Forest Terminology Projects in Finland
Péiivi Lipsanen
Library of Forestry, P.O. Box 24, FIN-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland paivi.lipsanen@helsinki.fi
Abstract
Forests, forestry and the forest products industry are very important to Finns in many respects.
Hence it has been natural and necessary to develop Finnish forest —>terminology. Finnish is dissimilar to the languages of its neighbours and the major languages of the world. Also, in different countries and languages forestry related econcepts and —>terms can have very specific meanings or they can even fail to exist. Therefore there is a strong need for defining the connections of Finnish forest ——>terminology to other languages and geographical areas of the world.
There are several —>vocabularies and projects in progress in Finland on forest —>terminology. They mainly deal with translation and some of them include the adefinition of the ->terms. Libraries and information services need —>vocabularies also for indexing information resources.
Keywords: forest terminology, vocabularies, Library of Forestry, historical background, Finland, Nordic countries
1 Introduction
Finland is a country with five million inhabitants and two official languages, Finnish and Swedish (minority of 6%). Finnish belongs to the Finno-Ugric languages, which include Estonian and Hungarian. Since Finnish is so dissimilar to the languages of its neighbours, Swedish, Norwegian and Russian, and the major languages of the world, multilingualism has become essential to Finnish economy and science.
Forests, forestry and the forest products industry are very important to Finns in many respects. Forests cover 80% of the total area of Finland. Over 50% of the forests belong to private owners, about 30% to the state and under 10% to companies. The forestry sector employs about 5% of the population. The share of the forestry sector in exports is over 30%.
The value of Finland’s forestry related exports ranks third in the world, representing approx- imately 9% of the world total in 1995 (Yearbook of forest statistics 1997). Multiple-use forestry, including nature conservation, recreation, picking wild berries and mushrooms, hunting and reindeer husbandry, is a significant part of Finnish forestry. And forests have always been places of peace, comfort and inspiration for the Finns.
Since forestry is so important in Finland, it has been necessary to develop Finnish forest
—->terminology and define its connections to other languages and geographical areas. In different countries and languages the -aconcepts and —>terms concerning e.g. vegetation types, sylvicultural systems and wood harvesting practices can have very specific meanings or they can even fail to exist. This makes the —>terms often impossible to translate directly and the only possibility is to explain the —>concepts.
2 Forest Terminology Projects
2.1 Historical Background
There is a long tradition of forest -->terminology work in Finland. Some efforts were made already in the late 1800s and early 1900s to develop Finnish and Swedish —>terminology.
Several bi- or multilingual evocabularies have been published in the past 50 years (see Table 1). In 1932 Finnish forestry organisations founded a committee to compile a multilingual forest dictionary. This Finnish-Swedish-German-English Forest Dictionary (Ano et al. 1944) con- tains about 9,000 —>terms without -adefinitions.
In 1966 the Finnish Society of Forest Science appointed an editorial board to carry out the publishing of a new dictionary. The Finnish-Swedish-English-German-Russian Lexicon Forestale (AHLSVED er al. 1979) contains about 9,000 ——>terms without —->definitions. ->Terms were reviewed by 15 specialists from Sweden, 18 from Great Britain, 27 from Germany, and 24 from the former USSR. Over a hundred of Finnish specialists were involved in the project.
The Finnish-Polish Supplementum of Lexicon Forestale (CZARNECKI 1985) was published 1985.
In 1983 the Helsinki University Library of Forestry started a project to compile a Finnish- English forest —>vocabulary, mainly for indexing purposes. Unfortunately it was not possible
Table 1. Printed vocabularies.
Reference Coverage Languages Definitions
provided ARO et al. 1944 forestry Finnish-Swedish-German-English no
9,000 terms
Anrsvao ez al. 1979 forestry Finnish-Swedish-German- no 9,000 terms English-Russian
CZARNECKI 1985 forestry Finnish-Polish no
8,000 terms
RUOKONEN 1987 forestry Finnish-English no
6,000 terms
GRANVIK 1988 wood science Finnish-Swedish definitions in
600 terms both languages
GRANVIK 1993 forest technology Finnish-Swedish definitions in
1,600 terms both languages
KANNINEN and forestry Finnish-Spanish no
MERY 1994 3,000 terms
HYTTINEN 1997 forestry Finnish-Swedish-German- definitions in 300 terms administration English-Russian-French-Spanish Finnish and in
English YMPARISTOSANASTO environment Finnish-Swedish-German-English definitions in
1998 300 terms -French Finnish
SKOGSORDLISTA forestry Swedish-English-German-Finnish definitions in
1994 (published in 3,600 terms Swedish
Sweden)
to finish the work due to a lack of financing and the —>vocabulary has not been published.
However, the Finnish —>terms of the proof version (Ruoi<oNEN 1987) have been used for indexing the publications catalogued into the different databases maintained by the Library of Forestry. The —>vocabulary is also searchable in a digitalized form.
2.2 On-going Projects
There are several forest —>vocabulary projects in progress in Finland (see Table 2), e.g. at the departments of the University of Helsinki. Also a commercial publisher plans to issue a multilingual series of forest —>vocabularies, partly in co-operation with the University (see also Vehmas-Lehto, this volume). The projects are carried out in co-operation with forest special- ists and linguists. Members of the Terminology Committee of the Finnish Society of Forest Science advise ->vocabulary projects in forest subject matters. Most of the —->vocabularies will only provide translations of the —>terms and some of them will include —>definitions. The aim is usually to produce a printed —>vocabulary. Libraries and information services need ——>vocab- ularies also for indexing and searching information resources, which nowadays also include electronic resources on the Internet.
In 1998 the Library of Forestry started a project to update Ruokonen’s Finnish-English
—>vocabulary and make it available on the World Wide Web. A —>thesaurus structure showing equivalence, hierarchical, and associative relationships of the —>terms is also planned if financing continues. However, there will be no resources to include —+definitions of the
-aterrns. The updated —>vocabulary will be a part of the Finnish-English AGRISANASTO, the present —+vocabulary database of the Agricultural Library at the University of Helsinki.
With the inclusion of the forest —>terms AGRISANASTO will become the common ——>vocab- ulary database of the libraries of the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry at the University of Helsinki. It will contain —aterms about agriculture, forestry, food, nutrition, household and environmental sciences. AGRISANASTO is already available on the World Wide Web with
free access. It will be searchable in connection with the FORESTREE database and the NOVAGate service. FORESTREE is the bibliographic database of the Library of Forestry.Table 2. Projects in forest terminology.
Definitions Project title/Host Expected date Languages
of completion provided
Support
Forest Vocabulary 1999 Finnish-English no
Library of Forestry, University of Helsinki
Vocabulary ofForest Mensuration 1998 Finnish-Russian- Department of Forest Resource Swedish-German- Management, University of Helsinki English
yes, in Finnish yes, in both languages
Forest Vocabulary ? Finnish-Russian
Department of Translation Studies, University of Helsinki, and a commercial publishing company
Forest Vocabulary ? Finnish-English
A commercial publishing company
yes
WWW with free access printed publication printed publication
printed publication
It contains about 60,000 references, mainly to Finnish forest literature, 65% of which are in Finnish.
NOVAGate is an example of multilingual co-operation in Nordic countries. It is carried out as one of the projects of the NOVA University (Nordic Forestry, Veterinary and Agricultural University). NOVAGate is the Nordic quality-controlled, subject-based information gateway on forestry, veterinary, agricultural, food and environmental sciences. lt contains information about Nordic Internet information resources, such as databases, Web sites of organisations and training materials. The main language of the service is English, but e.g. the descriptions of the resources will be available also in one of the Nordic languages, the language of the home country of the resource. The resources are described e.g. with English AGROVOC —+terms and keywords and the Danish and Finnish resources with —>terms from —>vocabularies in the respective languages. It is useful to connect on-line avocabularies, like AGRISANASTO, with NOVAGate to help searching and indexing. NOVAGate is maintained with ROADS (Resource Organisation And Discovery in Subject-based Services) software. Organisations can use this system to set up subject-based gateways, i.e. search and browsable indexes of Internet-based resources. ROADS is developed in connection with the eLib (Electronic Libraries) Programme in the United Kingdom.
The on-line evocabularies will also support indexing made by authors who want to describe their own Internet publications with metadata formats.
3 Conclusions
Several published ->vocabularies and on-going projects indicate that forest —>termino1ogy work is found important in Finland. Most needed seem to be multilingual —>vocabularies showing relationships of Finnish forest —>terms to other languages and geographical areas with different forestry practices. Also plans for a World Wide Web ——>vocabulary with free access
have received enthusiastic support.4 References
Anrsvan, K.-J.; MANDEVILLE, H.; WEISSENBERG voN, K. (eds) 1979: Lexicon forestale = Metsasana- kirja = Skogsordbok = Forest dictionary = Forstworterbuch = Lesnoi slovar. Porvoo, WSOY.
592 pp.
ARO, P.; ILVESSALO, Y.; LAITAKARI, E.; LINDFORS, J. (eds) 1944: Suomalais-ruotsalais-saksalais- englantilainen metsasanakirja - Finnish-Swedish-German-English Forest Dictionary. Helsinki, Otava. 235 pp.
CZARNECKI, J., 1985: Lexicon forestale. Supplementum fenniae-polonicae — suomalais~puolalainen metsasanasto. Helsinki, Suomen metsatieteellinen seura. 289 pp.
GRANVIK, B.-A., 1988: Puu- ja metsateknologian peruskasitteita ja termejéi = Traoch skogsteknol- ogiska grundbegrepp och termer, Osa 1 Puutiede : Del 1 Travetenskap, virkeslara. Helsinki, Helsingin yliopisto. 176 pp.
GRANVIK, B.-A., 1993: Puu- ja metsateknologian peruskasitteita ja termeja = Traoch skogsteknol- ogiska grundbegrepp och termer, Osa 2 Metsateknologia = Del 2 Skogsteknologi. Helsinki, Helsingin yliopisto. 455 pp.
HYTUNEN, T. (ed) 1997: Metsaalan hallinnon sanastoa - The Glossary on Forestry Administration.
Helsinki, Edita. 396 pp.
KANNINEN, M.; Mery, G., 1994: Metsasanasto espanja suomi espanja = Terminologia forestal espafiol finlandés espafiol. Helsinki, Suomen Metsatieteellinen Seura. 218 pp.
RUOKONEN, M., 1987: Sanasto metsakirjallisuuden sisallonkuvailua ja jalleenhakua varten : osa 1:
suomi-englanti. Helsinki, Metsakirjasto. 353 pp.
Skogsordlista = Forestry vocabulary : sv-en-de-fi. 1994. Solna, Tekniska nomenklaturcentralen. 518 pp.
VEHM/\S—LEHTO, I., 1999: Different Societies — Different Concepts. Difficulties in Compiling a Finnish-Russian Forestry Dictionary . This volume.
Ymparistosanasto = Miljoordlista = Environment vocabulary = Umweltglossar = Vocabulaire de l’environnement. 1998. Jyvaskyla, Gummerus Helsinki, Tekniikan sanastokeskus, 1998. 163 pp.
Yearbook of forest statistics 1997 - Metsatilastollinen vuosikirja 1997. 1997: Helsinki, Finnish Forest Research Institute. 348 pp.
5 Related Web Sites
— Library of Forestry, University of Helsinki http: //honeybee . helsinki . fi /mmhf/
— Finnish Society of Forest Science
http: //www.metla . fi/org/sins/englislmhtm
— AGRISANASTO (Thesaurus of the Agricultural Library at the University of Helsinki) http: //www-db .he1sinki . fi /agri /agrisanasto/Welcomeng .htm1
— FORESTREE (Bibliographic Database of the Helsinki University Library of Forestry) http: //honeybee .helsinki . fi/mmhf/fores—e .htm
- NOVAGate (Nordic information gateway on forestry, veterinary, agricultural, food and envi- ronmental sciences)
http: //novagate . nova—university. org/
- ROADS (Resource Organisation And Discovery in Subject-based Services) software toolkit for gateway management
http: / /www. ilrt .bris . ac .uk/roads/
