TERMS OF JOURNALISM AND BOOK STUDIES ENCYCLOPEDIAS

At the end of 1997, two encyclopedic publications appeared at almost the same time: the Encyclopedia of Journalism¹, prepared by the Institute of Journalism at Vilnius University (hereafter JE), and the encyclopedic dictionary of book studies², prepared by the university’s Department of Book Studies (hereafter EDBS). The latter publication was issued as part of the state programme commemorating the 450th anniversary of the First Lithuanian Book. Both books are very handsomely produced.

The publications differ considerably in size: EDBS consists of 2,006 varied articles arranged alphabetically, of which 1,035 (about half) explain terms in this field, whereas JE contains about 6,000 articles, a correspondingly greater number of which explain terms. This article will discuss terms in these publications that give rise to doubts (without quoting their definitions, although they are by no means beyond criticism).

Using these encyclopedias is made more difficult by the fact that neither is accented. As a result, many readers may have difficulty determining the stress of terms, especially international ones, which make up a large proportion of the terms in these publications. The origins of some international terms are also not indicated, for example: autography (JE 44); autotypy (JE 45); photo-landscape, photo-portrait, photo-review (JE 136); photo editor, photo report, photojournalist (JE 137); interlinear spacing (EDBS 132); corpus (EDBS 204); textual criticism (EDBS 365); typographer, typography (JE 522); triplex (JE 526), etc. One commendable feature of EDBS is that when a concept is named by both an international and a Lithuanian term, preference is usually given to the Lithuanian one (it is listed first; less recommended or rarer international terms are also cross-referenced to Lithuanian terms). However, there are some inaccuracies and inconsistencies. For example, the term spaudas (‘print’) is given (p. 339) (without the international synonym štampas) and three meanings are listed, whereas the following term štampas (p. 360) is given

¹ Žurnalistikos enciklopedija. V.: Pradai, 1997. 606 p.

² Knygotyra: Enciklopedinis žodynas. V.: Alma littera, 1997. 413 p.

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the synonym spaudas and a definition duplicating (without making more specific) the explanation of the first meaning of the previously listed term spaudas. The Lithuanian term brūkšnelis (‘hyphen’) is added to the term defisas (p. 87), but the former is not even listed separately. In our orthographic terminology, however, the only proper term is brūkšnelis. The term bilingvistinis leidinys (‘bilingual publication’) (p. 67) points to the term (a preferred synonym) dvikalbis leidinys, but the term trilingvistinis leidinys (‘trilingual publication’) (p. 372) has no such cross-reference; the term trikalbis leidinys appearing in its entry is offered not as a synonym but as an explanation of the meaning. Likewise, alongside the term šarnyras (‘hinge’) (p. 356), the Lithuanian word lankstas is also needed. The synonymy of JE terms merits fuller discussion. Attention should be drawn to two issues concerning synonyms and how they are presented. First, although this encyclopedia sometimes also attempts to give preference to Lithuanian terms, much more often Lithuanian synonyms should be listed alongside international terms (or terms containing an international element), for example: adapteris (p. 9) – garso ėmiklis; definicija (p. 101) – apibrėžimas; leksikonas (p. 269) – žodynas; serveris (p. 448) – valdytuvas; skeneris (p. 452) – skaitytuvas, (nu)skaitymo įrenginys; multit terpė (p. 342) – daugialypė terpė; štampas (p. 494) – spaudas; video-magnetofonas (p. 555) – vaizdo magnetofonas, and so on. Incidentally, JE perhaps should not offer the unattested term vertiklis as a Lithuanian synonym for modemas (p. 334), although the latter is followed in parentheses by angl. modem – vertiklis. Second, JE’s synonyms, like its main terms, are printed in boldface and, depending on their relationship to the main term printed in capital letters, in uppercase or lowercase (it should simply be added here that the terms hektografas, hektografija (p. 161) are not synonyms). However, it is not uncommon for a synonym to be assigned, for some reason, to the explanation of a term’s meaning—that is, an international term is explained by a Lithuanian synonym, or vice versa.

As noted at the outset, JE contains a great deal of recent information, including new terms (it also includes the neologism žiniasklaida (‘mass media’) (p. 584)). However, some of them are also unacceptable loanwords, for example: b r i f i n g a s (= a short meeting, a short press conference) (p. 73); d a i d ž e s t a s (= (periodical) review; summaries

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(p. 93; EDBS 84); kontentinė (= content) analysis (p. 241); mikšėris (= converter) (p. 329), and so on. Some of these terms (e.g., daidžestas) have been classified by the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language as major language errors. To be sure, some of these loanwords are given with a see-also reference (perhaps intended to indicate that they are not recommended), but it is customary to mark inadmissible terms with the label ntk. (as is done in EDBS), while a cross-reference merely indicates a preferred synonym. This encyclopedia, as well as EDBS, also contains older loanwords that should be corrected, for example: abzacas (= indent, paragraph) (JE 9); ekslibris (= bookplate) (EDBS 97); forzacas (= endpaper) (JE 133; EDBS 107); hartas (= wove) (JE 161; EDBS 124); kolontitulas (= running head) (EDBS 201); falcas (= fold) (JE 262); falcavimas (= folding) (JE 262; EDBS 105); rapidas (= rapid phonogram copying; rapid filming) (JE 418); preprintas (= pre-publication offprint) (JE 401; EDBS 298); reprintas (= reprint) (JE 425; EDBS 310); tonfilmas (= sound film) (JE 524), and so on.

Alongside some colloquial professionalisms (e.g., bobutė (JE 69); šviežiagalvis (JE 498)), semantically inaccurate terms were also noted, for example: apmirimas (= fading) (JE 28); metininkas (= chronicle, annual publication) (JE 325; EDBS 257); spaudos repertuaras (= totality of the press) (EDBS 343), and so on.

In some of the compound terms listed in JE, the specifying elements should take definite adjective forms, for example: adekvatus, autorizuotas, laisvas (= adequate, authorized, free) translation (JE 554); kietas (= rigid) disk (JE 222); oficialus (= official) newspaper (JE 364); šviesus, juodas, siauras, normalus, platus, tiesus (= light, black, narrow, normal, wide, straight) typeface (JE 494), and so on. On the other hand, the use of definite adjective forms in EDBS should be considered hypercorrection in cases such as: nemokamasis (= free) publication (p. 271); nupigintoji (= discounted) book (p. 274), and so on. In some cases, an adjective with the suffix –inis, –inė should also be used instead of a definite adjective naming the specifying element, for example: pakartotasis (= repeated) edition (JE 374); perforuotoji (= perforated) tape (EDBS 288); perspektyvioji (= prospective) bibliography (EDBS

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290); retrospective (= retrospective) bibliography (KEŽ 312), and so on. However, the adjectives with the aforementioned prefixes that occur in compound terms should often be replaced by the genitive case of a noun, for example: author’s (= of the author) right (ŽE 45); publishing (= publishing) company (KEŽ 215); publishing (= publishing) organization (ŽE 267); publishing (= publishing) law (ŽE 267); publishing (= publishing) data (ŽE 267; KEŽ 215), etc. Although the terminological inaccuracies mentioned here are minor, they could easily have been avoided.

Nijolė BANEVČIENĖ

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