Mokslinis seminaras „Terminologija: mokslo ir praktikos klausimai“

282 Ramunė Vaskelaitė Scientific seminar „Terminology: mokslo ir praktikos klausimai“ doi.org/10.35321/term27-12 Scientific seminar “Terminology: mokslo ir praktikos klausimai“ Ramunė Vaskelaitė Lietuvių kalbos institutas The autumn scientific seminar organized by the Institute of Lithuanian academics and representatives of terminology management), as well as term Language (hereinafter – the Institute) for Lithuanian terminologists (both creators, inviting Lithuanian terminologists (both academics and users to review important events and works in terminology, to examine current terminology problems, has already become a tradition, so it was held this October (October 16), but in an untraditional way for this event – using the remote seminar and conference organization tool Google Meet. It proved to be very convenient – more than sixty participants interested in terminology science, development and terminology management and creation attended the seminar without any interruptions, listened to the speakers and discussed. The most important event for terminology this year is undoubtedly the thirtieth anniversary of the restoration of state independence. Looking at it through the lens of a terminologue, in his presentation “Terminology 30 years ago and now”, Alvydas Umbrasas, senior researcher of the Institute, first of all drew attention to the fact that the year of the restoration of the Lithuanian state was also the year of the independent rebirth of the Institute (until 1990 it operated as a joint research institution with the Lithuanian Literature Institute). The restoration of a state for the terminology developed by the Institute meant both the creation of a separate, exclusively laikotarpio pradžia – praktinio pobūdžio darbų griūtis, užgriuvusi lietuvių kalbai po ilgoko dvikalbystės laikotarpio tapus valstybinei ir labai išsiplėtus terminology-oriented department (the Terminology Department was established in 1991) and the birth of a completely new publication – the Terminology, which still exists today. And for terminologists, the areas of its use. Thus, as it became clear from the report, after the establishment of a separate unit and the appearance of the journal, there were more opportunities to develop terminology as a science, but initially perhaps more forces were required by terminology as a term management: it was necessary to prepare term standards, perform expertise, work on the dictionaries of terms, while regretting, 283Terminology | 2020 | 27 that their publishing situation is poor, i.e. prepared dictionaries no one wants to allow, that dictionaries are not reviewed by terminologists. It was also planned to create a term database (bank) covering almost all areas of terminology use and in 2003 the creation of the Lithuanian language terminology was completed. Summarizing only the works of the beginning of the period, the speaker stated that during the first few years after the restoration of independence a medium for Lithuanian terminology science was created, a boost was given to the activity of terminological evaluation of term dictionaries and standards, and the foundations for the creation of computerized term databases in Lithuania were laid. Over time, the practical work was shared with other institutions (the Lithuanian Department of Standardization, the State Lithuanian Language Commission, the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics) and, as A. Umbrasas pointed out in his report, the proposal made in the newly established Terminology Department in 1991 to divide terminology work among four state institutions has almost been implemented. However, this paper was intended to review the significance of state restoration only for the terminology developed by the Institute, focusing mainly on the beginning of the restoration. During the thirty years of the restored state, there were more institutions developing terminology, even some higher schools, and the forms of terminology development also expanded considerably. From the other two stand presentations by the representatives of the Institute it was clear that an integral part of today’s terminology work, even a necessity, has become participation in international projects, which allow Lithuanian terminology resources to be included in a wider – European – context, while at the same time gaining access to the terminology resources of other countries. The Director of the Institute, Albina Auksoriūtė, presented the European Language Network development project, in which the Institute, as a national centre of excellence, together with 31 other national centres of excellence, helps to create a cloud platform that will provide access to commercial and non-commercial language technology services and datasets in all European languages. Head of the Institute’s Terminology Centre Asta Mitkevičienė introduced the Federal eTranslation TermBank network development project, which together with 9 other institutions aims to expand the central machine translation (eTranslation) network by creating its local nodes for terminology management and exchange of its resources. However, especially the change in the forms of terminological work, compared with the first years of the restored state, was highlighted by the report “Bilingual auto-translation in Lithuanian” read by Professor Sigita Rackevičienė of Mykolas Romeris University. 284 Ramunė Vaskelaitė Scientific seminar “Terminology: Matic Term mokslo ir praktikos klausimai“ Recognition (DVITAS): Concept and First Works”. It presents a project carried out by a group of representatives of two higher education institutions – Mykolas Romeris University and Vytautas Magnus University (Sigita Rackevičienė, Liudmila Mockienė, Andrius Utka, Aivaras Rokas, Marius Laurinaitis and Agnė Bielinskienė), whose final result should also be a term base, but already created using the most modern technologies – terms for the database should be collected from parallel and comparative textbooks by specially trained neural networks. The field of cybersecurity has been chosen for the creation of this term base (according to the speaker, due to its relevance, the non-establishment of terms in this field and the need for their base for translators, cybersecurity specialists), but the base, created precisely on the basis of terms in this field, could become a model for the creation of term bases in other fields. Thus, the project is intended to provide a methodology based on modern technologies for the creation of term databases. As the current stage of the project, the speaker mentioned the compilation and annotation of parallel and comparative textbooks, and further tasks – the development and training of neural networks. The seminar made it possible to measure the technological leap in terminology work by taking an even longer period of time – the reference point being the year 1906, when the first dictionary of botanical terms was published. However, the senior researcher of the Terminology Centre, the Director of the Institute, Albina Auksoriūtė, did not examine this dictionary, i.e. Povilo Matulionis Žolynas. Parts II. The Lithuanian Plant Dictionary and Plant Tails, the preparation process or methodology, and the terms attributed to Laurynas Ivinskis in it – the names of plant and fungi genera. After all, this year marks not only the centenary of the restoration of the state, but also the 210th anniversary of the birth of L. Ivinskis, one of the first creators of natural science terms. In her presentation “Laurynas Ivinskis’s Plant Genus Names in Povilas Matulionis’s Zoology”, the speaker, having excluded the derivatives of suffixes from all the terms attributed to L. Ivinskis in this dictionary, drew attention to the clarity of their formation and motivation and, in order to make sure of the true authorship of these terms, compared the terms with those presented in L. Ivinskis’s scientific work Prigimtūmenė (preserved manuscript), thus revealing the difficulties of identifying the sources of old terms. Some of the terms attributed to L. Ivinskis are not in Prigimtūmena, so it is concluded that P. Matulionis, attributing the terms to L. Ivinskis, probably had some other, now defunct, manuscript of L. Ivinskis. 285Terminology | 2020 | 27 Palmira Zemlevičiūtė, who chose the terms of the 19th and 20th centuries as the source of her research, did not mention the difficulties of identifying sources. However, based on medical terms used in booklets and articles on medical and health issues during this historical period, in her presentation “About non-uniform medical terms of the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century” she raised another problem, which is also relevant today, namely the question of the multi-significance of terms. A certain axiom of terminology is considered the statement that one term should have one meaning, but not one empirical study reveals that a significant number of terms have not one, but two, three or even more meanings. This encourages a more in-depth examination of the contradiction between the axiom and the research, as well as the reasons for the ambiguity of the terms. Of course, it is not possible to examine them in one seminar report, but this report shows that at least among the old medical terms there are few ambiguities, although 98 popular science publications of that period were reviewed. The speaker mainly mentioned terms with two meanings as ambiguous, but there were not many of them (face, belly, abdomen, nose, witch, beetle, etc.), and of the four-meaning terms in the terminology that marked the initial stage of the formation of medical terminology, the speaker examined only the term spa, thus the terminology of the period and the field of research as if confirmed the axiom – when moving from the words of the living language to the terms, the ambiguity decreases. Another problem of particular relevance for terminology science and practice was discussed in the presentation “Synonymy of terms and terminology management” by the researcher and head of the Terminology Centre Asta Mitkevičienė. As is known, avoidance of synonymy is also one of the principles of terminology that tends to be held as an axiom – one concept should be named by one term, i.e. a term should not have synonyms. On the other hand, there are few empirical works that do not mention synonymous terms used in one or another field. And although the synonymy of terms is usually considered only as a sign of the initial stage of terminology development, synonymous terms can also be found in those fields, whose terminology is considered to be advanced from the point of view of development. Having reviewed the normative approach to synonyms, the reasons for their avoidance and the principles of terminology standardization, the speaker, who has already examined the synonymy of 286 Ramunė Vaskelaitė Scientific seminar “Terminology: it is not possible to say mokslo ir praktikos klausimai“ that only one of these synonyms should be used. Thus, on the issue of synonymy, the seminar raises truly new thoughts, at least it suggests to look at synonymy as a much more complex phenomenon than is commonly thought. In addition to synonymy and ambiguity, the question of terminology borrowing is also constantly relevant from the point of view of terminology science and especially practice. He was also stopped at the seminar by another representative of the Institute’s Terminology Centre. Aušra Rimkutė, a senior researcher at this centre, who has recently been researching clothing and footwear terms (the article New names for footwear can be found in the last issue of Terminology), in her presentation “A few thoughts about clothing terms” discussed several clothing and footwear terms borrowed from English (jeggings, tregings, megings, kroksai, conversiukai), as well as terms created by means of her own language (timpės, tamprės, aptemtukai, aptemptukės, tampžinsiai, timpdžinsiai), using their examples to confirm the powers and resources of the Lithuanian language to create terms. The researcher took examples from the database of Lithuanian language new words compiled by the Institute, which includes borrowed words, new words, word combinations, words of new meaning, abbreviations that have appeared in Lithuanian language since the end of the 20th century (http://naujazodziai.lki.lt). Asked which of the new terms – borrowed or Lithuanian – are more likely to take hold, the author of the report said that she had not carried out any special research (and indeed such research would be more the subject of researchers of general language usage and norms), but she turned her attention to the area of consumption: in the language used by young people, non-Lithuanian names are more frequent... terms in several articles, this time drew attention to synonyms of different motivation and revealed that they are functional purposeful, therefore strictly functional. Specific terms – intellectual disability, mental retardation, mental disability, dementia – were also focused on the presentation of Dalia Gedzevičienė, a researcher working at the Lithuanian Institute of Law. It reveals in detail both the circumstances of the emergence of these terms, their meanings and relationships of meanings, as well as the difficulties arising from the use of these terms. However, above all, the report wanted to draw attention to terms as a factor in social regulation. According to the rapporteur, due to decades of social exclusion of persons with mental disabilities, isolation of such persons has become established in the public consciousness as a normal way of dealing with a person with disabilities, which is perhaps the main reason why difficulties are encountered in order to reduce the exclusion of persons with mental disabilities at present (especially in order to integrate children with disabilities into general schools or to return disabled people to communities, 287Terminology | 2020 | 27 pine life houses). As it turned out, the biggest pavyzdžiui, miestų ar miestelių centruose jiems steigiant nedidelius gruproblem of integration is not the lack of funds, but the negative, even hostile attitudes of society and the factors that shape them. Based on neįgalaus žmogaus atžvilgiu, stereotipinis įsitikinimas, kad neįgalus žmogus yra „pavojingas“ ir turi gyventi atskirai nuo bendruomenės. Minėdama terminus kaip vieną iš socialinę nuostatą tam tikro subjekto atžvilgiu the power of terms to mark a new concept, a different content, the speaker raised the assumption that the change in social attitudes, the position of society and even the behavior model in relation to the designated person can also be caused or accelerated by a change in the term. The report also draws attention to the aspect of metaphors in terms and states that although metaphors are considered one of the methods of terminology, this method is not equally acceptable for all fields. Summarizing the scientific seminar, it becomes clear that this year’s seminar managed to cover both the most significant events for terminology and the most relevant topics, as well as different fields and their terms. A wide spectrum of time is covered by the examined terminology: from historical terminology, created by L. Ivinskis or Lithuanian doctors at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, to the latest, already current creators of term databases, accumulations, clouds. This confirmed once again that the creation of terms is an uninterrupted process, and in order for it to be successful and targeted, continuous terminology management, detailed terminology research and search for new methods are necessary. Retrieved 2020-10-22 Ramunė Vaskelaitė Lietuvių kalbos institutas P. Vileišio g. 5, LT-10308 Vilnius, Lithuania E-mail ramune.v[email protected]