engleski

Croatian terminology policy in the light of European multilingualism

The stage a given language community has reached in developing and standardizing terminologies for individual fields can safely be taken as an indicator of how far that community has gone in overall language planning and of how well articulated the community's language policy is. The paper briefly examines the historical circumstances of terminology development for Croatian and the current situation. Croatia now faces several challenges: those caused by globalization and the dominance of English on the one hand, and those of “linguistically” acceding to the European Union on the other. Many states that have recently gone through the process of joining the EU have used that opportunity to consolidate their terminology resources. Such consolidation has, however, in Croatia started with much delay, but it presents a sine qua non for the very existence of Croatian as a standard language –– particularly with a view toward its functioning as one of the official languages of the European Union once Croatia becomes a full member. The author examines several prominent models of terminology planning and the practices of several new European Union states, countries that have undergone political, social and economic transformations similar to Croatia's and now feel an urgent need to integrate their terminology resources with the rest of the EU members. This integration requires them to establish national terminology standards in a wide variety of disciplines, as well as developing optimal methodology for terminology harmonization in a wider, multilingual context and ensuring cross-EU compatibility of terminological resources for data interchange. The paper then examines the role of the International Organization for Standardization and discusses the applicability of the UNESCO Guidelines for Terminology Policies, with the aim of proposing the best methods for terminology planning and management in Croatia. Finally, we present the first targeted endeavour towards terminology consolidation – STRUNA, a Croatian Terminology coordination project now being carried out by the Institute of Croatian Language and Linguistics with the support of the National Foundation for Science, Higher Education and Technological Development of the Republic of Croatia.

language policy; terminology planning and management; terminology harmonization

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