Semantic differences between terms associated with the Hungarian and the Ukrainian public education systems

Abstract

The integration of Ukraine into the European Union is a very complex process which can be facilitated with the development of terminological dictionaries that make the translation of Ukrainian-specific educational, administrative and legal terms much easier. In the spring of 2024, a new terminological research program began within the framework of the Science for the Hungarian Language National Program – Hungarian Terminology Strategy Subprogram. An international research group consisting of members from the Termini Hungarian Language Research Network set out to translate nearly a thousand Hungarian terms from Act CXC of 2011 on National Public Education of Hungary into the state languages of the neighbouring countries, including German, Slovak, Romanian, Serbian, Slovenian, Croatian, and Ukrainian, respectively. The Antal Hodinka Linguistic Research Centre joined the initiative to find the Ukrainian equivalents of Hungarian educational terms, and to develop new terminologies in case of any semantic gaps. The aim of this study is to shed light on the most important semantic differences between the educational and administrative terms connected to the Hungarian and the Ukrainian public education systems. The main problems during the translation process include the development of new terms, the translation of compound expressions, the search for functional equivalents, the grammatical and word-building differences between the Hungarian and the Ukrainian languages, the integration of regional equivalents into the dictionary, the explanation of country-specific educational terms, and the differences between the public education systems of the two countries. The current study is based on the translation of the first 450 terms from the terminological corpus. At the end of the research and the terminological work, a comprehensive online dictionary is going to be developed which will open the door for Hungarian–Ukrainian and Ukrainian–Hungarian translators to create bilingual versions of the countries’ educational laws, and semantic gaps will be filled in relation to the translation of specific terms of the Ukrainian public education system.