THE TERM BANK OF THE REPUBLIC OF LITHUANIA

On 23 December 2003, the Law on the Term Bank of the Republic of Lithuania was adopted (Žin., 2004, No. 7-129). For the first time, it legally regulated the procedure for the systematic accumulation, creation, systematization and standardization of Lithuanian terminology, and its coordination with the terminology of other languages. As an implementing act of the Law, the Methodology of the Term Bank of the Republic of Lithuania was approved by Resolution No. N-1 (90) of the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language of 2 February 2004 (Žin., 2004, No. 26-842); it sets out the rules for developing, managing and using this information system. Those legal acts establish that the Term Bank is public and freely accessible to all internet users. The State Commission of the Lithuanian Language is the manager of the Term Bank and the data processor; the administrator of the Term Bank information system is the Information Technology Department of the Office of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania.

The Term Bank is being developed as a shared information system, primarily for state institutions. Within their areas of competence, ministries, departments and services subordinate to them, government agencies, the Seimas and institutions accountable to it are authorized to collect and manage terminology here. For this purpose, terminology commissions have been established in the aforementioned state institutions. They are responsible for inventorying and managing the terminology of current legal acts, submitting it to the Term Bank, and coordinating the terminology of draft legal acts with the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language and incorporating it into the Term Bank.

The Term Bank information system is neither closed nor intended solely for the needs of public administration. Research institutes, universities, higher education institutions, private companies and individuals (e.g. authors and compilers of terminology dictionaries) can work with this system.

All registered users of the Term Bank (ministries, government agencies, other state institutions, universities, higher education institutions, research institutes, etc.) create terminology databases for their respective fields. They can manage and edit data in them and use them as working terminology databases. Terminology providers submit substantively reviewed sets of terminology entries to the Term Bank’s data processors through the information system; the processors forward them to experts, who assess the subject-matter and linguistic suitability of the entries. The terminology entries are then considered by the Language Commission. Decisions on the submitted terms are made by the Subcommissions on Terminology and at meetings of the Language Commission. Terminology providers also participate in these meetings.

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Following this procedure, terminology entries (and sets thereof) that have been prepared with due regard to subject matter and language are published in the Term Bank.

According to their sources, subject-matter accuracy and linguistic correctness, publicly published terms fall into three categories: approved, recommended and not recommended. These concepts are defined in the Law on the Term Bank. The status of approved is assigned only to terms that are or will be used in legal acts. They must be impeccable in both terminology and language. Approved terms are mandatory for drafters of legal acts. Terms that are linguistically correct but used not in legal acts, but, for example, in terminology dictionaries, various reference works, textbooks and similar sources, are included in the Term Bank with the status recommended. Entries for not recommended terms include references to correct terms—approved or recommended.

The Term Bank publishes terminology entries, not isolated terms. One of the most important elements of an entry is its definition. The Bank is not monolingual: equivalents in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Latin, Russian and, where necessary, other languages can be provided for each Lithuanian term. Synonyms (if any) may be included in a terminology entry, and various supplementary materials (documents, tables, images, charts, etc.), internet links and other information may be added as needed.

Terminology entries are grouped into sets organized according to a hierarchical classification of subject areas. There are 24 areas, divided into smaller subareas. The classification of areas is based on the distribution of fields of activity overseen by state institutions of the Republic of Lithuania, fields of science and fields of study; it also draws on the subject classification of the European terminology thesaurus “Eurovoc”.

The Term Bank offers various ways to search for information of interest: a word, part of a word or word combination can be searched for as a Lithuanian term, as a synonym or as an equivalent in another language; it may also be found in other parts of a terminology entry, such as the definition. A term’s subject area and/or status can also be selected. A separate search can also be carried out using these latter two criteria (area or status).

The Term Bank is not yet an extensive resource, but it is continually being supplemented with terms from both legal acts and dictionaries.

Audra IVANAUSKIENĖ State Commission of the Lithuanian Language Žvejų g. 14A, LT-09310 Vilnius E-mail: [email protected]

Received 2005-11-02

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