Iš Valstybinės lietuvių kalbos komisijos veiklos

BENDRINĖ KALBA 90 (2017) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 IŠ VALSTYBINĖS LIETUVIŲ KALBOS KOMISIJOS VEIKLOS (Prepared according to the 2016 report of the Language Commission) Language Programs & Courses The main objectives and tasks of the activities of the State Lithuanian Language Commission (hereinafter referred to as the Language Commission) are implemented through language programmes. In 2016, 27 projects were implemented under the State Programme for the Use, Standardization and Dissemination of the Lithuanian Language. The study of spelling and punctuation norms and the preparation of a new publication “Lithuanian Spelling and Punctuation” was started, as well as the study of current usage, competition and tendencies of Lithuanian grammatical forms. The Science and Encyclopedia Publishing Center prepared volumes of the World Placenames Series dictionaries Africa. Antarctica. Australia. Oceania and Asia. (Afghanistan–United Arab Emirates; Cambodia–Vietnam) databases have been transferred to the Language Commission’s website “World Placenames”, a search engine has been created. Supported the teaching of the specialty language in higher education institutions, state language courses for foreign-speaking residents of Lithuania. 56 Lithuanian publications of two titles were purchased for higher schools and public libraries. 15 projects have been carried out under the 2011–2020 Programme of Research on the Functioning and Change of Lithuanian Common Language, Dialects and Other Language Variants. Vilnius University has completed the project “Pronunciation tendencies of middle-generation intelligents and their relationship with common language norms”, its results have been presented to the public (pronouncement recommendations have been prepared, an electronic publication “Latest pronunciation tendencies of the Lithuanian language and their relationship with codified norms” has been published, etc.), a study has been carried out “Place of common language in the mental map of the Lithuanian language” and a scientific study has been prepared “Language variantity and evaluation from the point of view of perceptual dialectology: images of variants and places”. The project “Study of the functioning of new foreign words in common language: 2014–2016” was carried out at the Lithuanian University of Education. The Lithuanian Language Institute has completed the project “Research of Lithuanian Informatics and Computing Terminology”, as well as the series of publications for general education schools “Lithuanian Language Dialect School”. The Lithuanian Language Institute and Vilnius University continue to collect and archive dialect data. JŪRATĖ PALIONYTĖ. The Ministry of Economy of the Republic of Lithuania has been BENDRINĖ KALBA 90 (2017) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 informed that the draft law amending the Advertising Act of the Republic of Lithuania provides an erroneous definition of a sign, which does not comply with Article 17 of the State Language Act on the mandatory use of the state language on signs of all enterprises, institutions and organizations of the Republic of Lithuania. The opinion of the Language Commission has been taken into account. The Committee on Education, Science and Culture of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania has received an opinion on the draft law No. XIIP-3796 amending Article 5 of the Personal Identity Card and Passport Act of the Republic of Lithuania. The conclusion follows the same provisions that were presented to the Seimas in assessing previous draft laws regulating the spelling of names and surnames in documents. In the opinion of the Language Commission, the names and surnames of citizens of the Republic of Lithuania in personal documents should be written in Lithuanian characters, but, taking into account the needs of the current society, migration, etc., some exceptions are possible. In order to ensure the provisions of Article 21 of the State Language Act, the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Lithuania was contacted regarding the insufficient regulation of language correctness requirements for teachers in the implementing documents of the Education Act of the Republic of Lithuania and the supervision of the fulfilment of these requirements. It was recommended to amend the Regulations on the Attestation of Teachers and Specialists in Pupil Assistance so that all re-certified teachers who are seeking to obtain a higher qualification category should update their Lithuanian language knowledge and take a special language course. NORMATIVE AND EXPERT ACTIVITIES In 2016 there were 8 meetings of the Language Commission and 93 meetings of expert subcommissions. The Language Commission adopted 2 resolutions and 16 recommendations, 15 of them normative, protocol resolutions. About 260 expert opinions on personal names, place names, names of institutions, words, compounds, interpretation of the meaning of words and sentences, etc. were prepared. Approximately 200 questions were examined regarding the peculiarities of the formation and change of names, the granting or change of names, the identity of the same person’s name and (or) surname, etc. 18 names of residential areas and about 400 street names were evaluated. The Address Register was informed about the spelling of 25 newly registered names of residential areas. Termination. During the meetings of the Terminology Subcommittee, 1107 terms of legislative acts (mainly drafts) were discussed, the European Union institutions through one-stop-shop JŪRATĖ PALIONYTĖ. From the activities of the State Lithuanian Language Commission | 3 BENDRINĖ KALBA 90 (2017) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 terminological requests (40 terms), 6 manuscripts of terminology dictionaries, 2 supplements to dictionaries, terminology standard, names of Lithuanian nomenclature in biology (2212), other terminology and foreign words replacement with Lithuanian equivalents. 3 terminology dictionaries, a terminology standard, 1121 approved term articles (182 sets of term articles) were evaluated positively at the meetings of the Language Commission. These are the terms of legislation and other documents in the fields supervised by state institutions (environment, energy, finance, defence, culture, social security and labour, transport, communications, law, economy, health, public security, agriculture, fisheries and food, etc.). The protocol decisions of the Language Commission approved two recommendations on Lithuanian names of poisonous plants, 5 recommendations on names of some amphibians and molluscs. About 300 consultations were provided by e-mail and telephone on terminology, foreign word replacement, word meanings. Translators, editors, terminologists of the European Union institutions, as well as civil servants and employees of Lithuanian institutions, employees of private institutions, natural persons. During the year, 1121 approved (182 sets of term articles) articles of terms used or submitted for use in legislation and other documents were published in the Term Bank of the Republic of Lithuania (http://terminai.vlkk.lt). Also, 1023 Lithuanian names of biology nomenclature have been added to the Terms Bank: 623 names of plants, 377 names of amphibians, 23 names of molluscs. In total, at the end of 2016, the term bank of the Republic of Lithuania consisted of 238725 term articles: 12 966 approved, 224 597 to be submitted, 1162 not to be submitted. Grammar. The Subcommittee on Grammar, Spelling and Punctuation discussed the results of the study of the Lithuanian language syntax norms and recommendations provided in the Language Advice Book Syntax: Use of Verbs, Relationship with Current Use – Part of Verbs, and began to consider prepositions. During the meetings of the Temporary Subcommittee on the Translation Manual, comments were prepared for the Lithuanian Translation Unit of the European Parliament on the issues of the composition and spelling of Lithuanian names of United Nations institutions and bodies, and a list of names of United Nations institutions and bodies with comments was presented. A working group formed by the Language Commission prepared a draft of the rules for transliteration from Yiddish and Hebrew. JŪRATĖ PALIONYTĖ. From the activities of the State Lithuanian Language Commission | 4 Personal BENDRINĖ KALBA 90 (2017) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 names and place names. The Subcommittee discussed topical issues of Lithuanian place names, the legality of citizens’ names and the change of surnames, coordinated the pronunciation of names with accentology specialists, submitted to the Language Commission the Frequently Recommended List of Baltic Origin Names (prepared by Prof. Dr. Daiva Sinkevičiūtė). At the joint meetings of the Subcommissions for the Nomenclature and Grammar, provisions on the use of personal names in other languages were discussed. The language commission adopted the resolution “On the amendment of the spelling and punctuation of the Lithuanian language”, the protocol resolution “On the recommendation “On the grammar of authentic personal names”. At the request of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Lithuanian form of the new name of the Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk has been established – Dnipras. Based on the changes in the names of settlements adopted by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, a list of Ukrainian and Lithuanianized forms (about 1,000 settlement names) has been compiled. Lexicon. The protocol resolution supplemented the recommended list of foreign words equivalents. The dictionary subcommittee discussed the reviews of the articles on the letters b, d, ž of the General Lithuanian Language Dictionary prepared by the Lithuanian Language Institute and the articles themselves. The structure of the word meaning, the degrees of evaluation, the principles of meaning presentation, the articles of letters b and d were discussed. Spelling. Taking into account the data of the study of spelling tendencies, the Subcommittee on Council and Spelling continued to review the spelling recommendations, and at the suggestion of the Subcommittee on Terminology considered the pronunciation of compound and prefix-free adjectives. 6 recommendations were adopted (by protocol decisions of the Language Commission) on the pronunciation of compound adjectives and adjectives made without a prefix, the prefix of international words with pronounced stem diphthongs el, er and eu, the modification of the pronunciation of some nouns of foreign origin, prepositional adjectives and adverbs. Evaluation of textbooks. The textbook evaluation subcommittee considered 36 manuscripts of textbooks for general education subjects – a total of 48 books (some textbooks in several parts). The mark confirming the correctness of the language was immediately given to 19 books, 3 books were returned to publishers for correction, comments were made on 26 books – manuscripts of textbooks to be published. The manuscript language of 15 higher education textbooks was evaluated: the language of 11 textbooks did not meet the correctness requirements, the language of 4 textbooks met them partially. Of the 10 textbooks submitted for examination, 6 textbooks did not meet the correctness requirements, 4 textbooks met them partially. JŪRATĖ PALIONYTĖ. From the activities of the State Lithuanian Language Commission | 5 BENDRINĖ KALBA 90 (2017) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 OTHER WORK In 2016, 38,600 language consultations were provided, of which 14,720 online and 23,880 by telephone. The Registry Centre received 19,281 consultations through a special electronic system regarding the compliance of names of legal entities with Lithuanian common language norms. The language consultation database has been supplemented with 416 new entries (now it contains over 12,500 headings). Vilnius University has updated the content descriptions of Lithuanian as a foreign (state) language Lūžis, Pusiaukelė, Slenkstis, Aukštuma and prepared new descriptions of C1 and C2 levels. These descriptions have been submitted to the Ministry of Education and Science responsible for the creation of the language proficiency assessment system, in order to further develop a system of teaching, assessment, testing and certification of Lithuanian as a foreign language that meets European standards. The Language Commission continued the evaluation of the Lithuanian language used in higher education, which was started in the previous year. The master’s thesis and dissertation submitted to the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences competition for the best scientific works were evaluated. It was found that the language quality of the works submitted to the competition is not satisfactory: more than 80 percent of the works were assessed as not meeting the requirements of language correctness – they contain a lot of syntax, lexicon, punctuation errors. Daiva Vaišnienė, Chairperson of the Language Commission, speaking at the Conference of Rectors of Lithuanian Universities, emphasized that the skills of academic writing, the creation and use of terms, and functional literacy should be formed and consolidated by the specialty language subject, the teaching of which in higher education institutions is financed from the funds of the programme coordinated by the Language Commission. However, in recent years, there has been a rise in the number of study programmes that no longer include the subject of specialty language. In 2016, the Language Commission organized 12 seminars in 11 higher education institutions for teachers and doctoral students, editors of scientific journals, textbooks and other tools. 2 seminars were held for editors and translators of scientific journals, textbooks and other tools. The Subcommittee on Language Technologies, taking into account the task of the Information Society Development Programme 2014-2020 “Digital Agenda of the Republic of Lithuania” “to create and develop publicly available language and writing resources and services, to implement Lithuanian language technologies and digital products in ICT”, considered five project proposals submitted by research and study institutions and proposed to the Ministry of Communications of the Republic of Lithuania to include them in the list of projects funded by the programme. The Language Commission held an extended meeting of the Language Technology Subcommittee, attended by representatives of the Ministry of Transport, Infobalt Association and the above-mentioned JŪRATĖ PALIONYTĖ. Iš Valstybinės lietuvių kalbos komisijos veiklos | 6 BENDRINĖ KALBA 90 (2017) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 project proponents. Priority projects were discussed, the opportunity for IT developers to use the created tools and resources. It has been found that the objectives of both the public sector and business are the same in the development of e-public services: language tools and resources must be of good quality, freely available, reusable and capable of being developed into other products. The Language Commission is one of the partners of the European Language Resources Consortium (ELRC) initiated by the European Commission, which coordinates the development and use of multilingual translation tools for public administration purposes. On February 24, the Chancellery of the Government of the Republic of Lithuania, ELRC, Language Commission and the European Commission Representation organized a seminar for representatives of the state institutions of the Republic of Lithuania. The 6th conference of the Lithuanian Terminology Forum was held on 3 June. The conference was organized by the Language Commission together with the Lithuanian Language Department of the Directorate-General for Translation of the European Commission, the Lithuanian Language Unit of the Directorate-General for Translation of the General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union and the Chancellery of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania. In 2016, the Language Commission became a member of the Terminology Working Group of the European Association of State Translation Services (COTSOES). One of the activities of this international organization is the harmonization of terminology between the institutions of the European Union states. On the initiative of the Language Commission, the first Lithuanian Language Days were held from 16 February to 11 March. About 800 events were held in 53 municipalities and Lithuanian communities abroad to promote the Lithuanian language in Lithuania and abroad and to increase its prestige. On February 19, in the Hall of the Academy of Sciences, the awards of the Language Commission for significant work in the fields of Lithuanian terminology creation, the promotion of the scientific language and public language education were presented. The National Dictation Contest was held for the ninth time. The competition is organized by the Institute of Civic Thought, the Language Commission is one of its partners. Helped in preparing the 9th national student competition “Clean language – clean head”. It was attended by 16,000 people. Students of Lithuanian and foreign schools in grades 5-10. Received 28 September 2017 JŪRATĖ PALIONYTĖ Valstybinė lietuvių kalbos komisija Gedimino pr. 60, LT-01110 Vilnius [email protected]