Europos Komisijos projektas „EUROTERMBANK“

EUROPEAN COMMISSION PROJECT EUROTERMBANK (Collection of European terminology resources in cooperation with terminology institutions) Since the beginning of 2005, the Institute of Lithuanian Language has been a partner in the European Commission project Euro TermBank (Collection of European terminology resources in cooperation with terminology institutions). The project involves partners from seven European Union countries — five new members: Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Lithuania and Hungary, and two old members: Denmark and Germany. The project coordinator is Tilde (Latvia) — a Baltic IT company specializing in language technology, localization and web projects. Project partners: e Cologne University of Applied Sciences Institute of Information Management (Germany) — a research institute whose main objective is to develop, implement and coordinate research and development projects in information management. e The Centre for Language Technology at the University of Copenhagen (Denmark) is a research institute in Denmark that conducts and promotes research and commercial development in the field of language technology and computational linguistics. e Terminology Commission of the Latvian Academy of Sciences. This commission coordinates and takes care of the development and harmonization of Latvian terminology at the national level, taking into account the requirements of international terminology harmonization. The Terminology Commission and its 25 subcommissions carry out expert reviews of terms and their definitions and approve the submitted terms. e MorphoLogic (Hungary) — one of the leading Hungarian companies in the field of linguistic information processing. This company offers a large number of language analysis tools and has more than ten years of experience in applied linguistics and textbook preparation. e Department of Estonian and Finno-Ugric Linguistics, University of Tartu (Estonia). This unit of the University of Tartu conducts research in several fields: terminology, textbook, computer linguistics, lexicography and lexicology, morphology, syntax, semantics, historical linguistics, phonology, etc. e Information Processing Centre (Poland) — an independent governmental research organization that collects and presents scientific and technological information in Poland. The main objective of this centre is to facilitate quick access to up-to-date scientific information in Poland. e Lithuanian Language Institute. The project aims to harmonize and unify terminology work in the new EU member states, taking over the experience of terminology networks in other EU countries. The project is directly targeted at Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, but it is also open to other European Union countries, as well as to interested parties and organisations outside the European Union. It enables to exchange term data with national and European Union term databases, to establish mutual cooperation, to apply uniform methodology and standards, to create and implement data exchange mechanism and procedures. The aim is to assess the terminology level and best practices in the Baltic region and the European Union, to provide recommendations for terminology harmonization based on the practices of those countries and the expert experience. The main objectives of the EuroTermBank project are: 169 1.Development and preparation of methodology to harmonize the process of terminology development in the new EU countries and guarantee the adaptability of its sources. 2. establishing a network of institutions involved in terminology work (source producers and database owners) at national and international level to facilitate the dissemination, harmonisation and dissemination of terms. 3.The creation and development of the online term bank with easy and simple access to the term sources. 4. consolidation of the content of different sources and terminology owners for the creation of national term bases and their further integration into the EuroTermBank database or the creation of appropriate interfaces. 5. Ensuring the continuity of project results. An online term bank of the partner countries will be created, which will operate on a dual principle: as a central database and as an interface or networking link with other national or international term banks and resources. During the project paper dictionaries will be digitized, about 100 000 terms are planned to be digitized. Contacts and cooperation have already been established with some international organisations and term banks, while others are expected to be established. A number of organizations, term banks and projects could be mentioned: e TERMIUM - Canadian term bank, one of the largest term banks in the world. e JATE-Interactive Terminology for Europe was launched in 170 + INFOTERM -—The International Terminology Information Centre, an international non-profit association established in 1971 by an agreement between the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the Austrian Institute of Standards (ON). Its main objectives are: to be a cooperation framework between international, regional and national terminology organisations and institutions that work in terminology; collect information on terminology activities and their results; advise various organisations on the multilingual aspects of specialized information and documentation, the application of harmonised principles and methods, as well as the organisation of model terminology work and other terminology activities; to support and promote cooperation in the field of terminology, with a view to accelerating the development of the Multilingual and Multidisciplinary Terminology Infrastructure. The EuroTermBank project is participated by INFOTERM Council President Prof. Klaus Dirk Schmitz, who is the Director of the Institute of Information Management. Furthermore, the project is supported by Dr. Christian Galinski, General Manager of INFOTERM (LKI is a member of INFOTERM). e NORDTERM - The Norwegian network of terminology centres with the Nordterm-Termbank. e FINNISH TERMINOLOGY CENTRE is an independent non-profit association whose main activities include terminology projects, terminology services and the TEPA term bank. TEPA is a multilingual technical terminology database with about 100,000 term articles. e EURODICAUTOM The European Commission's multilingual terminology database. 1999 with the main objective of creating a terminology management infrastructure for the Translation Centre of the European Union and the decentralised EU agencies. A common database of EU law terminology has been created (containing about 30 000 Lithuanian terms). The EuroTermBank project partners and experts are faced with various tasks: identifying the needs of users, registering the terminology resources, selecting the content. content prioritization, etc. Content prioritization and selection will be done by project experts. Priority selection criteria include: 171 adequacy of timelines for implementing EU law; the needs of local and international authorities; the needs of consumers; quality of databases, etc. The final criteria will be determined after the methodology is submitted. The EuroTermBank project is supported by the European Commission’s eContent Programme (European Digital Content on the World Wide Web). This program has been running since 2001. There are three main activities of this programme: (a) promoting the consumption of and improving access to public information, (b) increasing the production of content in a multilingual and multicultural environment, (c) increasing the dynamism of the market for electronic content. The main objectives of the project related to the Electronic Content Programme are: 1. Pooling linguistic resources with a special focus on multilingual terminology. 2. to provide content providers and language service providers with a marketplace and convenient access to digitised terminology. An important aspect of the project is that the main focus is on the languages of the five new European Union member countries — Estonian, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian and Polish. The inclusion of the languages of the new Member States in the projects of the Digital Content Programme is one of the main objectives of this programme. The project also involves experts from various fields, representing Western Europe and the new EU member states. An important part of the activities is related to the transfer of knowledge and experience. Since the EuroTermBank project is a demonstration project, the information transfer process will be directed to other Eastern European countries, popularizing and disseminating the results achieved by the project. During 2005, the first year of the EurofermBank project, a lot of work has already been done. Two councils have been established: the Methodology Advisory Council and the Cooperation Council. The Methodology Advisory Council is the organizational body of the project, which resolves issues related to the presentation and creation of the methodology, discusses questions of the content of the terminology resources, evaluates the results of the work carried out. The Methodology Advisory Board consists of at least one qualified expert from each partner country and is chaired by Lina Henriksen from the Language Technology Centre at the University of Copenhagen. The Cooperation Council was formed for broader cooperation between various terminology organizations in the partner countries in order to 172 disseminate working practices and recommended methodologies, obtain more detailed information about terminology resources, databases, their structure, data exchange possibilities, etc. Eight representatives from five countries were invited to the Cooperation Council: from Poland — Aniela Topulas, Director of the Translation Unit of the Committee for European Integration; Danuta Kierzkowska, President of the Polish Society of Translators in Economics, Law and Law Enforcement, Tomasz Borkowski, terminologist at the Faculty of Applied Linguistics of the University of Warsaw; from Latvia — Eduards Cauna, member of the Terminology Commission, and Prof. Juris Borzovs, Chairman of the Information Technology Subcommission of the Terminology Commission; from Austria —- INFOTERM General Director Dr. Christian Galinski, from Estonia —Arvi Tavastas, President of the Estonian Society of Terminology and Nijolė Dudlauskienė, Head of the Standardization Division of the Lithuanian Standardization Department. During this year, the terminology resources of Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Lithuania and Hungary were described, their analysis was made, a user survey was conducted and their needs were assessed, a description of the database structure was prepared, a bank system program and the project recommended methodology were developed. The peculiarities of copyright in all countries have been analyzed, contracts have been prepared, which will be concluded with the owners of terminology resources. The analysis and compatibility of the already submitted sources is being carried out, the Euro TermBank project website (address — www.eurotermbank.com) has been prepared, which contains the project presentation and the most important documents. Albina AUKSORIŪTĖ Received 2005-12-09 Lithuanian Language Institute P. Vileišio g. 5, LT-10308 Vilnius, Lithuania E-mail: albinaa@- ]ki.lt 173