DISCUSSION, PROPOSALS

Antanas BURAČAS

ECONOMIC INFORMATION AND PROBLEMATIC ASPECTS OF TERMINOLOGY

New sources and forms of information

A universal European Union terminology classifier, EUROVOC, being developed through the efforts of the Computer Data Processing Division of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania, will be highly significant for standardizing terminology in our economy, technology, and other fields. In addition, at the initiative of the Standards Department of the Republic of Lithuania, mandatory procedures for preparing terminology and definition standards are currently being discussed jointly with the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language and specialists from the LMA MII, bringing them into line with the requirements, formats, and standards of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) applicable in this field.

It goes without saying that the most significant considerations in this work have been, and remain, the semantics of a term and the criteria for its conformity with customary usage. Requirements for the correct formation of terms are no less important. Applying all these criteria appropriately in terminology work requires a computerized dictionary of contemporary Lithuanian, which should be linked to the dictionary of international words that we use. It is paradoxical that for 15–20 years it has been easy to correct English texts on any personal computer in the country, because English dictionaries are automatically installed with various software. Meanwhile, computerized dictionaries of the state Lithuanian language, despite the many mandatory language-standard requirements, are hard to find. They are rarely available and therefore used almost nowhere—not in government agencies or educational institutions—despite their obvious necessity. The aim should be for every computer sold in Lithuania to include a Lithuanian-language dictionary and, for the business and finance sectors, appropriate business terminology, etc.

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Recently, several original and translated textbooks have appeared in Lithuania (I would single out those by Prof. H. Dauderis and P. and R. Wonnacott), as well as the Dictionary of Economic Terms (Ch. Pass et al., translated in 1994 from the Collins series), which have helped foster a general culture of economic thinking and raise the analytical level of our officials and businesspeople. Considerable attention to standardizing and normalizing the terms in use was also devoted in the Dictionary and Handbook of Business, Banking, and Stock Exchange Terms (Žodynas, V., 1994), which I prepared together with Prof. B. Svecevičius. The translation of the original Oxford Dictionary of the Business World, which had been begun, would have been especially important; its publication has stalled because of a lack of funds and the Lithuanian publisher’s indeterminate position.

However, with the particularly rapid expansion of information-society culture and the use of international computer databases, we must hurry to standardize the usage of new terms, especially in management, finance, and banking, all the more since our large student population is participating ever more intensively in this process. One means of exerting influence is through professional reviews of the latest information sources and other innovations, prepared using appropriate tools and in the most timely formats. Among these I would mention an electronic book on international banking experience, being prepared through the joint efforts of graduate students in finance and informatics at VDU and KHF. It synthesizes publications from 1996–97 in the Financial Times and Economist, reports from the central banks, investment funds, and stock exchanges of Europe and the United States, international conferences, and databases on the Internet and World Wide Web. Clearly, once edited, such a book would reflect far more of the latest insights and analytical tools of global financial experts and of hard-to-access manuals on a wide range of topics, while being available to our specialists on incomparably easier terms than those offered by the much-publicized latest courses at prestigious banking training centers in England or Austria. A copy of such a book could be made in very little time.

Lessons in terminology formation

What problems arise when terminological supervision is carried out without the determined and attentive efforts of specialists,

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was demonstrated very clearly by the appearance of the Lithuanian translation of the aforementioned “Collins” Dictionary of Economic Terms (Christofer Pass, Bryan Lowes, Leslie Davies), otherwise especially necessary and well prepared (“Baltijos biznis,” ed. A. Pupkis, economic-terminology editor-consultant S. Vaitkevičius, hereafter ETŽ). One would not want terminology groups working separately in specialized fields to create additional problems instead of helping to standardize usage, especially since their assistance is much needed in rapidly developing branches of terminology. Let us now examine, using the experience of this dictionary (ETŽ) as an example, whether its translation editors adhered to the necessary principles of terminology and why, in many cases, they failed substantially.

First of all, the ETŽ team’s efforts to protect Lithuanian economic terminology from established and newly spreading foreign words are highly commendable. However, specialists reacted quite negatively, not without reason, in cases where the ETŽ translation editors ignored the semantics of terms and where common-sense reasoning and accumulated experience point to a more acceptable conceptual alternative to the neologism proposed by ETŽ, one that better reflects the term’s meaning (see Lietuvos rytas, October 12, 1994, No. 211, and elsewhere). I will mention just a few more such cases here.

1. Misleading choice of equivalent. For example, double-entry is translated as double bookkeeping. This turns the universal principle of double-entry recording of transactions into a method of concealing income from tax collectors, widespread in criminal activity! The obvious mismatch between the translated meaning and the original term can be seen in equating diseconomies of scale with a negative economic effect. This conflates losses incurred as a result of an irrational scale of activity with a universal assessment of the nature of an activity.

Factor does not mean resources, as the ETŽ authorities translate it, but rather a factor, although in context the two may sometimes coincide. Semantically, the difference here is that the term selected by ETŽ denotes “the possibility of obtaining,” whereas economic literature tells us that the original term is used to analyze the “active components” of production and their interaction. Similarly questionable is articles of association

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translation internal regulations: after all, association means an association, that is, an institutional form of activity, which disappears entirely in the translation! The translation of maximization as unlimited is also surprising (e.g., asset-growth m.): increasing to a m a x i m u m level is obviously limited precisely by the criterion embodied in the term itself. The equation of the term asset value per share with the value of assets sold under compulsion is entirely unacceptable. As can be seen from the definition given right there under the term, this means “the value of assets attributable to one share.”

I believe that the s u b t l e meanings of compound terms must be distinguished. For example, the equation found in ETŽ of authorized/registered capital – authorized/registered capital with nominal capital may be misleading. In cases of legal conflicts, this and many other proposed inaccuracies may result in very considerable losses indeed! There are many such cases.

Similar carelessness leads to the “dropping” of parts of compound terms or to shifts in nuance, for example: capital-output ratio is not capital intensity but rather the ratio, or coefficient, that characterizes it. Likewise, equilibrium market price is more likely not market price equilibrium but the price of a market in equilibrium; equilibrium market quantity is not the same as market equilibrium; it is the quantity (of supply and demand) that ensures this equilibrium. There are many more such cases. Not every product is a commodity, so collective products cannot be equated with collective commodities. The term cash flow means flow of cash, but not necessarily its turnover (for example, only into or out of the cash register).

The term nondurables is not at all equivalent to short-lived goods (the latter include both medium-durability consumer goods and supplies obtained in non-commodity form, such as haberdashery or stationery supplies, and so on). The expression clearing house system should be translated not as bank clearing but as clearing-house system (the latter carries out clearing operations). Similarly, we cannot agree with translating current-weighted index as current value index, since the text itself explains that what is meant is the determination of comparative weights or weighted indices. The term corporate sector – corporate sector is not equivalent to private activity, as is also apparent from the description of meaning 2 in ETŽ itself, p. 206 (which additionally includes household

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and financial activity), but editors turn a blind eye to this.

The term learning curve should not be narrowed to qualification acquisition curve: any educator will confirm that “learning” is a much broader concept and cannot be reduced to “acquiring qualifications.” Even the skills involved in work or other activities are not merely an indication of qualification acquisition.

The meaning of a term changes quite markedly when the concept of “indifference” (or equal utilities) is replaced by the ETŽ concept of “lack of preference”: the possibility of actively choosing when the odds are equal does not at all imply a lack of preference. An insufficiently careful choice of an equivalent for a word in a compound term may also impermissibly alter the term’s content. For example, ETŽ offers hidden price reduction as equivalent to secret price reduction. In essence, however, this is a concealed reduction, and, as we know from experience, it usually takes place entirely u n o p e n l y, although disguised by an updated product range, different packaging, and other similar methods. For similar reasons, one cannot accept linear integration as the equivalent used to translate horizontal integration, since the economic term used to describe the process in question is integration of horizontal, or homogeneous, activities.

The content of a term is altered when ETŽ offers banking services institution as the equivalent of licenced deposit taker. First, in many countries, deposits have been accepted for centuries not only by banks. Second, banking services include deposit operations among dozens of other services. Third, the emphasis in the original term on a l i c e n c e d or r e g i s t e r e d deposit-taking institution is lost. Support price is not an accurate equivalent of limiting pricing, because the emphasis in the original term—limiting—should be translated as limiting, while the equivalent of pricing is not the result of a process but the process itself: price-setting. ETŽ is inconsistent in its use of the term limiting, since limiting factor is indeed translated as limiting factor. Another case: minority interest is not a minority share, but rather its interests in the company’s management.

Sometimes incompetence creates the danger that a term may be replaced altogether by another without any justification. For example, the term public goods (education, etc.) is conflated with state property or pu-

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blic product, but public goods are neither one nor the other, contrary to what ETŽ attempts to claim. The term welfare state is not a term taken from a novel to denote a prosperous country, but one analogous to the term welfare economics already used in ETŽ; moreover, state here specifically means the s t a t e, since the discussion concerns state regulation policy. A similar misunderstanding is the attempt to offer secret price as the equivalent of shadow price. This is a price that cannot be established directly, or one constructed according to the criteria of the shadow economy. Inaccuracy and inconsistency are evident when the equivalent of cost is costs, i.e. expenses, but isocost line is nevertheless translated as line of equal values. Differences that lead to erroneous conflation should not be ignored, even at the popularization level. For example, UN organizations have long strictly distinguished between developing and less developed countries. Therefore, conflating developing and underdeveloped country, retaining only one (the former) term in translation, is impermissible.

2. I n c o n s i s t e n c y i n t e r m i n o l o g y f o r m a t i o n. The previously mentioned equivalent of diseconomies of scale selected by ETŽ is negative economic effect; however, external diseconomies of scale is translated as external diseconomies factors, while internal economies of scale is translated as internal economies factors. In this case, as in the previous one, the essential criterion of the term is lost—that the original refers to the consequences of the scale of activity; moreover, (dis)economies in this context may be partial or incidental cases, although this choice is otherwise worth viewing as an interesting attempt. On the other hand, describing economies of scale in activity does not at all require adding as a component of the term the word factors, which is absent from the original term.

ETŽ’s inconsistency in its criteria is also notable in the case where diseconomies is translated as diseconomy, while at the same time disequilibrium is translated as lack of equilibrium (let us call this a shift to using a descriptive criterion); likewise, in analogous situations, international terms such as deindustrialization, disinflation are retained (why not at least dezinflation?)

The term substitution effect is translated by the term replacement ef-

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effect; and marginal rate of substitution – marginal rate of substitution; yet marginal rate of technical substitution – marginal rate of technical renewal (why not substitution?) rate.

The ETŽ editors, who made considerable efforts to Lithuanize the terminology, may reasonably be asked something else as well: why is the international term company so often retained in the translated text, when the concept of “bendrovė” is consistently used and recognized both in legislation and in other specialized literature? It is also unclear why the concept “certificate” is not replaced by the equivalent certificate (of industrial development, etc.), which could readily displace this unnecessary international word.

3. The use of meanings for several terms used alongside one another is inadvisable, especially when these are borrowings from the methodology of another discipline serving a particular field. For example, the translation of rank correlation coefficient as category association coefficient is wholly unacceptable: mathematical statistics has long used the term rank correlation to measure this ordinal relationship. The equivalent multiple correlation is likewise incorrect as multiple association. The equivalent interactionscontingency table is also misleading (see the term’s description—which interactions?) table: in the Dictionary of Mathematical Terms (abbreviated MTŽ, p. 544) and in earlier practice, this term is clearly defined as a table of dependence between attributes. The appropriate meaning of the term distribution is distribution, but when using the statistical term conditional distribution, the standardized form in this branch of science, conditional distribution, should be used; correspondingly, normal distribution should be translated not as normal distribution (ETŽ, p. 159), but as distribution (see MTŽ, p. 564), since otherwise we would confuse the meanings of the concepts. Similarly, the translation of exponential smoothing as equalization is not to be endorsed; the standardized meaning in MTŽ is smoothing (p. 691).

Unacceptable are attempts to translate literally such phrases as have acquired a specific meaning in specialized fields. Among such unsuccessful cases, I would include ETŽ’s attempt to impose a literal translation of ordinal utility as ordinary utility. One may indeed wonder whether even a single member of the ETŽ team looked at how this term has long been used in economics textbooks. Students are already required to distinguish

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quantitative utility from utility determined by preference, the ranking of priorities.

The ETŽ’s proposed translation of returns (diminishing average/ marginal r.) as profit is also unacceptable: not all revenues are profitable, so greater precision must be observed in distinguishing concepts. The concepts of “money” and “currency” are unjustifiably conflated: forward exchange market is translated in ETŽ as market for fixed-term monetary transactions. In the practice of the exchanges that most often use this term, what is generally meant is currency transactions.

4. Great inconsistency in the translation process can leave readers at an impasse: this has happened more than once to the ETŽ editors, who failed to notice that their untranslated introductory (headword) term derivatyvas – derivative (in financial operations, usually a derivative index) is accompanied by a reference to differential calculus—but in the latter’s entry, the original term has already been translated, so the reference is of no use to the reader. We encounter a similar situation repeatedly: the equivalent accumulation (?) curve for envelope curve, with a reference to the term long-run average cost, explains nothing either. The explanation of the latter does not mention such a curve at all (cf. pp. 110 and 269–270). There are inconsistencies of various other kinds, too. For example, convertability is translated quite acceptably as exchangeability; yet in the entry for the same term concerning currency, it is said to be convertible; the reader may therefore feel that they are simply being mocked and confused.

5. In the case of the term derivatyvas and similar cases, we encounter the presentation of jargon used by specialists (colloquial expressions); I believe it is always appropriate to indicate this in the translated text, distinguishing these expressions from standard, recommended terms.

6. A term must be understandable. What would you think if you heard this term: M-form organization? Probably only the translators themselves, who know that, according to the original, M is an abbreviation of the English term multidivisional, have any real idea what it means (unfortunately, no explanation is given as to why a component of the Lithuanian term is not only abbreviated in this case, but also left untranslated). Equally undesirable is

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the replacement in translation of one foreign, or even international, word with another, especially when there is no guarantee as to which one may be more familiar to the reader. For example, the word excess in ETŽ and MTŽ replaces the term kurtosis: I think one can sense here an attempt by specialists to artificially distance themselves from non-specialists who might try to use the method of determining the distribution maximum to analyze statistical observations.

In the end, everyone will be surprised to see that the classic of physiocracy F. Kene (Quesnay), whose surname spelling and pronunciation have been familiar in Lithuania for two centuries, is proposed, without any justification, to be pronounced Kvesne!

7. Application of Descriptive Criteria

when seeking the most acceptable equivalent, one should not overlook the fact that an added qualification to a more general term may narrow its semantic range of use. This happened in ETŽ, for example, when translating the compound terms barriers to/condition of entry: in the Lithuanian version, the term entry (which can also mean record!) unexpectedly acquires the word into the market, which is absent from the original. It is undeniable that entry is possible into a community, a composition, and so on.

In all cases where descriptive criteria are applied, one should aim to select the closest possible equivalent. Therefore, in my opinion, the term delivered pricing is better matched by the term price with delivery than by the term selling and delivery price⟧ used in ETŽ. The translation of the term Direct labour as the phrase direct labour force, as the text shows, narrows its use: the first instance is intended to describe direct labour costs.

The translation of investors in industry as controlling institution is very far removed from the original meaning: it describes the nature of the influence, but not the institution or its field of activity. The term investors in industry describes only this specific branch of economic activity.

The equivalent chosen by ETŽ, illegal transaction, distorts the original meaning of the term insider trading. This is an insider transaction in securities, which is not necessarily unlawful, even though it is carried out using information held by brokers that is not publicly available, or information concerning the interests of a potential investor.

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ETŽ proposes translating the term loss-leading as the phrase selling goods at a loss. However, leading in losses does not occur only when selling goods; moreover, the original term emphasizes not selling, as one way of leading, but the act of leading itself.

8. Assigning characteristics of a term where none exist:

international commodity agreement is rendered in the ETŽ as the term international agreement on consumer goods (one could even organize a lottery among economists, with a valuable prize for whoever comes up with the idea of looking for this commodity agreement term where it is listed): even the text that follows makes it clear that the term can just as readily be used in commodity markets or other markets not involving consumer goods.

9. Continuity with traditions in specialized terminology:

If Lithuanian language specialists advise against using the all-purpose word put on when talking about shoes (they suggest put on), or trousers (they suggest pull on), then why should luxury product be translated as luxury product rather than good, as is customary in economic practice? Similarly, the ETŽ’s translation of permanent income as constant income provokes a hostile reaction: what would that mean—income received daily or monthly? It is customary to speak of steady income, to distinguish it from the rest, which is indeed temporary and received irregularly. Nor do we want to replace portfolio investments with a package of securities.

10. The principled decision to use new terms in the ETŽ translation while preserving the alphabetical presentation of terms characteristic of the original, rather than grouping them under their main semantic entries, proved a complete failure when it came to easily finding what one needed. Some term combinations cannot be found under the wording newly proposed by the ETŽ, which is so far known only to the translation team. For example, bilateral trade should be sought not under trade, nor even under bilateral trade, but under mutual trade. Alternatively, one might begin looking under the English equivalent, using the index at the end of the ETŽ—if only the reader knows it.

A term rarely begins with an adjective, although the translators of its Lithuanian equivalent, having probably followed the original too literally, must have fallen into the trap here and provoked the ire of specialists. Who would think to look for the equivalent of the term derived demand under a term other than

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derived demand, as specialists are accustomed to using it and as fully accords with the term’s meaning, and instead under a different but related term, secondary demand? Why should the term stock dividend be sought under the word stock? And should the term gold-backed securities be sought under the term gold?

Where terms of unsettled usage are proposed or introduced—and these may account for about a quarter of the entries in the publication—even a specialist can find the required term only after carefully reading the entire book from beginning to end several times.

On the one hand, despite recent advances in Lithuanian economic terminology, there remains a particular need for a systematic, modern, encyclopedic account of specialized fields in macroeconomics and microeconomics—finance, commerce, labor, management, and others—from a pragmatic rather than an academic standpoint. It is also essential to reconcile the meanings of terms interpreted differently across various areas of economic analysis; to provide a correct and regularly updated account of contemporary analytical tools (their uses and applications); and to describe foreign economic statistics indices, measures, and information sources. Translation alone will not solve these most important problems.

On the other hand, no specialist working in terminology is immune to inaccuracies arising from lack of knowledge or from failure to choose the right equivalents. But this must not turn into arrogance or, worse, a system: writing or translating a dictionary differs fundamentally from preparing either novels or specialized literature, both in aims and methods, and the criteria for tolerance are entirely different.

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