International Scientific Conference on Terminology

Normative and Descriptive Terminology

AUŠRA RIMKUTĖ

Institute of the Lithuanian Language

On May 25–26, 2006, the 11th International Scientific Conference on Terminology Normative and Descriptive Terminology (Нормативное и описательное терминоведение). was held in Moscow. The conference focused on issues related to the standardization and regulation of terms and presented new methods for studying terminology in various fields. It was organized by the Federal State Unitary Enterprise Russian Center for Information on Standardization, Metrology and Certification in Science and Technology STANDARTINFORM (Российский научно-технический центр информации по стандартизации, метрологии и оценке соответствия СТАНДАРТИНФОРМ), the Committee for Scientific Terminology in Fundamental Sciences of the RAS of the Russian Federation (Комитет научной терминологии в области фундаментальных наук РАН РФ), the Russian Terminology Society RosTerm (Российское терминологическое общество РоссТерм), and the A. S. Pushkin State Russian Language Institute (Государственный институт русского языка имени А. С. Пушкина). The conference brought together scholars from various Russian cities (Moscow, Omsk, Chelyabinsk, Khabarovsk, Samara, Kazan, Yekaterinburg, and others), as well as from Finland, Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine. The papers were presented in Russian.

The conference was opened by A. Kozlov, deputy director of STANDARTINFORM, who delivered a welcoming address. Some of the plenary-session papers dealt with theoretical issues in terminology (the cognitive research method, the concept of term fields, and linguistic requirements for terms). There were also review papers reporting on the state of terminology work and work completed, as well as on problems arising in the preparation of normative, translation, and other bilingual or multilingual terminological dictionaries and in translating scientific and technical literature.

STANDARTINFORM representatives A. Kozlov and E. Savilov reviewed the standardization of terminology in Russia. They emphasized that standardization is a matter of state, established by a law adopted on December 27, 2002, and a government

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resolution. The work of standardizing terminology is coordinated and directed by Technical Committee 55 Terminology. The committee consists of specialists from more than 30 Russian organizations engaged in terminology work. According to the speakers, standardizing terms is a fairly effective way to regulate the language of science and technology. They also presented STANDARTINFORM’s term database RosTerm (РОСТЕРМ), which contains more than 140,000 terminological entries. The database is expected to be useful in preparing high-quality terminology standards and managing national and international terminology. They identified compatibility between concepts and terms in different languages as one of the most important aims of terminology standardization.

Professor S. Griniov-Grin<PRIVATE_PERSON>vich of the University of Białystok spoke about the tasks of terminology. The author emphasized the need to continue studying terminology in various fields and describing it using a range of research methods. He discussed separately several areas of terminological research (cognitive, comparative, historical, semantic, and other studies), which hold considerable promise. He regretted that terminology is not currently being studied typologically.

Scholar I. Kudashev of the University of Helsinki presented a paper on the difficulties involved in compiling a descriptive translation dictionary of terminology, based on a Finnish–Russian forestry dictionary. The dictionary in preparation is intended for translators. The speaker also discussed how descriptive and normative multilingual terminology dictionaries differ. Professor T. Kiyak of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv spoke about the translation of scientific and technical literature.

A. Auksoriūtė and A. Rimkutė (Vilnius) presented a paper on the development and current state of Lithuanian terminology. The speakers devoted considerable attention to the work of the Terminology Center at the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, introduced other institutions engaged in terminology work in Lithuania, and described the terminology databases being developed: the Terminology Bank of the Republic of Lithuania, the Lithuanian Termbank, and others.

V. Novodranova, a scholar at the Moscow State University of Medicine and Dentistry, presented a paper on types of cognition and the cognitive study of medical terminology.

S. Shelov’s (Moscow) paper on term fields and the structure of concepts in terminology prompted the most discussion. The linguist considered the following term fields separately: semantic, conceptual, conceptual-terminological, and terminological (in the broad and narrow senses). In discussing term fields, he presented his own term database, WinTERM, comprising terminology from various fields.

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Terminology dictionaries, reference works, and standards, and also showed how their use makes it possible to identify a term’s fields. Interestingly, there is not a single term that lacks a semantic or conceptual term field; however, not all terms have a conceptual terminological field and a terminological field. The terminological field of a term (in the narrow sense), to which the terms included in dictionaries usually belong, is very narrow. Quite often, terms do not have this field.

After the plenary session, work continued in two sections. In the section Theoretical Aspects of Terminology, most presentations were devoted to cognitive terminology (L. Manerko, E. Golovanova, A. Kiziu-kevičius, et al.), terminological synonymy and polysemy (G. Ivanova, S. Oskina, et al.), metaphorical terms (E. Bezateeva, T. Pristaiko, et al.), and other issues.

The other section was The Practice of Terminology Work, Terminography, and the Teaching of Terminology. It dealt with terminology work in Ukraine (L. Bojarova, L. Simonenko) and problems involved in defining terms and compiling terminology dictionaries (I. Vechmas-Lechto, E. Sorokina, et al.). Terminology in economics, law, computer science, advertising, navigation, beekeeping, medicine, and other fields was discussed, and the need to train qualified terminologists was also mentioned.

The results of the two-day terminology conference were discussed by V. Leičikas, professor in the Department of General and Russian Linguistics at the A. Pushkin State Russian Language Institute. According to him, the conference addressed pressing issues in terminology and terminography and provided an opportunity to share experience in terminology work.

Collections of the conference abstracts and presentations were published.

The next international conference is planned to be held in Moscow in the spring of 2007.

Received 2006-11-18

Aušra Rimkutė Lithuanian Language Institute P. Vileišio St. 5, LT-10308 Vilnius E-mail: [email protected]

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