Lietuvos Respublikos terminų bankas

On December 23, 2003, the Law on the Term Bank of the Republic of Lithuania was adopted (Journal of Laws, 2004, No. 7-129). For the first time, it legally regulated the procedure of consistent collection, creation, systematization, standardization and harmonization of Lithuanian terminology with terminology of other languages. As an accompanying act to the law, the State Lithuanian Language Commission approved the Methodology of the Term Bank of the Republic of Lithuania (Journal of Laws, 2004, No. 26-842) by Decision No. N-1 (90) of 2 February 2004 — the rules for the creation, management and use of this information system. The aforementioned legislation stipulates that the Terms Bank is public and freely accessible to all Internet users. The administrator and data processor of the Term Bank is the State Lithuanian Language Commission, the administrator of the Term Bank information system is the Information Technology Department of the Seimas Chancellery of the Republic of Lithuania. The term bank is created as a common information system primarily for state institutions. The ministries, their subordinate departments and services, government agencies, the Seimas and institutions reporting to it are authorized to collect and manage terminology according to their competence. For this purpose, terminology commissions have been set up in the state institutions mentioned above, which are responsible for inventorying, managing and submitting the terminology of the legislation in force to the Terms Bank and for coordinating the terms of legislation in preparation with the State Lithuanian Language Commission and including them in the Terms Bank. The term bank information system is not closed or reserved only for the purposes of state administration. This system can be used by research institutes, universities, higher education institutions, private companies, natural persons (e.g., authors of terminology dictionaries, editors). All registered users of the Terms Bank (ministeries, government agencies, other state institutions, universities, higher education institutions, research institutes, etc.) create term databases in their fields, can manage and correct data in them, and use them as working term databases. Subjectively considered sets of term articles are sent by term providers to the Term Bank data processors via the information system, who pass them on to experts who assess the subjective and linguistic suitability of the submitted term articles. Subsequently, the term articles are discussed in the Language Commission. Decisions on submitted terms are taken at the meetings of the Terminology Subcommittee and the Language Commission. Term providers are also involved. Term articles prepared in terms of subject matter and language following this procedure 181 (Their collections) are published in the Terms Bank. According to sources, factual accuracy and linguistic correctness, publicly published terms are three-fold: approved, to be submitted and not to be submitted. These concepts are defined in the Term Bank Act. The restricted status is granted only to those terms that are or will be used in legislation. They must be terminologically and linguistically impeccable. The approved terms are binding on the legislators. Terms that are linguistically correct, but not used in legal acts, but, for example, in terminology dictionaries, various guides, textbooks, etc., are added to the Terms Bank with the status to be submitted. Terms not to be presented shall be accompanied by references to the correct terms, whether elaborated or to be presented. The term bank does not publish individual terms, but their articles. One of the most important elements of an article is the definition. The Bank is not monolingual: for each Lithuanian term, equivalents can be provided in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Latin, Russian, and other languages if necessary. Synonyms (if any) can be entered in the term article, various supplements can be added if necessary (documents, tables, pictures, graphs, etc.), Internet links, etc. Term articles are grouped into certain sets, divided according to the hierarchical classification of the fields of concepts. There are 24 areas, divided into smaller sub-areas. The classification of fields is based on the division of fields of activity, scientific directions and fields of study supervised by the state institutions of the Republic of Lithuania, and also on the classification of concepts of the European terminology dictionary “Eurovoc”. In the term bank you can search for various things of interest: a word, part of a word or a combination of words can be searched as a Lithuanian term, as a synonym, as an equivalent in another language; it can also be found in other parts of the term article, for example in the definition. You can also select a term area and/or status. According to the last two criteria (field or status) a separate search is also possible. The term bank is not yet an abundant source, but it is constantly supplemented not only with legislation, but also with dictionaries. Audra IVANAUSKIENĖ Received 2005-11-02 State Lithuanian Language Commission Žvejų g. 14A, LT-09310 Vilnius E-mail audra.ivanauskiene(2vikk.lt 182