The Principles of Terminology Development and Their Legitimization Procedure in 1918-1923 (According to Archival Materials)

Abstract

The National Archive of Georgia preserves the materials of the fund of the People’s Commissariat of Education, which describes the provisions of the terms developed by the commissions under the State Scientific Board and various stakeholders in 1918-1923, the list of individual scientific-technical terms and the review processes for the acceptable forms of common literary Georgian.

"As yet In 1918, when the process of the nationalization of the institutions was initiated, teachers’ summer courses were organized in Tiflis to prepare teachers for teaching every subject in Georgian. Then, teachers' commissions for each field were established, and materials were provided for the development of the terms. Soon after this, textbooks, with different authors, were created for various subjects and published as well. In these textbooks, the homogeneity of the terminology was not preserved. In 1919, one group was formed with the aim of establishing technical terminology in Georgian. In this group, the main participants were the brother and sister Nikoladze and various technicians. They decided to eliminate all the international words related to scientific terminology in the Georgian language and prepared to translate them in Georgian or create and propagate invented words. (f. 471, o. 1, 123, “To the U.S.S.R. People's Commissar of Education,” l. 3).

The establishment of the terminology approval procedure changed radically in 1921 after the state scientific council was founded under the People's Commissariat of Education, which was tasked with developing the scientific terminology and general literary forms of Georgian. In 1921, the members of the above-mentioned body mainly developed the common forms accepted in Georgian literary language. By 1922, they started preparing to adopt technical terminology. In 1922-1923, the principles of processing new lexical units were more or less identified. And in 1923 the Scientific Council discussed the issues related to specialized and scientific terminology as well as legitimized the specific international or newly established Georgian terms.

At the 1922 Scientific Council sessions, scientists approved 128 technical terms, and in 1923, they acquired 1,671 terms, including 1,623 mathematical and 48 physical terms. The sessions of this period discussed and approved linguistics, botany and dendrology, physics, mathematics, and military terminology as well as scientific technical terminology in general.

The archival materials we have found include the document titled "Circular On Using Terms According to the National Principle”, which was prepared in 1928 by Philippe Makharadze, the chairman of the main terminology committee under the central executive committee. The creation and legitimization of the terminology has not only scientific, but also political significance. According to this document, the terms created according to “extremely nationalist principles” were unacceptable for Mr. Makharadze, who requested the use of international terminology instead.