doi.org/10.35321/term28-14

4th International Scientific Conference “Scientific, Administrative and Educational Levels of Terminology”

RAMUNĖ VASKELAITĖ

Institute of the Lithuanian Language

ORCID id: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6063-9699

The scientific conference “Scientific, Administrative and Educational Levels of Terminology,” which brings terminologists from around the world together at the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, could this year bring them together only... in front of computer screens. As Covid-19 restrictions continued, this conference, which is becoming a tradition, had to be held in an unconventional format.

However, there was no shortage of presentations. Almost all of Europe was represented—Western Europe (France, Belgium), Central and Eastern Europe (Hungary, Poland, Switzerland, Croatia, Romania, Georgia, Russia), Southern Europe (Spain and the autonomous region of Catalonia, Portugal), and Southeastern Europe (Greece, North Macedonia). Two presentations were delivered by Latvian neighbours, and ten by presenters from Lithuania. Thus, the unconventional format was no obstacle to sensing the pulse of European terminology and where it is headed. Held on a particularly intensive schedule (October 21–22), the event featured numerous presentations of both research and projects highlighting the directions and forms of terminological work.

Among the latter, the need and aim for harmonisation and coordination emerged as perhaps the most prominent direction in contemporary terminological work. It is true, however, that coordination takes different forms.

The project Terminology without Borders (in English, Terminology without borders), presented by European Parliament representative Rodolfas Maslias, opened up what is perhaps the broadest dimension. According to the presenter, it covers not only Europe but also Asia and North America. The project is set to expand. Already, it has more than 20 partners and covers 10 major areas of terminology use: education, finance, medicine, law, and others. It is oriented towards universities: corpora are compiled there, terms selected from them, equivalents in other languages identified, and the results made publicly available in the form of multilingual glossaries (https://

Terminologija | 2021 | 28

267

According to the European Parliament terminologists, terms with equivalents are entered into the EU terminology database IATE.

However, coordination efforts are also being made at other levels, for example, at the national and language levels. The invited speaker Frieda Steurs (Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium) presented efforts to coordinate the Dutch language and terminology. As is well known, this language is used in the Netherlands, in the Belgian region of Flanders (the so-called Flemish language), in two groups of Caribbean islands, and also in the former Dutch colony of Suriname. Noting that efforts to bring it together had always been made (the Dutch Language Union was established in 1980), the speaker spoke about the Dutch Language Institute in Leiden, which has become such a centre and where all the materials needed to learn Dutch are collected, and about the result of efforts in the field of terminology—the Centre of Expertise for Dutch Terminology, operating since 2019. Of course, she also discussed the work on coordinating, developing and researching Dutch terminology carried out there.

A presentation prepared by representatives of Hungary and read by Dóra Mária Tamás, who teaches at two Hungarian universities and also works at a specialist translation office (Hungarian Office for Translation and Attestation Ltd, OFFI), pointed in a similar direction. The speaker presented a three-volume terminology handbook published by this office, which belongs to the Hungarian Ministry of Justice. Its aim is stated in the title of the presentation itself: to provide training, coordinate terminology and contribute to implementing the objectives of Hungary’s terminology policy. The publication focuses on the most important legal concepts, providing equivalents in other languages, definitions and sources, while also publishing articles on terminology and language strategy and language planning. After reviewing the first volume (2017), focused on training, and the second volume (2019), focused on terminology coordination, which provide English, German, French and Italian equivalents, the speaker also presented the most recent volume, which provides equivalents in the languages used in six neighbouring countries (Slovenia, Slovakia, Serbia, Romania, Croatia and Ukraine), where Hungarian is a minority language.

The topic of coordination was also addressed in a presentation by Albina Auksoriūtė, Director of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, but she looked back to the past—to the Terminology Commission established by the government at the beginning of the period of independence (1921), which the presentation identified as the beginning of organised terminology management. The Commission, established under the Ministry of Education, aimed to coordinate the language and terminology used in state institutions. As was summarised, it crea-

268

Ramunė Vaskelaitė

4-oji tarptautinė mokslinė konferencija „Moksliniai, administraciniai ir edukaciniai terminologijos lygmenys“

ted the terms necessary for the state to function. However, it also had to be noted that its work was interrupted by internal disagreements and differing views on terminological purity and neologisms, and came to a complete halt after five years (resuming only after the war). Presentations also covered figures who had considered questions of terminology around the same time: the work of Stasys Šalkauskis, and thus a philosophical perspective, as well as his formulated principles of terminology, including the idea that it is not always necessary either to borrow or to coin neologisms—words used in one’s own language can be adapted for terminology.

Regina Kvašytė’s presentation, representing Šiauliai Academy and the University of Latvia, could be seen as a continuation of this topic. It reviewed the Terminology Commission established after the war, in 1945, as well as a commission established in Latvia around the same time, comparing the circumstances of their establishment and their activities. In Lithuania, the Terminology Commission was established under the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences; in Latvia, from 1946, it was based at the Latvian Academy of Sciences. Both later became part of research institutes devoted to the study of language. The commissions have survived in one form or another to this day, which would seem to suggest that their links with science were a more lasting factor in their work. However, an excerpt was also presented from the minutes of a 1951 meeting of the Lithuanian commission, at which its aims and objectives were formulated. The excerpt shows that one of the aims was “the fight against the alien bourgeois legacy in the field of terminology,” while one of the areas of activity was “familiarising oneself with the bourgeois legacy in the field of terminology.” The latter formulation was interpreted as an effort to continue the work of the pre-war Commission, but it also shows that this work now had to continue in entirely different circumstances, when even science, even terminology, was considered an area subject to ideological influence. It was probably thought that reality could be changed by changing terminology.

The conference also featured presentations on work demonstrating coordination efforts at the level of individual fields. Francesc Galera, a representative of the autonomous Catalan university (Catalan Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), described a project carried out over more than a decade, which resulted in harmonized terms for the academic environment. According to the speaker, the project’s starting point was internationalization: the English terms in the documentation governing the university’s activities were translated in such different ways that they caused communication difficulties. Since this problem arose among universities using the Catalan language (19 universities in the Catalan-speaking part of Spain and one each in Andorra, France, and Italy), a project was launched to harmonize the terms at the level of these universities, resulting in 2,000 harmonized terms in Catalan, Spanish, and English (the latter used as a working language at univer-

Terminologija | 2021 | 28

269

sities). The speaker cited the contribution to the standardization of English as an advantage, and the major differences between language systems and between realia as difficulties that emerged during the project. Other speakers also mentioned mismatches between language systems, including Diana Stolac of Croatia (University of Rijeka), who discussed marine engineering terms, and Inta Virbule and Maira Kreisler of the National Library of Latvia. The latter presentation focused on library science terms and highlighted problems arising in the translation and implementation of the international Resource Description and Access standard (English Resource description and access, RDA), which M. Kreisler described as a new philosophy.

At first glance, standards might seem to be tools for harmonizing terminology, but the presentation by Spanish representative Ricardo Eito-Bruno (Carlos III University of Madrid), which focused on safety terms, showed that rather than fulfilling this role, they merely encourage diversity, which poses a danger in fields such as safety. The presentation revealed differences between terms used in different engineering fields and proposed collecting such terms in one place so that all discrepancies would be immediately apparent. In another session, a group of researchers from Hungary, represented by Márk Jámbor, turned its attention to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems; they presented a study showing that it does not cover some soft-tissue and bone injuries recorded in diagnoses by Hungarian doctors. However, a presentation by Violeta Černiauskaitė (Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania), who participates in the work of the International Organization for Standardization committee on “Information and documentation” and discussed the terminology of standards, revealed that standards are constantly updated and therefore are subject to change. Moreover, standards are developed at a rapid pace, and countries cannot keep up with translating all of them into their national languages. The speaker also mentioned the standards-dictionary LST ISO 5127. Information and documentation. Foundation and vocabulary, which covers terms from standards published up to that point. This confirms the idea that emerged from the discussion of safety terms: standards for terminology are themselves a field that requires standardization.

The conference did not consider whether terminology dictionaries are a more reliable tool for standardising terms. However, two presentations on dictionaries were given, and both showed that this traditional tool still has a future. Elīna Peina, representing the University of Liepāja (supervisor Anita Helviga), noted that more than 600 dictionaries were published in Latvia between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and presented a study aimed at finding out what makes a good dictionary. However,

270

Ramunė Vaskelaitė

4-oji tarptautinė mokslinė konferencija „Moksliniai, administraciniai ir edukaciniai terminologijos lygmenys“

Only part of it was presented—the responses of surveyed students and doctoral candidates to the question of what qualities an ideal terminology dictionary should have. The responses showed that the most important qualities were considered to be keeping the dictionary up to date, simplicity, and reliability. Only a few respondents considered it important for the dictionary to include equivalents in other languages. In his presentation, the speaker from Poland, Tomasz Michta (University of Białystok), presented a systematic dictionary as an alternative to an alphabetical one, based on the division of concepts into primary, secondary, tertiary, and other categories. This would also suggest that dictionaries have a future, although a new format is being sought.

Modern tools for terminology management or research, and artificial intelligence technologies, received little attention at this conference. They were mentioned in only a couple of presentations. Sigita Rackevičienė (Mykolas Romeris University), representing the Lithuanian research group (S. Rackevičienė, A. Utka, A. Bielinskienė, and A. Rokas) carrying out the project Bilingual automatic term recognition, discussed the project’s current phase—annotating data with the tool QuickTag—and, more specifically, the problems that had emerged. The automated tool was also mentioned by Khatuna Beridze (Batumi Shota Rustaveli State University), a representative of Georgia, which is preparing to join the EU and is therefore translating the Acquis Communautaire into Georgian. This terminology tool is being developed on the basis of documents already translated and reveals errors in the translation and use of terms. It is being created to prevent costly errors. The speaker identified eight groups of such errors in the EU–Georgia Association Agreement, which had already been translated.

The importance of terminology in translation was also demonstrated by several other presentations. Maria Crina Herteg, who teaches at the University of December 1, 1918, in Alba Iulia, Romania, drew on both a wealth of literature and an experiment she had conducted at the university to highlight the importance of a terminology course for future translators. She described an experiment that revealed how important it is to teach them to use corpora. Milena Sazdovska Pigulovska, representing North Macedonia (Ss. Cyril and Methodius University), delivered a presentation showing that in her country a terminology course for translators is not only taught but was also recently modernized. Students are encouraged to use digital tools and learn independently. Ágota Fóris (Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary) presented a project that highlighted the importance of terminology at the very outset of the translation process: the outcome of a translation depends on the proper, precise use of terms in the text to be translated.

Terminologija | 2021 | 28

271

Thus, the conference addressed the administrative, educational, and applied levels of terminology. However, an entire group of presentations also focused on the scientific level.

Christophe Roche, a professor from France (Université Savoie Mont Blanc), examined the key concepts: terminology, term, concept, and definition. He also considered the relationship between them, the question of whether the term or the concept takes precedence, and their relation to ontology. Aušra Rimkutė-Ganusauskienė, representing the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, considered the relationship between a definition and a term (more precisely, the modifying component of a compound term), drawing on terms and definitions from the field of sports. Mariusz Górnicz of the University of Warsaw proposed a new classification of terms, along with new terms for naming the units in that classification (in English, endoderived terms and exoderived terms). Whether Lithuanian equivalents such as endodariniai and egzodariniai, or some others, would render them more accurately could only be determined once this classification was applied more widely in Lithuanian; the presentation made clear that its starting point was the requirement that a term be transparent. The terms are being divided according to whether they can be understood without a definition or explanation, or are more metaphorical, although the boundary drawn does not coincide with the distinction between metaphorical and non-metaphorical terms.

A couple of studies employing new research approaches were presented. Lina Rutkienė (Institute of the Lithuanian Language), who researches construction terminology, analyzed compounds in this field as unions of logically related concepts, or propositions—in other words, from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. Drawing on compounds collected from 70 sources, she had examined propositional patterns consisting of two object concepts and concluded that these patterns had changed little in construction terminology over a period of 100 years. Elena Logunova (Kaliningrad State Technical University) proposed frames as a tool for terminological analysis, and also gave a fuller account of the concept of a frame and frame theory, which is related to processes of cognition and thought. Dmitry Schilovskiy, representing A. I. Yevdokimov Moscow State University of Medicine and Dentistry, discussed the phenomenon known in English as clip thinking or mosaic thinking as a cognitive model. The presentation examined its manifestations in the current training and work of medical professionals (computer-based medical training, the overemphasis on the use of technological tools, the inability to see the patient as a whole, and so on), as well as the ethical and social problems it causes, such as the dehumanization of medicine (in English, dehumanization of medicine). A solution to the problem was also proposed: terminology teaching based on structuring.

272

Ramunė Vaskelaitė

4-oji tarptautinė mokslinė konferencija „Moksliniai, administraciniai ir edukaciniai terminologijos lygmenys“

Presentations by Lithuanian authors turned their attention to the context in which terms are used. Palmira Zemlevičiūtė (Institute of the Lithuanian Language), who researches medical terminology, this time discussed terms in Noah Gordon’s novel The Physician: A Student of Avicenna, that is, the use of terms in literary texts. Drawing on this source, she was inclined to challenge the view put forward by some researchers that such contexts involve determinologization. The examples presented showed that terms also perform a nominative function in this context, although, surrounded by other words, they can also be emotionally expressive and figurative. Asta Mitkevičienė, whose subject was synonymy, likewise chose not scholarly works as her source, but popular health-related texts whose data are included in the Lithuanian web corpus ltTenTen. The author had previously drawn attention to the features of synonym use in texts, distinguishing not only systemic but also contextual synonyms (see the detailed article in issue 22 of Terminologija); this time, she focused on the nature of the text and distinguished functional synonyms. Jurgita Mikelionienė (Kaunas University of Technology), by contrast, chose students’ final papers as the source for her analysis of synonyms, and thus focused on academic or similar styles. After examining the many synonyms of compound terms used in these papers, she identified causes of synonymy that are not usually mentioned when studying academic writing: translation, paraphrase, and quotation; efforts to demonstrate erudition and knowledge of the field being analyzed; a desire for brevity; an effort to provide a more vivid or unusual term; and so on. It would therefore be interesting to compare the use of synonymous expressions in student papers with that in, say, scholarly monographs. The author of this review also touched on synonymy, focusing more specifically on the relationship between synonymy and variation in astrology texts and questioning the view that synonymy and variation should both be regarded equally as signs of instability in terminology.

Variation in terminology, based on specialized and non-specialized corpora, was also examined by Aurélie Picton, a representative of Switzerland (University of Geneva). As is customary in foreign-language linguistic studies, the concept of variation here encompassed differences both between terms and in the forms used to express a term. However, variation was studied using a method more typical of dialectological research: it was divided into diachronic (differences over time), diatopic (geographical differences), and diastratic (differences associated with specialists and informants). Fátima Noronha (University of the Algarve) also studied the culinary heritage of Mediterranean countries from the perspective of diastratic variation. Thus, the methods of analysis and classifications differ, but overall it is becoming clear that, although discussions at the administrative level were perhaps the most prominent

Terminologija | 2021 | 28

273

The distinctive feature of the current stage was the alignment of terminology, while discussions at the scientific level highlighted its diversity and variation. Perhaps somewhat outside the bounds of terminology science was the presentation by the speaker from Greece, Panagiotis G. Krimpas (Democritus University of Thrace). It discussed not only many terms, but also morphological (prefixes, roots, endings), syntactic, and other similarities between Lithuanian and Modern Greek. For example: the nominative endings of masculine and feminine nouns have been preserved, although they have been lost in many European languages; there is no excessive penchant for loanwords, and when words are borrowed, there is a tendency to adapt them to the native declension system; neoclassical stems, and so on. The need to continue studying these commonalities carefully was stressed. In conclusion, a somewhat unexpected proposal was made, yet one that fit especially well with the conference context, which highlighted the alignment of terminology at various levels: why not try to use terminology to restore the former relationship between these two most conservative branches of Proto-Indo-European—the Baltic and Greek branches?

Received 2021-11-03

Ramunė Vaskelaitė

Lietuvių kalbos institutas

P. Vileišio g. 5, LT-10308 Vilnius

Email [email protected]

274

Ramunė Vaskelaitė

4-oji tarptautinė mokslinė konferencija „Moksliniai, administraciniai ir edukaciniai terminologijos lygmenys“