Teisės terminijos tvarkyba Terminologijos komisijoje (1921–1926): Terminologijos komisijos 100-mečiui

225Terminology | 2021 | 28 doi.org/10.35321/term28-10 Management of legal terminology In the Terminology Commission (1921–1926): 100th anniversary of the Terminology Commission ALVYDAS UMBRASAS Institute of Lithuanian Language ORCID id: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5184-0056 ANNOTATION In 2021 it will be 100 years since the first Terminology Commission was established in Lithuania, which organized terminology in various fields, including law. The Lithuanian language, as the official language of the law, was only taking its first steps at that time. The list of legal terms discussed by the Terminology Commission and published in the press on several occasions contributed to the organization of the legal language. Although small, the list, which included examples of usage, helped to write court texts in Lithuanian and performed essentially a didactic function. KEY WORDS: legal terms, history of terminology, terminology management, Terminology Commission, anniversary. ABSTRACT 2021 marks the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the first Lithuanian Terminology Commission, which systematized the terminology of various fields, including law, in an organized manner. Lithuanian, as the official language of law, took only the first steps at that time. The list of legal terms considered by the Terminology Commission and published several times in the press contributed to the standardization of the legal language. Although small, the list, which included examples of usage, helped to write court texts in Lithuanian and performed a largely didactic function. KEYWORDS: legal terms, history of terminology, terminology ordering, Terminology Commission, anniversary. INTRODUCTION After the restoration of independence in 1918, the Lithuanian language was used for the first time for official purposes of the state, therefore, the management of legal terminology and legal language in general was a matter of particular importance, directly related to statehood. And the challenges of the legal 226 Alvydas Umbrasas Legal terminology management in the Terminology Commission (1921–1926): Terminologijos komisijos 100-mečiui language at that time were many, because after the state was restored, many Russian empire legislation acts were left in force – the young state simply had no other choice – and they began to gradually translate these legislation acts1 into the Lithuanian language, at the same time introducing the Lithuanian language into various spheres of life, where there was almost no official Lithuanian language before2. In the first year of independence, the Act on the Temporary Organization of Lithuanian Courts and their Work (LLTDS 1919) was drafted and promulgated in January 1919. However, this was not easy to implement because there was not only a lack of terms, but also of people who could handle legal matters in Lithuanian. The situation of statė, kad teismų darbas taip pat turi būti atliekamas valstybine lietuvių legal terminology in the period of the first independence has already been examined (Umbrasas 2001), other authors have also written about the formation of the Lithuanian legal language in that period, for example: Vytautas Andriulis (Andriulis 1998: 11–13), Mindaugas Maksimaitis (Maksimaitis 2007), Ieva Deviatnikovaitė (Deviatnikovaitė 2021), and the contemporaries themselves, for example: Petras Stravinskas (Stravinskas 1938), Boleslovas Masiulis (Masiulis 1954) and others. This article was motivated by the anniversary – on March 14, 1921, the then Prime Minister Kazys Grinius and the Minister of Education Kazys Bizauskas signed the Order on the Establishment of the Terminology Commission (TKSĮ 1921). It was published in the Government’s journal a couple of weeks later – on March 29. Thus, 100 years have passed since the formation of the first official commission, as stated in the decree, “for the determination and unification of terms in all fields of science and all matters of life practice”. The decree stipulates that the commission, which will operate under the Ministry of Education3, will consist of ten persons, and there will also be ten lower-level commissions in various fields, which will prepare material and submit it to the main commission for consideration. One of those commissions is the law science commission. It is planned that the Terminology Commission, through the Ministry of Education, will publish the material under consideration to the public, so that 1 Many translations were made essentially on a private initiative and did not have an official status. These were the basic codes in force in most of Lithuania (though the term code was not yet established at that time). At the same time, it should be borne in mind that in some parts of Lithuania (Užnemunė, Klaipėda region, Palanga parish and a small part of Zarasai district) other legislation was in force, the Lithuanian translations of which were not published at all (see Andriulis 1998: 22–27; Maksimaitis 2001: 168–176). 2 For example, there were many difficulties in introducing Lithuanian in the military field (see Ažubalis, Builienė, Kazlauskaitė-Markelienė 2010: 7–33). 3 According to Aldonas Pupkis, the Ministry of Education at that time was not only engaged in educational activities, but was also one of the most important centers of cultural and spiritual life in the whole country (Pupkis 2019 1: 6). The terminology commission in Lithuania was established following the example of an analogous commission in Latvia that had been operating since 1919 (see Kvašytė 2021). 227Terminology | 2021 | 28 After receiving feedback and finally agreed, the terms adopted by the Commission will be printed in the publication Educational Work and will become binding on state bodies. The Terminology Commission, established in March 1921, met for its first meeting on 21 April (TKPP 1921: 14). Seven of the ten members attended the first meeting: Kazimieras Būga, Aleksandras Dambrauskas (also known as Adomas Jakštas), Pranas Dovydaitis, Jonas Jablonskis, Pranas Mašiotas, Antanas Smetona and Antanas Vireliūnas. Of the invitees, Vladas Požėla, Juozas Tumas-Vaižgantas and Adomas Varnas did not come. As you can see, the Commission was composed of well-known public figures – linguists, lawyers, publicists, educators. Many of them had a wide range of activities – they were people with a wide range of interests. At the inaugural meeting, it was agreed that the first task of the Commission would be to “unify the official language of state institutions” (TKPP 1921: 1). It was also agreed to review and amend the terms of various scientific disciplines. As regards the working procedure, it is planned that at the first meeting, the terms for consideration by the Terminology Commission will be officially submitted in writing by the interested ministries through specially appointed persons. The representatives of the ministries that provided the dates will be invited to the meeting5. At that time, it was also provided that individual interested persons could also submit deadlines for consideration. In order to facilitate consideration of the material, it was requested that explanatory sentences be added to the terms. At the second meeting of the Terminology Commission, held three days later (24 April), this time with the participation of nine members (there was only V. Požėla, who, it seems, did not participate in the activities of the Commission at all), A. Smetona was confirmed as the permanent Chairman of the Commission and A. Vireliūnas as Secretary. As for the future work, it was agreed that decisions would be taken by a simple majority of votes and only when at least six members were present at the meeting, of whom at least one must be a philologist (i.e. J. Jablonskis or K. Būga; it is obvious that their role in the Commission had to be significant) and a rapporteur (TKPP 1921: 2). Terminologijos komisijos, veikusios iki 1926 m. vidurio, sudėtis, jos pirmininkas ir sekretorius ne kartą keitėsi, palaipsniui radosi nesutarimų, požiūrių skirtybių, ypač terminų lietuvinimo klausimu, – susidarė grupės, norinčios „viską lietuvinti, nieko svetimo nepaliekant“, „kai ką lietuvinti, bet svarbesnių mokslo ir šiaip labai įprastų žodžių nebraukyti“ ir „inter4 Čia ir toliau nurodomi Terminologijos komisijos posėdžio metai, o po dvitaškio – protokolo numeris. 5 In principle, this procedure exists even today in the meetings of the Terminology Subcommittee of the State Lithuanian Language Commission when discussing the terms submitted by state institutions in accordance with the procedure established by the Law on the Term Bank of the Republic of Lithuania and its implementing legislation (Umbrasas 2013: 96–97). 228 Alvydas Umbrasas Legal terminology management in the Terminology Commission (1921–1926): Terminologijos komisijos 100-mečiui national words not to be Lithuanianized” (Laurinaitis 1925b: 2–3), this hindered consistent and systematic work, prompted criticism6. In 1925, the Ministry of Education returned J. Jablonski to the Commission to lead it, but in mid-1926 he resigned from the post of chairman due to health problems. After his resignation, the Ministry of Education dismissed the Commission in general and ordered Kaunas University to form another commission, but there the activities of considering the terms never started. Working without J. Jablonskis and K. Buga (the latter died at the end of 1924), the Commission had deviated into excessive purism (Palionis 1995: 281). For more information about the activities of the Terminology Commission and the persons who worked in it, see In publications by Albina Auksoriūtė (Auksoriūtė 2011, 2021). The work of the Terminology Commission has covered various fields, but this article focuses only on the field of law and deals only with legal terms. The aim of the article is to use the descriptive analytical method to reveal the contribution of the Terminology Commission to the organization of legal terms at the beginning of independence, to show the nature and development of its terminological proposals. The article analyses not only public publications of Commission decisions, but also the unpublished minutes of Commission meetings. The activities of this and other terminology commissions of the time, which discussed legal terms, are reviewed (see Umbrasas 2010: 20–26), here the aim is to supplement the material of previous studies with both historical and terminological data based on sources. The order establishing the Terminology Commission stipulated that the work would be carried out in small commissions in various fields, but it is not clear from the minutes of the meetings of this Commission how these small commissions worked (and whether all of them worked7). On October 6, 1921 (TKPP 1921: 13), during the discussion of the budget for the next year, funds were allocated for the meetings of the commissions and it was agreed to set up commissions to prepare terms for mathematics, nature, geography, literature and law8. For more details on the disagreements in the Commission and the criticism of Lithuanianization, see Journal of Economics 2012 [1967]: 38–41. It should be added that those disagreements were not related to the consideration of legal terms in the Commission, they did not touch on the legal field. 7 The order establishing the Terminology Commission provided that the field commissions would be formed by interested state institutions (TKSĮ 1921), but, as Jonas Martynas Laurinaitis, who was not working in the Commission from the beginning, writes, “since the order did not clearly impose the duty on any state institution to take care of this matter, no one formed those commissions” (Laurinaitis 1925a: 5). It distinguishes only the Ministry of National Defence, which created the commission and the entire network of terminology work in the army. He also wrote a book on the history of agriculture, The Agricultural History of England (1927). Despite the lack of commissions, the Terminology Commission discussed the lists of terms, and the working groups or individuals who prepared them could be compared to commissions. 8 These were apparently the first areas to be addressed, even though “systematically prepared drafts have not yet been submitted to the Commission” by the summer (TKPP 1921: 10). 229Terminologija | 2021 | The composition of the 28 missionaries is provided, but about the commission on the terms of rights, as it was called at the time, it is only said that it was entrusted to A. Smetona. By the way, A. Smetona had already raised the question at the meeting on June 9 that it was necessary to determine the equivalents of some Russian words important for journalism (and now it is clear that also for administrative law). It was then agreed that the Russian power in Lithuanian language corresponds to power, government – vyriausybė, and начальство – vyresnybė (TKPP 1921: 10). Just over a month after the decision to set up the Commission on Legal Terms was taken – on 11 November – the Terminology Commission considered (TKPP 1921: 18) a small list of legal terms with examples of use (the minutes contain a little more than two pages of small manuscript text; see Figure 1). In addition to the members of the Terminology Commission, the meeting was also attended by Antanas Kriščiukaitis, the drafter of the list and the Chairman of the Supreme Tribunal, i.e. the Supreme Court of Lithuania at the time. In the same month (at the sitting of 26 November) it was decided to publish in the newspaper Lietuva the terms of the law already discussed (TKPP 1921: 21), but this was not immediately published, because another section of the same law was discussed at the sitting of 1 December (TKPP 1921: 22). The beginning of the protocol No. 18 of the Terminology Commission of 11 November 1921 230 Alvydas Umbrasas Legal Terminology Management in the Terminology Commission (1921–1926): Terminologijos komisijos 100-mečiui part of the list of terms, also with examples of usage (the minutes contain one and a quarter pages of small manuscript text; see Figure 2). It is true that in the minutes of the first meeting Lithuanian terms are provided with Russian equivalents, and in the minutes of the second meeting, on the contrary, Russian terms with Lithuanian equivalents (i.e. both terms and layout are different). As written in the minutes of the second hearing of the legal terms (December 1), those terms were “for the purposes of the court”. Basically, this reflects the needs of the legal terms of the time, and the compiler of the list, A. Kriščiukaitis, according to his field of activity, was interested in managing precisely the terms relevant to the court. First of all, it is clear from both protocols that the intention was to agree on the names of the persons necessary in the court proceedings, e.g.: party (сторона (въ судѣ бѣлѣ9), тяжущiйся), plaintiff (истецъ, жалобщикъ), witness (свидѣтель), accuser (обвинитель), defendant (обвиняемый), defendant (подсудимый). Some terms are given with synonyms, e.g. respondent, complainant, responded to (отвѣтчикъ). The minutes of the first meeting record the material already agreed, while the minutes of the second meeting highlight the section on the Commission's proposals. It shows that most of the terms presented for consideration were accepted, a relatively small number of terms were changed during the hearing, for example, instead of the form with the prefix applicant, it was agreed to present the applicant (заявитель), synonyms were also added, for example, the Commission proposed civil, property plaintiff (гражданскiй истецъ), although in the original version there was only a civil plaintiff, the synonym third party was added next to the third party in the case (третье лицо въ дѣлѣ). The examples of use, according to the protocol, were changed very little during the consideration, only one failed example was significantly reformulated: it was – the Complainant contributed to the complaint price of 1000 r. and asked for that amount to secure the complaint by attaching the defendant’s movable property; amended – the Complainant assessed his claim at 1000 r. and requested that the claim be secured by attachment (or: by attachment) of the defendant’s movable property, property. At a meeting held in the middle of December (15th) (TKPP 1921: 24), in which A. Kriščiukaitis also participated, it is recorded that “the legal terms have been corrected” (no details are given) and it is decided to publish them. A week later (December 23) the draft of terms appears in the newspaper Lietuva, as paranoid, confusing both terms and relevant word combinations, as well as sentence examples (see Figure 3). The draft list had a total of 68 numbered 9 There should be a comma between the words, but there is no comma in the minutes. In the whole article, the examples are not corrected, they are taken from the sources (only the Lithuanian term is written first, when the first term in the protocol was Russian). šyta, „viešajai mėnesio laiko kritikai“ (TTP). Sąrašas paskelbtas gana cha- 231Terminology | 2021 | 28 Figure 2. The first page of Protocol No. 22 of the Terminology Commission of 1 December 1921 232 Alvydas Umbrasas Legal terminology management in the Terminology Commission (1921–1926): Terminologijos komisijos 100-mečiui units, but some of them are compounds; the first 24 units are material from the first reading of the meeting, from the 25th unit – from the second meeting (the order is the same as in the minutes). The published draft is essentially identical with the material of the protocols (there are only a few minor differences), except for the absence of sentence examples in the newspaper and the Russian equivalents of some compounds (although there were corresponding ones in the protocols). At the end of the list, the Terminology Commission was asked to send comments and informed that the final edited terms would be published in the newspaper Švietimo darbas after a month. As can be seen from the subsequent minutes, there were responses – the protocol of 2 February 1922 states that “in the Commission received from pl. Bulotos and pil. "Resolutions of the General Assembly of the United Nations" (PDF) (1922). A. Kriščiukaitis is entrusted to review them and make a report at the next meeting. Figure 3. Draft of legal terms published in the newspaper Lietuva on 23 December 1921 (beginning) 233Terminology | 2021 | 28 In the minutes of the meeting held a week later (February 9), it is written that "Kriščiukaitis reports the Commission's attitudes about pil. Bulotos and pil. General statements in the field of legal terms" (TKPP 1922: 32) (from this it can be inferred that A. Kriščiukaitis was a member of the Commission on Legal Terms). Taking into account the suggestions received, the Commission decides to add some data to the list (to include the terms initial complaint (первоначальный иск), evidence, testimony (свидѣтелство, показанiе), to add the compound terminate, suspend the case (прекратить дѣло)), and instead of evidence (улика) to provide inculpation (in the original draft there was no inculpation, this word was added next to evidence, inculpation at the meeting of the Commission itself on December 1). In March (9) the revised list of legal terms was discussed again and it was decided to publish the final list in the newspapers Lietuva and Švietimo darbas. The minutes of the meeting state that “[t]he explanatory text in Russian was decided to be written in the old (non-Bolshevik) Russian spelling” (TKPP 1922: 36) (in the first draft published in Lithuania, Russian words were generally transliterated into Latin characters). The terms appeared in the newspaper Lietuva the same month (TT1), and in the newspaper Švietimo darbas – somewhat later, in July (TTR1). In 1922, the first issue of the journal Tiesa (Right) also included this list (TT2). Compared with the first draft published in Lithuania in December 1921, the data were now presented somewhat more orderly, the list was reorganized into two parts, in which terms and examples were separated. The first part contains 46 numbered terms or combinations of words of terminological nature (with one number not necessarily one term was provided, i.e. the real number of terms was higher), and the second part – 22 numbered examples of sentence-like usage (with various variants). Compared to the draft, the terms have not changed much. In addition to the above-mentioned changes recorded in the minutes, there was, for example, a defendant, a plaintiff, and in the project there was only a defendant, a complainant, respectively. There was an action with the synonym ieškas, and in the project there was only a complaint in this sense. The third person proposed by the Commission itself as a third party in the case was removed, as well as the unsuccessful self-inculpation that had been added by the Commission itself as a non-public (private) inculpation. In addition to apeliacinis skundas, kasacinis skundas, the variants apeliacijos skundas, kasacijos skundas were added (these variants were already in the protocol of 1 December 1921 (TKPP 1921: 22), only somehow omitted in the published draft). What legal matters were concerned with the first Terminology Commission? The approved list begins with the types of cases: case, court case (cудебное дѣло), criminal case (уголовное дѣло), civil case (гражданское дѣло). As already mentioned,