Lia Karosanidze
PhD in Philology
TSU Arnold Chikobava Institute of Linguistics
Head of the Department of Translating Dictionaries and Scientific Dictionaries
Tbilisi, Georgia
ORCID: 0009-0005-4555-2049
Lia Karosanidze
PhD in Philology
TSU Arnold Chikobava Institute of Linguistics
Head of the Department of Translating Dictionaries and Scientific Dictionaries
Tbilisi, Georgia
ORCID: 0009-0005-4555-2049
Raphiel Eristavi – a Shaper of Georgian Terminology Policy in the 19th Century
As it has been known, for successful terminology work, its management and coordinated endeavors are is rather significant, and this is not easy to accomplish. Since the 20th century to our days, several international standards have been developed which, based on know-hows of various countries, stipulate rules for planning and managing adequate terminology work. How did people manage to work in coordination in the late 19th century? How did they manage to unite? This is unarguably surprising, and, alongside other achievements, it repeatedly reveals the make-up of the Georgian-educated public of the epoch.
Everything began with the statement in which A. Guladze and I. Mrevlishvili, teachers at a vocational school, set forth the problem of working on terminology; the primary difficulty, identified in the statement, was to cope with terminological diversity: “We have terms but they are scattered; we need to collect them and to declare them for common usage and declare them for common use in order to introduce use of the same terms everywhere and not to make teachers use terms coined by themselves.” Another and rather significant problem were to regulate the coinage of terms which was left to chance: “Up to the present day, all, who took up with it, established terms only on their own, and, owing to that, in the literature, one comes across a plethora of terms to refer to the same object, thus embroiling the cause and moving it backwards.”
We can say that the statement became an impulse for setting forth the issue of the coordination of terminology work in the then Georgia. It was established to convene terminology sessions. The newspaper Droeba published an announcement informing that a meeting was scheduled on November 20, Saturday, whereby Georgian scientific terms for all subjects were to be explored and developed. The first terminology meeting was held on November 20, 1882, in the hall of the city administration. Raphael Eristavi was unanimously elected chair of the meeting. Ilia Chavchavadze, Akaki Tsereteli, Ivane Machabeli, Iakob Gogebashvili, Zakaria Chichinadze, teachers and other representatives of the public attended the meeting.
The terminology meetings identified a plan of Georgian terminology work, discussed the character of Georgian terminology about which participants expressed different viewpoints. It was at those sessions whereby Georgian terminology policy of the 19th century was shaped by the theoretical foundation of which was in a way implied in Raphael Eristavi’s article “How fair is it to accuse the Georgian language of being poor?”
The paper discusses the outcomes brought as a result of the Georgian public’s well-planned terminology policy powered by Raphael Eristavi.
References:
Guidelines for Terminology Policies formulating and implementing terminology policy in language communities, prepared by Infoterm, Paris, 2005: 5. Translated into Georgian by Prof. Zaal Kikvidze;
Karosanidze L., Georgian Term Bank (GTB) and Terminological Policy in Georgia, Terminological Issues, V, (ISSN 1987-7633), 2022-2023, Tbilisi;
Vashakidze I., Principles of Terminology Work in the Second Half of the 20th Century in Georgia, 2009, Tbilisi;
Yordanishvili L., The language of Rafiel Eristavi, 2015, Tbilisi.
Keywords: Raphiel Eristavi, terminology, terminology policy.