing a permit to use mineral resources, excluding hydrocarbons, or a permit to use subsurface cavities, in which the tender winner is selected;
permit to transport radioactive waste, except for radioactive waste generated during the nuclear fuel cycle – a document granting the right to import into the Republic of Lithuania, export from it, transport in transit or transport within the Republic of Lithuania radioactive waste, except for radioactive waste generated during the nuclear fuel cycle, subject to the conditions laid down in this Law.
Descriptive terms of this and similar kinds are generally not included in traditional terminography, or are included much less frequently. Although this would require broader research, it can generally be said that terms in legal acts
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Termhood is lower than that of terms we are accustomed to seeing in terminology dictionaries. In the Lithuanian Standard LST ISO 612:2008 Road vehicles. Dimensions of motor vehicles and trailers. Terms and definitions, the following constructions can be found presented as terms: the length of a chassis without a cab, but with a bonnet that gives the vehicle its external shape; the length of a passenger car and a chassis without a cab and without any engine or other-part covers that give the vehicle its external shape. Such constructions, in the context of terminology standardization11, should be regarded as complete exceptions. Using descriptive terms is, of course, inconvenient. As legislative acts show, this inconvenience is usually avoided by introducing shorter forms, referred to as abbreviations in legislative drafting recommendations (Umbrasas 2022: 124–125, 135). Although in standardization practice the requirement of terminological precision carries more weight than the requirement of brevity, the criterion of ease of use should help strike a balance between these two requirements. By linking convenience to requirements, termhood can also be treated as the degree to which terms meet the requirements.
CONCLUSIONS
The Law on the Bank of Terms of the Republic of Lithuania, adopted on 23 December 2003, is a distinctive source in the history of Lithuanian legislation and terminology management. Twenty years ago, the management of legislative terminology was regulated by a separate high-level legal act, whose preparation established not only a system for standardizing legislative terms but also a centralized system for disseminating reliable terminological resources. The drafters of the Law initiated processes that were later elaborated and developed through implementing legal acts; this essentially established a tradition of legislative terminology management and also enabled various interested groups in society to access terminographically and otherwise evaluated terminology resources. The continually expanding Bank of Terms established on the basis of the Law now contains about 278,000 term entries, most of which are based on data from terminology dictionaries. The diversity of data is increasing; since the Bank was first established, it has been populated with Language
11 Terminology standardization, alongside terminography, was previously generally considered a separate method of terminology management (Gaivenis 2002: 63), but there are now sound proposals to regard terminology standardization as part of terminography (Gaivenytė-Butler 2018: 36). In general, by its nature, terminology standardization occupies an intermediate position between the management of legislative terminology and the compilation of terminology dictionaries, especially since standards are sometimes approved by legislative acts.
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on the basis of the recommendations of the Language Commission, which largely cover biological nomenclature; over the past decade, terms from terminology standards, as well as terms extracted from and evaluated in higher education textbooks, have also begun to be published in it.
Legislative terminology, whose management is a particularly important function of the Bank of Terms, makes up a relatively small share of the entire database: about 19,000 approved term entries are published (compared with about 9,000 ten years ago), but dozens of institutions and several times as many individuals have contributed to the creation of these data. Although the activity of these institutions varies and is inconsistent, the benefits of their work cannot be measured solely by the number of term entries. The consideration of these terms in hundreds of meetings of the Language Commission’s Terminology Subcommission, and the discussions surrounding them, also contribute to legislation as a whole, to the language of legislative acts, and to the development of terminological thinking, with the aim of ensuring the precision and logical consistency of terms and definitions, as well as clear and fluent expression.
A single large database encompassing sources of different kinds enables users to see differences among terms and definitions. Increasing diversity makes the database more difficult to use, since users have to select relevant data, but it also makes it possible to better understand the situation in different fields and assess whether terminology is established or not. In the broader context of terminology, legislative terminology emerges as distinctive, constantly changing material, with its own means of expression and definitions formulated differently according to the needs of specific legislative acts. Some concepts in legislative acts are temporary, applicable only for a certain period; some are designated either by a very general term that is uninformative without context and a definition, or, conversely, by a highly detailed descriptive phrase that lacks termhood. It is likely that legislative terminology has a lower degree of termhood than scientific terminology.
The principle one concept = one term = one definition is essentially impossible to implement even in a terminology dictionary for a single field, and is altogether impossible in a multidisciplinary database encompassing sources from many different periods. Diversity in the Bank of Terms will only increase. In light of the deteriorating quantitative indicators for terminography, it is worth seeking other forms of terminological work that could contribute to the development of the Bank of Terms.
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LITERATŪRA
Bielinskienė Agnė, Boizou Loïc, Grigonaitė Gintarė, Kovalevskaitė Jolanta, Rimkutė Erika, Utka Andrius 2015: Lietuvių kalbos terminų automatinis atpažinimas ir apibrėžimas: monografija, Kaunas: Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas.
Gaivenis Kazimieras 2002: Lietuvių terminologija: teorijos ir tvarkybos metmenys, Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos instituto leidykla.
Gaivenytė-Butler Jolanta 2009: Lietuviškų terminų žodynų leidyba 1998–2008 metais. – Terminologija 16, 252–265. Prieiga internete: https://journals.lki.lt/terminologija/article/view/560.
Gaivenytė-Butler Jolanta 2018: Apie terminografiją ir terminų standartizaciją. – Terminologija 25, 23–38. Prieiga internete: https://journals.lki.lt/terminologija/article/view/475.
Gaivenytė-Butler Jolanta, Keinys Stasys, Noreikaitė Adelė 2008: Lietuvių kalbos terminų žodynai: anotuota 1900–2005 m. bibliografijos rodyklė, Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos institutas.
Ivanauskienė Audra 2005: Lietuvos Respublikos terminų bankas. – Gimtoji kalba 3, 3–6.
Ivanauskienė Audra 2008: Lietuvos Respublikos terminų bankas: terminijos tvarkybos galimybės ir problemos. – Specialybės kalba: terminija ir studijos: mokslinių straipsnių rinkinys, Vilnius: Mykolo Romerio universiteto Leidybos centras, 45–49.
Klimavičius Jonas 2003: Lietuvių terminografija: praeities bruožai, dabarties sunkumai ir uždaviniai. – Terminologija 10, 9–32. Prieiga internete: https://journals.lki.lt/terminologija/article/view/663.
Shelov Sergey D. 2005: Terms, Termness and Term Definitions (Seven Steps Towards Terminological Theory). – Pabaltijo tautų terminologijos problemos ir Europos Sąjunga: [straipsnių rinkinys], atsak. red., sud. A. Aukšoriūtė, Vilnius: Lietuvos kalbos instituto leidykla, 122–153.
Sintaksė 2003: Kalbos patarimai 2: Sintaksė 1: Linksnių vartojimas, sud. R. Miliūnaitė, Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidybos institutas.
Umbrasas Alvydas 2013: Lietuvos Respublikos terminų bankas: 10 metų po įstatymo priėmimo. – Terminologija 20, 96–122. Prieiga internete: https://journals.lki.lt/terminologija/article/view/475.
Umbrasas Alvydas 2022: Teisės aktų terminų ir jų apibrėžčių reikalavimų klausimu. – Terminologija 29, 120–138. Prieiga internete: https://journals.lki.lt/terminologija/article/view/2180.
Zemlevičiūtė Palmira 2020: Medicinos asmenų pavadinimai 1920 metų nepriklausomos Lietuvos pirmajame Medicinos žurnale. – Lituanistica 66(4), 302–322. Prieiga internete: https://www.lmaleidykla.lt/ojs/index.php/lituanistica/article/view/4364.
Zemlevičiūtė Palmira 2021: XIX a. pab. – XX a. pr. dvižodžiai sudėtiniai pavadinimai su pagrindiniu dėmeniu liga ir dalyvių reiškiamais priklausomaisiais dėmenimis. – Terminologija 28, 239–255. Prieiga internete: https://journals.lki.lt/terminologija/article/view/2071.
TERM BANK OF THE REPUBLIC OF LITHUANIA: 20 YEARS AFTER PASSING THE LAW
Summary
On 23 December 2003, the Law on the Term Bank of the Republic of Lithuania was adopted, so at the end of 2023 it will be twenty years since the management of legal terminology in Lithuania has been regulated by a separate law. This article aims to add historical, factual, and terminological data to previous research. The aim of the article is to show the development and implementation of the Law on the Term Bank, the changes in the Term Bank, especially over the last ten years, the dynamics of the activities of the state institutions contributing to the creation of the Term Bank, and the specificity of the content of this database.
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Administered by the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language, the Term Bank acts as a centralised system aimed at providing reliable sources of terminology. It enables various interested groups of society to have access to terminologically evaluated term resources. The Term Bank, established by the law, already covers around 278,000 term entries, most of which are based on data from dictionaries of terms. The diversity of data in the database is increasing. Since its launch, the Term Bank has been filled with data from the recommendations of the Language Commission, mainly covering biological nomenclature; in the last decade, it has also been expanded to include terms from standards as well as terms collected from textbooks of higher education institutions. Legislative terminology (the management of which is a particularly important function of the Term Bank) is a relatively small part of the overall database. Around 19,000 approved legal terminology entries have been published. Dozens of public authorities have contributed to the creation of this data and the management of this data is particularly time-consuming. One large database, covering sources of different types, allows users to see the differences in terms and definitions between these sources. The variety of data makes the database difficult to use, as it is necessary to select the relevant data, but it allows a better understanding of the current state of terminology in different fields. In the overall context of terminology, the terminology of legislation emerges as a particularly distinctive material. It can be argued that legal terminology is less terminological than scientific terminology.
