Uncovering the hidden value of forgotten Slovak terminological data by Jana Levická and Miroslav Zumrík

1970

Jana Levická and Miroslav Zumrík, from the Ľudovít Štúr Institute of Linguistics, Slovak Academy of Sciences, participated at the VIII European Terminology Summit giving a presentation entitled ‘Uncovering the hidden value of forgotten Slovak terminological data‘. Down below you will find a text sumarizing their speech, with the highlights of Slovak terminology development.

Here you can also access to the slides of the presentation.

 

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Slovak contribution focused mainly on the revision of the 60-year old terminology activities and theory especially in the framework of the ongoing project aiming at gathering, evaluation and analysis of older terminological works.

The presentation opened with a simplified picture of the development of the Slovak language in the multi-lingual Austro-Hungarian Empire in the 18th century. The establishment of the standard Slovak based on the Central Slovak dialect in 1844 triggered the first systematic efforts in the domain of terminological work. Besides textbooks, newly adopted standard language started to be used in several journals and newspapers which published the first articles discussing Slovak scientific terminology. During this period, several terminology glossaries were compiled that focused e. g. on mathematics, logics, geometry, linguistics and general scientific terminology. However, some of them remained in manuscripts. Naturally, terminology reflected the development of newly standardised Slovak which needed time to stabilize and overcome the start-up pains. It is no wonder that written sources feature a great amount of synonymy.

In 1918 Slovakia became a part of newly established Czechoslovak Republic and Slovak language was to be used in all walks of life. However, this process was slowed down by the political concept of Czechoslovakism, which was partly reflected by contemporary linguistics that was not favourable to Slovak as a separate standard language. However, this period saw the publishing of several terminological dictionaries. The concept of Czechoslovakism influenced also the terminology development in Slovak as the everyday practice as well as some linguists and domain specialists promoted the principle that Slovak terminology should not differ unnecessarily from the Czech one.

After the restoration of the Czechoslovak Republic and with the changed political status of Slovaks testified by the post-war Czechoslovak Constitution it was high time to start systematic terminology work. Thanks to the creation of a specialised terminology department at the Institute of Linguistics in the Slovak Academy of Sciences and Arts the 1950s represent a terminological boom. Already in 1953 members of this department participated in as many as 25 terminology commissions. Almost in no time, the terminology department became the central body for terminology planning and regulation in Slovakia. It organised terminology work and preserved and archived terminology outputs and cooperated with the Standardisation Office. In order to present their terminology outputs, the Institute started to publish in 1953 the monthly scholarly journal Slovenské odborné názvoslovie, which was in 1962 replaced by a new terminology journal entitled Československý terminologický časopis. The members of the department were also involved in counselling activities, especially as editors of Slovak textbooks but also as authors of popular scientific texts appearing in scholarly journals as well as in newspapers. Already in 1953 eight terminological dictionaries were published and by 1965 the terminological department contributed to the compilation and publishing of as many as 30 dictionaries.

The second part of the presentation provided an outline as well as preliminary results of the project dealing with one of the key figures of Slovak terminology – Ján Horecký (1920–2006). The project aims at digitalizing Horecký’s both major and minor terminological works (more than 1400 in total), the latter ones being spread in various journals throughout the second half of the 20th century and thus not so easily accessible to readers and researchers. After giving basic information about Horecký’s wide scope of interest (ranging from the terminology of engineering, agriculture, natural sciences, humanities, linguistics, chess, bee-keeping, to name just a few) and fields of terminological activities, the presentation dealt with the description of the creation of the database, typology of the articles (namely terminological notes, reviews, reports, theoretical papers, papers on state-of-the-art of Slovak terminology in various fields), recurrent themes and features in Horecký’s terminological papers, and, last but not least, future work in the project. At the very end, the presenters briefly showed the beta version of the terminology portal of the Ľudovít Štúr Institute of Linguistics, a web page offering not only searchable library of Horecký’s papers, but also the Slovak terminology database (covering some 16 domains) and various terminological and linguistic resources at one place (http://terminologickyportal.sk).

 

References

  • Bartl, J. et al. (2002), Slovak History. Chronology and Lexicon. Wauconda/Bratislava, 350 p.
  • Horecký, J. (1950), Činnosť terminologického oddelenia pri Jazykovednom ústave SAVU. In: „Slovo a tvar” 4, 79–80.
  • Horecký, J. (1954), Organizácia terminologickej práce na Slovensku. In: „Sovětská jazykověda“ 4, 193–195.
  • Horecký, J. (1956), Základy slovenskej terminológie  názvoslovie. Vydavateľstvo Slovenskej akadémie vied. Bratislava.
  • Horecký, J. (1960), Pätnásť rokov slovenskej terminológie. In: „Slovenská reč“ 25, 236–241.
  • Horecký, J. (1962), Nový terminologický časopis. (Československý terminologický časopis, 1, 1962.). In: „Slovenská reč“ 27, 185–186.
  • Horecký, J. (1974), Obsah a forma termínu. In: „Kultúra slova“, vol 8., n. 10, 321–324.
  • Masár, I. (1989), Pomocný materiál k metodike ustaľovania termínov. In: „Kultúra slova” 23, 132–144.
  • Masár, I. (1991), Príručka slovenskej terminológie. Bratislava, 192 p.
  • Žigo, P./ R. Krajčovič (2002), Dejiny spisovnej slovenčiny. 1st ed. Bratislava, 249 p.