APŽVALGOS, INFORMACIJA

FROM THE ACTIVITIES OF THE STATE COMMISSION OF THE LITHUANIAN LANGUAGE

(Prepared on the basis of the 2012 report of the Language Commission)

LANGUAGE PROGRAMMES

The main objectives and tasks of the Language Commission are implemented through language programmes. In 2012, the Programme for the Standardization, Use, Development and Dissemination of the State Language for 2006–2015 continued, as did the 2011–2020 Programme for Research into the Functioning and Change of Standard Lithuanian, Dialects and Other Language Varieties, and the programme “Legal and Administrative Supervision of the State Language”.

Under the 2006–2015 Programme for the Standardization, Use, Development and Dissemination of the State Language, the dictionary World Place Names. Asia (Afghanistan–United Arab Emirates) was published; the electronic tool Educational Accentuation Program. A Practical Accentuation Trainer (UAB “Šviesa”) was released; a translation of Fridrichas Kuršaitis’s Grammar of the Lithuanian Language (Grammatik der littauischen Sprache, 1876) was prepared; and work began on creating an online database for the dictionary World Place Names. Europe.

In 2012, 1,258 Lithuanian studies publications in 28 titles were purchased and donated free of charge to public libraries at universities and colleges, in counties, and to libraries of national importance and municipal public libraries.

Support continued for teaching professional language in higher education institutions, scientific research projects, and state-language courses for residents of Lithuania who speak other languages. Support was also provided for preparing Lithuanian-language summaries of the daily news broadcasts of Visaginas Community Television’s “Russkaja volna,” and for preparing and publishing thematic pages in the journal Gimtąją kalbą entitled “The Functioning and Change of Standard Lithuanian. Dissemination of Language Standards.”

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Under the 2011–2020 Programme for Research into the Functioning and Change of Standard Lithuanian, Dialects and Other Language Varieties, research into the language of European Union documents and changes in dialect vocabulary and phonetics was completed in 2012. Work was also completed on expanding the database of the Dialect Recordings Archive of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language’s Department of the History of the Lithuanian Language and Dialectology. Research continued into emigrant language and young people’s accentuation tendencies, and a study was launched on the relationship between Lithuanian syntax rules and recommendations and current usage.

LEGAL PROTECTION OF THE STATE LANGUAGE

Amendments to the draft of the new version of the Law of the Republic of Lithuania on the State Language were submitted to the Seimas Committee on Education, Science and Culture.

An opinion was submitted to the Seimas Committee on Legal Affairs and Law Enforcement regarding the draft law of the Republic of Lithuania “On the ratification of the Decision 2011/199/EU of the European Council of 25 March 2011 amending Article 136 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union with regard to a stability mechanism for Member States whose currency is the euro.” The opinion states that in Lithuanian only the noun euras, inflected according to Lithuanian-language rules, may be used; it cannot have the nominative form euro, which is uncharacteristic of Lithuanian, even though that form is used in the Treaty on European Union. The law adopted by the Seimas established a compromise option: alongside the currency name euras, the form euro is indicated in parentheses.

Approval was given to the draft resolution of the Government of the Republic of Lithuania “On amending Resolution No. 1407 of the Government of the Republic of Lithuania of 12 November 2003 ‘On the Establishment of the Register of Legal Entities and Approval of the Regulations of the Register of Legal Entities’” (Resolution No. 1452 was adopted on 5 December 2012). Under point 76¹ of the amended Regulations of the Register of Legal Entities, the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language provides the State Enterprise Centre of Registers with consultations on whether the names of legal entities comply with the norms of standard Lithuanian.

An appeal was made to the State Non-Food Products Inspectorate under the Ministry of Economy concerning the annex to the recommendations on applying the concept of minor labelling deficiencies when supervising the activities of economic operators, approved by an order of the Inspectorate’s head—the List of Minor Labelling Discrepancies, in which grammatical errors on product labels are classified as minor matters. Letters were also sent to the State Food and Veterinary Service and the State Plant Protection Service—

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under the Ministry of Agriculture, which, together with the State Non-Food Products Inspectorate, signed a memorandum on minor labelling deficiencies. The Commission of the Lithuanian Language’s opinion was taken into account, and the provision classifying grammatical errors as minor matters was removed from the List of Minor Labelling Discrepancies.

IMPLEMENTATION OF THE LAW OF THE REPUBLIC OF LITHUANIA ON THE BANK OF TERMS

Over the course of the year, 1,033 articles on terms approved for use in legal acts or proposed for use in draft legal acts were published in the Bank of Terms of the Republic of Lithuania (http://terminai.vlkk.lt).

In addition to terms from legal acts, about 500 term articles from other sources were published: S. Maskeliūnas’s Glossary of Information Technology Terms (online edition), the NATO terminology standard AAP-35 submitted by the Ministry of National Defence, Glossary of NATO Asset Tracking Terms, and the recommendations “On Lithuanian Names of Ornamental Plants (A–B),” approved by Commission of the Lithuanian Language Protocol Resolution No. PN-5:

At the end of the year, the Bank of Terms contained a total of 206,088 term articles: 8,680 approved, 196,273 recommended, and 1,135 not recommended.

STANDARDIZATION AND EXPERT ACTIVITIES

In 2012, the Language Commission held 7 meetings and its subcommissions held 90 meetings. During the year, approximately 300 expert opinions were prepared on personal names, place names, names of institutions, interpretation of concepts, and other matters.

Terminology. At meetings of the Terminology Subcommission, 1,289 terminology entries from legal acts and their drafts, 6 manuscripts of dictionaries of new terms and additions to 1 dictionary, and 4 draft terminology standards were reviewed; guidelines for forming Lithuanian zoological nomenclature names were discussed. Work began on reviewing 2 dictionary manuscripts, one of which is a dictionary being prepared by the Office of the Seimas for Lithuania’s Presidency of the Council of the EU (terms and phrases from the Statute of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania).

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At meetings of the Language Commission, 1,033 terminology entries were approved. These were terms from legal acts (and their drafts) in areas overseen by state institutions (finance, public security, culture, law, the economy, transport, education and science, communications, agriculture, fisheries and food, energy, the environment, health, pharmaceuticals, defence, etc.).

The Language Commission adopted Protocol Resolution No. PN-5 “On the Recommendation ‘On Lithuanian Names of Ornamental Plants (A–B)’” (605 names). In accordance with Resolution No. 998 of the Government of the Republic of Lithuania of 7 July 2010 “On the Coordination of the Lithuanian Terminology of Draft European Union Legal Acts” (Žin., 2010, No. 84–4417), the coordination of the Lithuanian terminology of draft legal acts submitted by European Union institutions with Lithuanian state institutions was carried out on a one-stop-shop basis.

Comments and recommendations on the formation and spelling of electoral district names were submitted to the Central Electoral Commission.

Almost 600 consultations on terminology and the replacement of foreign words were provided by email and telephone. Translators, editors and terminologists from European Union institutions were consulted, as well as civil servants from Lithuanian institutions, employees of private institutions and other interested parties.

Personal names and place names. Two resolutions and two protocol resolutions (recommendations) were adopted concerning the names of countries, their capitals and their inhabitants, as well as the names of Georgia’s administrative regions; a protocol resolution was also adopted on the formation and spelling of the names of eldership subdivisions.

The Onomastics Subcommission considered issues concerning Part II of the dictionary being prepared on behalf of the Language Commission, World Place Names. Asia.

Lexicon. The Dictionary Subcommission considered the manuscript of the revised and expanded edition of the booklet Language Advice, Lexicon: Use of Borrowings, and submitted it to the Language Commission for consideration. The Subcommission decided to propose that the Language Commission remove from the Dictionary Errors section of the List of Major Language Errors unacceptable foreign words and their derivatives, as well as newly emerging foreign words that should not be used, and establish and disseminate lexical standards through recommendations of the Language Commission.

The List of Equivalents for Foreign Words was supplemented with 49 words by means of a protocol resolution.

Grammar, spelling and punctuation. At a meeting of the Grammar Subcommission, the names of the parliaments of European Union member states were considered at the request of the Office of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania. At meetings of the temporary “Translation Guide” Subcommission, the Spelling section, template phrases and problematic issues of the European Union Institutions Translation Guide were considered.

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Textbook evaluation. The Subcommittee for Textbook Evaluation considered 42 general education textbook manuscripts, comprising 60 books in total (some textbooks consist of several parts). The mark confirming correct language use was awarded immediately to 36 books; the others were returned to publishers for revision.

In 2012, no textbooks were rejected outright (that is, failed to meet the language-correctness requirements for a third time); the language of the textbooks submitted to the Language Commission for evaluation had improved considerably.

OTHER ACTIVITIES

About 36,400 language consultations were provided during the year, including 13,100 online and about 23,300 by telephone. In 2012, the Language Consultation Bank was supplemented with 848 new entries (it now contains over 10,000 headwords).

At the beginning of the year, the subsite vardai.vlkk.lt was opened to the public. It provides recommendations on the standard usage of names of Lithuanian citizens (83,000 names have been published, including 4,691 single-component names); publishes scholarly articles and links to media articles on personal names; provides a list of legal acts governing the use of personal names; and presents interesting statistics.

A new Subcommittee for Language Technologies was established at a meeting of the Language Commission. It will coordinate the integration of the Lithuanian language into information technologies, prepare a Strategy for Lithuanian Language Technologies, and identify measures to promote the development of the Lithuanian language in the digital environment.

On the basis of a letter from the Lithuanian Computer Society, the State Language Inspectorate and the Lithuanian Communications Regulatory Authority, as well as mobile service companies, were contacted. They were reminded of their obligation to ensure that short messages (SMS) sent to service recipients within the territory of Lithuania are prepared and sent using the Lithuanian alphabet.

The Language Inspectorate was asked to check how personal names are written on debit and credit cards issued by all banks operating in Lithuania, and to ensure that the names and surnames of Lithuanian citizens are written on them using Lithuanian letters.

At the suggestion of the Language Commission, on December 12, 2012, the Education, Science and Culture Committee of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania considered the results of the trial Lithuanian language examination and the declining literacy levels among schoolchildren; an analysis of the trial examination results was presented. The Committee

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[It] tasked the Ministry of Education and Science with preparing proposals on how to improve pupils’ literacy.

All Lithuanian universities and non-university higher education institutions were asked to provide information on the teaching of language for specific purposes, the assessment of students’ general Lithuanian-language proficiency, and the evaluation of the linguistic correctness of final theses. The information received was considered at a meeting of the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language, and it was decided to initiate a review of descriptions of language-for-specific-purposes courses and an analysis of the linguistic correctness of final theses.

Together with other institutions, a number of conferences, meetings, and other events were organized, including the conference “Language, Culture and Globalization,” held at the Seimas on June 4; the second conference of the Terminology Forum of the institutions and bodies of the European Union and the Republic of Lithuania, held on June 8 (together with the Lithuanian Language Department of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Translation and the Office of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania); and the fifth national competition “Clean Language – Clear Mind,” in which more than 8,500 pupils in grades 6–10 from all over Lithuania tested their knowledge of Lithuanian using information technologies.

Received 2013 11 26

JŪRATĖ PALIONYTĖ

State Commission of the Lithuanian Language

Gedimino Ave. 60, LT-01110 Vilnius

[email protected]

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