New Approaches in Contemporary Terminological Dictionaries

Abstract

The creation and preparation of relevant terminological dictionaries is strongly linked to major changes in our social-political or economic spheres since new attitudes in scientific fields appear and lexicographical approaches and the dominant language change as well.

The creation and elaboration of a multifield terminological dictionaries (as a sub-branch of linguistics) to the Sovietization process in Georgia was directly related. In the Soviet period, terminological work was carried out in a new way. In particular, the question of the issues of standardization and unification was raised, which meant the organization's terms designating scientific concepts and the necessity of their regular use in every field of knowledge. This in itself promoted the prioritization of the Russian language in scientific societies. Every scientific notion and term entered by way of the Russian language and became established in the scientific or technical society. “Concept revealing, i.e., the compilation of a 'logical scheme' for the concepts in a particular field was developed for the Russian reality” (R. Ghambashidze). Consequently, terminological work was developed basically by way of translation. In that time, dictionaries compiled for a field were mainly bilingual; they were basically Russian-Georgian dictionaries.

Georgia’s obtaining of independence in the 1990s brought new challenges to the area of terminological work. The major changes that came about affected the dictionary compiling process as well. First of all, it should be mentioned that the management system coordinating the terminological working process collapsed. This contributed to the uncontrolled spreading of new terms and the establishment of several terms for a single term in a specific field.

Even though the role of English as an international language has increased, specialists in different fields still predominantly use the Russian equivalents of terms, as the Russian influence on scientific fields remains strong. Many collaborative projects with the participation of Russian-speaking specialists are also occurring more frequently. Therefore, the preparation of trilingual Russian-English-Georgian and English-Russian-Georgian dictionaries is starting with intensity (for instance, the English-Russian-Georgian Energy Engineering Dictionary, R. Kandelaki, 2000; Terminology of Trade Economy and Commodity Science, the Russian-Georgian part, 2003; Trilingual Dictionary of Water Recourses Management, I. Kruashvili, K. Bziava, 2003; G. Nadirashvili, R. Krichinashvili; English-Russian-Georgian Oil and Gas Dictionary, R. Kandelaki, 2005, etc.).

The rapid spread of information and the unprecedented development of informational technologies have created a preference for English terms. To overcome the linguistic barrier, it is necessary to create innovative standards for the English-Georgian terminological dictionaries for the translation of many new terms depicting the new social-political, economic and cultural life into Georgian. (The English-Georgian Dictionary of Public Administration, L. Dolakidze, 2000; The Georgian-English and English-Georgian Polygraphic Publishing Dictionary, Diogene Publishers, 2003; English-Georgian Obstetric and Gynecological Dictionary, A. Bakradze, 2009).

The foundation of new fields in science and the establishment of novel concepts in civil or scientific societies are a big deal for specialists who have to translate these terms from other languages into Georgian (especially for such fields as Healthcare Management or Marketing). This is a complex problem that contains a need for compiling lexicons as translation or multifield explanatory dictionaries (for instance, The English-Georgian Healthcare Management Explanatory Dictionary, O. Vasadze, T. Djanelidze, L. Kobaladze, 2002; The English-Russian-Georgian Explanatory Dictionary of Aviation, S. Tepnadze, 2003; The English-Georgian Dictionary of Marketing Terms, the Marketing Association of Georgia, 2005).

Since the 21st century, new approaches and tendencies have been established at the Department of Scientific Terminology. Along with the traditionally compiled dictionaries, there were also created English-Georgian and multilingual dictionaries, as well as explanatory dictionaries for the new fields and innovative terminological standards.

In this paper, we discuss the innovations related to the multilingual and explanatory dictionaries for specific fields prepared at the Department of Scientific Terminology at the turn of the 21st century. We also summarize the difficulties we faced while working on the dictionaries.