Белорусская и литовская терминографии: сравнительный аспект

Belarusian and Lithuanian Terminography: A Comparative Aspect VYACHESLAV SHCHERBIN Institute of Language and Literature, National Academy of Sciences of Belarus During periods of sharp social change, invariably accompanied by rapid shifts in the foundations of worldviews, in naïve and scientific world pictures, and even in long-established disciplinary paradigms (including the linguistic paradigm), researchers in countries undergoing transition experience an acute methodological need to ground their inquiries in established scientific knowledge that has proved itself in practice. It is precisely reliance on such knowledge, tested by time and international scientific practice (sometimes called the international scientific tradition), that enables researchers not to squander the time and energy allotted to them in life on something “fashionable” but not especially significant for the development of their chosen field of knowledge. Such knowledge, recognized by the global scientific community, or an international scientific tradition, is generally formed over decades and even centuries through the work of several generations of researchers from different countries, who seek to preserve and pass on to their successors the most valuable elements of accumulated scientific experience. Disciplinary international comparative studies, as well as international scientific conferences with comparative themes, serve to identify such generally recognized scientific knowledge. One example is the conference held by Vilnius University in November 2008, which was devoted to issues concerning interaction between the languages and cultures of Lithuanians and Slavs. We have previously written about the current state of comparative social science in the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (Shcherbin 2001), whose development is hampered by the isolation of the CIS countries’ social sciences and humanities from those of the world’s most scientifically advanced countries—a separation that has persisted since Soviet times. As a result, not all the achievements and advances of global social-scientific and humanistic thought are available for comparative study in the CIS countries. Terminologija | 2008 | 15 43 The psychological causes underlying the persistence of this social-scientific and humanistic isolation among the Commonwealth countries were explained by the well-known Belarusian philosopher and academician A. A. Mikhaylov: “…in our recent history, the content of humanistic knowledge was shaped over a long period in an atmosphere of militant opposition and radical exclusion from everything that the professional community lived by and continues to live by. In this sense, we are heirs to a condition of the humanities which, in essence, is not knowledge at all… The first and necessary step toward overcoming the crisis in our humanities is to eradicate within ourselves the still-existing lack of awareness of the latest research trends in the humanities, in which we remain immersed” (Mikhaylov 2000: 415–416). In our view, the most effective way to develop an adequate understanding of the latest trends in the development of foreign social sciences and humanities is to conduct international comparative studies drawing on available domestic and foreign data concerning the history and current state of these disciplines. The extensive experience of international comparative research accumulated in Western European and North American countries supports this conclusion. In these countries, comparative studies (or comparative social science) have been actively developing since the beginning of the 20th century: (a) international congresses are regularly held on comparative law, literary studies, philosophical comparison (Hawaiian conferences), comparative cultural studies, linguistics, historiography, sociology, and other social sciences and humanities; (b) various university departments and institutes specializing in comparative studies, as well as public associations of humanists engaged in comparative research, are established (for example, the French Society for Comparative Literature was founded as early as 1954); (c) numerous journals on comparative social sciences and humanities are published: Comparative Law (Paris), Journal of Comparative Philosophy Quarterly (Hawaii), Comparative Political Studies (California), Interna- 44 Вячеслав Щербин | Белорусская и литовская терминографии:… tional Journal of Comparative Sociology (Leiden), Journal of Comparative Economics (San Diego), Journal of Comparative Psychology (Washington), and others. There is no doubt that applying a comparative approach can also be invaluable in studying the terminographic practices of different countries around the world, since quantitative and qualitative differences among national terminographies are sometimes determined less by the state and level of development of terminological and terminographic theory in those countries than by such extralinguistic circumstances as the scale of organizational structures, human resources, financial and informational support for a given national science, and the presence of national scientific traditions, recognized schools of thought, and so on. However, for international comparative studies in terminography to yield positive results, one must carefully select the specialized disciplinary criteria for such comparisons and appropriately justify the aims and reasons for conducting them. In particular, an examination of existing Western European comparative research has shown that “there are two main reasons for conducting specific international comparisons. One is connected with the empirical testing of various explanatory hypotheses that supposedly extend beyond national borders... The second reason for conducting specific international comparisons can best be described as evidentiary clarification. The central task of such analysis is to gain a deeper understanding of the characteristics of a particular country by comparing its experience with that of other states” (Sanders 1995: 32). The choice of methods and criteria used in an international comparative study depends on whether its aims are theoretical (testing a hypothesis, theory, etc.) or practical (for example, determining the effectiveness of terminographic work carried out in a country). In conducting our comparative study of Belarusian and Lithuanian terminographies, we set a purely practical objective—to determine Terminologija | 2008 | 15 45 to determine which of the two national terminographies named is developing more dynamically and productively. In accordance with the stated aim, the following research attributes were selected: a) the method of pairwise comparison of Belarusian and Lithuanian data (concerning different aspects of the development of the two countries’ national terminographies), selected using one criterion or another; b) the set of such criteria itself (quantitative, chronological, linguistic, typological, and the criterion of the entry volume of terminological dictionaries). The method and set of criteria mentioned above had already been tested by us as part of an earlier cross-country comparative study based on Belarusian and Ukrainian terminographies (Shcherbin 2005). The results of this comparative study showed that the method and set of criteria have considerable heuristic potential. In particular, their use made it possible to establish that “Ukrainian terminography is richer than Belarusian in the range of specialist dictionaries of different types that it includes and, accordingly, in the list of terminographic fields represented by them” (Shcherbin 2005: 30). The achievements of Ukrainian terminographers noted above “are the result of the good organization of terminographic work in Ukraine” (ibid.: 30), which is based on the following: a) the existence of the State Committee for Scientific Terminology in Ukraine; b) the existence of a terminology department at the Institute of the Ukrainian Language of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine; c) the regular (biennial) holding of all-Ukrainian congresses of terminologists and the publication of their proceedings in full, as well as much else that, unfortunately, is absent from terminographic practice in Belarus. Therefore, a comparative study of Belarusian and Ukrainian terminographies helped identify and remedy a number of shortcomings in the work of domestic terminographers. Similarly, we had every reason to hope that a comparative study of Belarusian and Lithuanian terminographies would also prove highly productive and make it possible to introduce corresponding adjustments into terminographic practice in Belarus, formulated with due regard for the achievements of our Lithuanian colleagues. The recent publication of sufficiently comprehensive bibliographic 46 Вячеслав Щербин | Белорусская и литовская терминографии:... indexes on the terminographies of Belarus and Lithuania—two Belarusian indexes (Charnyavskaya, Tsikhun 2000; Kipel, Sauka 2002) and one Lithuanian index (Gaivenytė-Butler, Keinys, Noreikaitė 2008)—greatly facilitated such a comparative study of the two national terminographies. At the same time, it should also be noted that the Belarusian indexes and the Lithuanian index differ from one another in a number of respects: a) they cover different chronological periods of terminographic material (taken together, the two Belarusian indexes include data on terminological dictionaries published from the mid-nineteenth century through 2002, inclusive, while the Lithuanian index contains data on terminological dictionaries published from 1900 through 2005, inclusive); b) they have different structural arrangements (in the Belarusian indexes, terminographic data are presented alphabetically, i.e. by authors’ surnames and the titles of terminological dictionaries, whereas in the Lithuanian index the data are presented chronologically, i.e. by the years in which the terminological dictionaries were published); c) they are based on different principles for presenting terminographic material: the most comprehensive Belarusian index (Kipel, Sauka 2002) contains information not only about individual book publications of terminological dictionaries, but also about terminological dictionaries included in books and articles. The second Belarusian index (Charnyavskaya, Tsikhun 2000) and the Lithuanian index (Gaivenytė-Butler, Keinys, Noreikaitė 2008) include information only on terminological dictionaries published as separate books; d) the compilers understood the boundaries of terminological vocabulary differently (in our view, this explains why information on the Lithuanian-published translation dictionary of kinship terms (Sifrisova 2000), which contains both Belarusian and Lithuanian terms, is included in the Belarusian index but absent from the Lithuanian index). Given the substantial differences between the two Belarusian indexes and the one Lithuanian index in their presentation of terminographic material, it was necessary to standardize the bibliographic data on Belarusian and Lithuanian terminography selected for comparison in some way; otherwise, the results of such a comparison would not have been valid from a comparative perspective. We therefore decided— Terminologija | 2008 | 15 47 the decision to “level out” the data from the Belarusian indexes on the model of the Lithuanian index: 1) for comparison, data on Belarusian terminological dictionaries published in 1900–2005 were used. Data for 2003–2005 missing from the available Belarusian indexes were “supplemented” by examining the contents of 36 issues of «Кніжнага летапісу друку Беларусі» for those three years; 2) for comparison, only data on individual (book) editions of Belarusian terminological dictionaries were included. The bibliographic data on Belarusian and Lithuanian terminography obtained as a result of this standardization were then compared according to the five criteria mentioned above. In particular, a comparison of the Belarusian and Lithuanian data according to the quantitative criterion yielded the following figures: during the period specified above (1900–2005), 393 Belarusian terminological dictionaries and 501 Lithuanian terminological dictionaries were published as separate book editions. Furthermore, comparison of the original Belarusian and Lithuanian bibliographic data according to the chronological criterion revealed substantial differences in the decade-by-decade dynamics of publication activity among Belarusian and Lithuanian terminographers (see Table 1). Table 1. Data on the dynamics of publication activity among Belarusian and Lithuanian terminographers in 1900–2005 Subdivision of the period under consideration (1900–2005) into decades Number of published Belarusian terminological dictionaries Number of published Lithuanian terminological dictionaries 1901–1910 – 3 1911–1920 2 6 1921–1930 30 1 1931–1940 3 3 1941–1950 – 3 1951–1960 1 14 48 Вячеслав Щербин | Белорусская и литовская терминографии:… Continuation of Table 1 Breakdown of the period under consideration (1900–2005) by decade Number of published Belarusian terminological dictionaries Number of published Lithuanian terminological dictionaries 1961–1970 11 48 1971–1980 6 61 1981–1990 29 64 1991–2000 250 186 2001–2005 64 112 The data presented in Table 1 show that the publication activity of Belarusian terminographers fluctuated considerably from decade to decade: it sometimes fell to zero and sometimes rose sharply. Two decades (the 1920s and the 1990s) have been identified in which “bursts” of Belarusian terminographic output occurred (30 terminological dictionaries were published in the 1920s, and 250 in the 1990s). It was precisely in these two decades that the priority status of the Belarusian language as the language of the titular nation received corresponding legislative support. In the other decades of the 20th century, when the Belarusian language lacked legislative support for its priority status, the publication of domestic terminological dictionaries saw evident declines (only a few dictionaries published per decade) and even genuine gaps (a complete absence of published dictionaries over an entire decade). A completely different pattern of publication activity is evident in the bibliographic data on the development of Lithuanian terminography. The data show that this pattern was fairly stable and positive, that is, the number of terminological dictionaries published grew almost continuously, without any significant declines or gaps. In particular, 3 terminological dictionaries were published in the first decade of the 20th century, 6 in the second, 1 in the third, 3 in the fourth, 3 in the fifth, 14 in the sixth, 48 in the seventh, 61 in the eighth, 64 in the ninth, 186 in the last decade of the 20th century, and 112 during the first five years of the present century, which, if current trends continue Terminologija | 2008 | 15 49 The pace of publication of terminological dictionaries in Lithuania will yield more than 220 dictionaries by the end of the first decade of the 21st century. Thus, since the middle of the last century, Lithuanian terminography has seen a rapid increase (from decade to decade) in the number of specialized dictionaries published, fully in keeping with the demands of the global scientific and technological revolution that began in the 1960s, as well as those of the global knowledge economy, whose formation began in the 1990s. Significant differences between Belarusian and Lithuanian terminography were also revealed in their comparison according to the linguistic criterion, that is, by determining the language affiliation of terms in the Belarusian and Lithuanian dictionaries being compared. Specifically, the linguistic profile of the terminological material in the Belarusian dictionaries examined is as follows: of the 393 terminological dictionaries published during the period in question, 334 include Russian terms, 288 Belarusian terms, 38 English terms, 31 Latin terms, 18 German terms, 10 French terms, 9 Polish terms, and so on. Overall, the terminological dictionaries published in Belarus contain terms in 32 Slavic and non-Slavic languages. Quite different linguistic preferences were prioritized when selecting terms for Lithuanian specialized dictionaries: of the 501 terminological dictionaries available in Lithuania, 499 include Lithuanian terms, 231 contain English terms, 215 Russian terms, 128 German terms, 76 French terms, 44 Latin terms, 19 Polish terms, 13 Italian terms, 12 Spanish terms, and so on. In total, Lithuanian specialized dictionaries feature terms in 27 languages of the world. Thus, whereas Belarusian terminography is clearly dominated by a tendency to translate and define Russian terms as a priority (sometimes even at the expense of terms in the titular nation’s language), Lithuanian terminography has published specialized dictionaries that, first, invariably include terms in the native language and, second, contain terms in the principal languages of the world’s most scientifically developed countries in relatively equal and comparable proportions 50 Вячеслав Щербин | Белорусская и литовская терминографии:… in terms of scientific development, giving Lithuanian readers who use these specialized dictionaries access to a greater volume of scientific information accumulated in different countries around the world. A comparative study of the bibliographic data on Belarusian and Lithuanian terminography according to the typological criterion—that is, taking into account the types of terminological dictionaries published—yielded very interesting results. In Belarusian terminography, the following types of specialized dictionaries predominate: 1) bilingual dictionaries (267 titles in total), including 201 bilingual dictionaries and 66 multilingual dictionaries; 2) educational dictionaries (175 titles in total), including 153 dictionaries for university students and 22 for schoolchildren; 3) explanatory dictionaries (136 titles in total); 4) encyclopedic dictionaries (31 titles in total); 5) classification dictionaries (7 titles); 6) glossaries (4 titles) and other types of specialized dictionaries. The latter include indexes, dictionaries of synonymous terms, conceptual dictionaries, historical, illustrated, and phraseological dictionaries of terms, dictionaries of scientific metaphors, abbreviations, and so forth. The typology of Lithuanian terminological dictionaries is somewhat different. Specifically, the following types of specialized dictionaries predominate in Lithuanian terminography: 1) translation dictionaries (396 titles in total), including 240 bilingual dictionaries and 156 multilingual dictionaries; 2) explanatory dictionaries (223 titles in total); 3) educational dictionaries (100 titles in total), including 63 dictionaries for university students and 37 for schoolchildren; 4) encyclopedic dictionaries (28 titles in total); 5) conceptual or concept dictionaries (27 titles); 6) indexes (11 titles); 7) electronic dictionaries (5 titles); 8) classification dictionaries (5 titles); 9) illustrated dictionaries (4 titles), and other types of special-purpose dictionaries. The latter include phraseological, word-formation, frequency, and spelling dictionaries of terms, dictionaries of abbreviations and errors, etc. Terminologija | 2008 | 15 51 Thus, educational dictionaries are more widely represented in Belarusian terminography than in Lithuanian terminography (44% of the total number of terminological dictionaries. For comparison: in Lithuanian terminography, educational dictionaries account for only 20% of all special-purpose dictionaries), as are bilingual dictionaries (51.1% of the total number of dictionaries. For comparison: in Lithuanian terminography, bilingual dictionaries account for 49.9% of the total). By contrast, Lithuanian terminography includes more explanatory dictionaries (44.5% of the total number of dictionaries. For comparison: in Belarusian terminography, explanatory dictionaries account for 34.5% of the total) and multilingual dictionaries (30.1% of the total number of dictionaries. For comparison: in Belarusian terminography, multilingual dictionaries account for just116.5% of all dictionaries). The high proportion of multilingual dictionaries in Lithuanian terminography (one in every three special-purpose dictionaries) is easily explained: “the number of Lithuanians studying foreign languages is constantly growing, since everyone understands that knowledge of Lithuanian alone is not enough for effective communication in the modern world” (Subačius 2002: 12). Finally, a comparative study of Belarusian and Lithuanian terminological dictionaries by criterion of their entry count revealed certain advantages of Belarusian special-purpose dictionaries. For example, the entry list of M. V. Adamchik’s two-volume Great English-Russian Polytechnic Dictionary (2004) includes 280,000 words and meanings; the entry list of the two-volume Russian-Belarusian Polytechnic Dictionary (1997–1998) contains about 170,000 terms; the entry list of V. N. Yanushkov, T. P. Yanushkova, and A. A. Chenado’s two-volume Russian-English Dictionary for Businesspeople (1994) comprises about 80,000 economic terms. The list of Belarusian terminological dictionaries with such large entry counts is quite long. For comparison: the entry section of the vast majority of Lithuanian terminological dictionaries very rarely contains more than 50,000 terms. In our view, the advantage of Belarusian terminography noted above (compared with Lithuanian) in terms of the volume of entry vocabulary in special-purpose dictionaries is attributable to the close genetic relationship between Belarusian and Russian, which allows Belarusian termin- 52 Вячеслав Щербин | Белорусская и литовская терминографии:… Terminographers can increase the volume of Belarusian headword lists in their dictionaries quite quickly and easily by borrowing, calquing, and even transliterating missing terms from Russian specialized dictionaries with very comprehensive headword lists. Another reason for the publication in Belarus of large explanatory (Russian-language) and translation (Russian-to-foreign-language) terminological dictionaries is the pronounced orientation of Belarusian dictionary publishers and companies toward Russia’s vast book market, where these translated dictionaries from Belarus sell quite quickly. An indirect consequence of this publishing orientation is the not infrequent occurrence of individual Russian-language terminological dictionaries published in Belarus having larger headword lists than comparable Russian dictionaries. For example, the five-volume Опыт исторического словаря русской лингвистической терминологии by M. G. Bulakhov (Minsk, 2002–2005) includes over 10 thousand headwords, considerably more than the headword lists of the most comprehensive Russian terminological dictionaries of linguistics: the headword list of the Англо-русского словаря по лингвистике и семиотике edited by A. N. Baranov and D. O. Dobrovolsky (Moscow, 1996) includes about 8 thousand terms, while the headword list of the second edition of O. S. Akhmanova’s Словаря лингвистических терминов (Moscow, 1969) contains about 7 thousand terms. CONCLUSIONS If Belarusian and Lithuanian terminography are compared not according to a single criterion but across the full set of criteria we selected, then the advantage noted above of Belarusian terminography in terms of the headword-list size of published specialized dictionaries pales in comparison with the clear advantages of Lithuanian terminography according to four other comparison criteria (quantitative, chronological, linguistic, and typological). In other words, the results of our comparative study of Belarusian and Lithuanian terminography clearly indicate that Lithuanian terminography is developing more dynamically and productively than Belarusian terminography. This conclusion is also supported by the presence at the Institute of the Lithuanian Language of a well-staffed Terminology Centre, as well as the publication, under the auspices of the said institute, of a specialized journal Terminologija | 2008 | 15 53 Terminologija (14 issues have already been published). Unfortunately, Belarus still has neither a permanent organizational structure for the study of terminology nor a regularly published terminological journal. A similar conclusion (regarding the achievements of both Lithuanian terminography and Lithuanian lexicography as a whole) can be found in the works of researchers from various countries around the world. For example, in the paper “Lexicography and Terminology Studies” by the well-known Russian terminologist S. V. Grinev-Grinevich, now working in Białystok (Poland), delivered at the meeting of the international scientific conference Lexicology and Terminology: Theory, Practice and History, dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the birth of Lithuanian lexicographer Jonas Kruopas (April 23–24, 2008, Vilnius), he expressed sincere admiration that Lithuanian terminologists had managed to accomplish so much in creating terminological dictionaries with limited resources. In turn, Riga linguist A. Veisbergs, in his encyclopedic article on Lithuanian lexicography, noted the broad thematic coverage of terminological dictionaries published in Lithuania, several dozen of which are accessible online, and concluded that “the Lithuanian dictionary landscape is impressive and unexpectedly well developed for a small nation of 3.3 million people” (Veisbergs 2006: 285). In conclusion, we would like to express our confidence that the results of our comparative study of Belarusian and Lithuanian terminography will enable terminologists in the two countries to learn more about achievements in compiling Belarusian and Lithuanian specialized dictionaries, and to make the necessary adjustments to their terminographic practice. In any event, the experience accumulated within Lithuanian terminography is of undeniable interest to Belarusian terminographers, and becoming acquainted with it will serve as an evident stimulus to the improvement of their professional work. ЛИТЕРАТУРА Gaivenytė-Butler J., Keinys St., Noreikaitė A. 2008: Lietuvių kalbos terminų žodynai, Vilnius. Šifrisova F. 2000: Giminystės terminai rusų kalba ir jų atitikmenys kitose kalbose, Kaunas. 54 Вячеслав Щербин | Белорусская и литовская терминография:... Subačius G. 2002: The Lithuanian Language: Traditions and Trends, Vilnius. Veisbergs A. 2006: Lithuanian Lexicography. – Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Vol. 7, Amsterdam; Boston, 284–285. Кіпель В., Саўка З. 2002: Беларускія слоўнікі й энцыкляпэдыі: Бібліяграфія, Нью Ёрк; Менск. Михайлов А. А. 2000: Гуманитарное знание в меняющемся мире. – Социология 1, 9–15. Сандерс Д. 1995: Некоторые методологические соображения о сравнительных межгосударственных исследованиях. – Международный журнал социальных наук 9, 27–35. Чарняўская Л., Цыхун Г. 2000: Тэрміналагічныя слоўнікі (асобныя выданні) 1918–1998 гг.: Бібліяграфічны даведнік, Мінск. Щербин В. К. 2001: Сравнительное обществоведение в странах СНГ. – Наука и образование на пороге III тысячелетия: Материалы международного конгресса, Минск, 414–424. Щербин В. К. 2005: Белорусская и украинская терминографии: сравнительный анализ. – Українська термінологія і сучасність: зб. наук. праць. Вип. VI, Київ, 26–31. BALTARUSIŲ IR LIETUVIŲ TERMINOGRAFIJOS: LYGINAMASIS ASPEKTAS Straipsnyje apžvelgiami pagal keletą kriterijų atlikto lyginamojo baltarusių ir lietuvių terminografijų tyrimo rezultatai. Nagrinėjami abiejų šalių terminografijų privalumai ir trūkumai. Išvadomis grindžiama būtinybė koreguoti dabartinę Baltarusijos terminografijos praktiką. BELARUSIAN AND LITHUANIAN TERMINOGRAPHIES: COMPARATIVE ASPECT The article considers the results of the comparative research of the Belarusian and Lithuanian terminographies according to a number of criteria. The advantages and drawbacks of each of the mentioned terminographies are analyzed. The necessity to introduce the amendments into modern Belarusian terminographic practice has been substantiated. Gauta 2008-12-19 Вячеслав Константинович Щербин Институт языка и литературы имени Якуба Коласа и Янки Купалы Национальной академии наук Беларуси ул. Сурганова, 1, корп. 2, 220072, г. Минск, Республика Беларусь Эл. почта: [email protected] Terminologija | 2008 | 15 5 5