Building a Cross-Border Educational Terminology Database: The Case of Hungary and Ukraine

Abstract Following the Treaty of Trianon, the Hungarian language developed a number of regional varieties, which differ primarily in their lexicon. To help harmonise these varieties, an educational terminology database is currently being developed with the support of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA). In the first year of the project, 849 terms from Hungary’s Act CXC of 2011 on National Public Education were translated into English as well as into the official languages of Hungary’s seven neighbouring countries (Austria, Croatia, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Ukraine). Additionally, country-specific educational terms were translated into Hungarian, and regional dialect expressions (loanwords) related to education were collected. Based on this developing database, the present study explores the main conceptual differences between the Hungarian and Ukrainian public education systems. These differences appear in areas such as institution names, grading systems, and school subject names. The collection of region-specific educational terms links terminological work with sociolinguistic research and has contributed to the development of the Termini Online Hungarian Dictionary and Database, the largest online corpus of loanwords from cross-border Hungarian minority language varieties. The degree of equivalence between the source- and target-language terms ranged from complete to partial or functional equivalence. In cases where no direct equivalents existed, term candidates and paraphrases were developed. The database addresses terminological challenges in the field of Hungarian minority education in the Carpathian Basin, while also serving as a valuable tool for translators, teachers, parents, and students planning to pursue studies abroad. Among the important outcomes of the research are the identification of 126 functionally equivalent terms between the educational systems of Hungary and Ukraine, the creation of 142 new terms in cases where no equivalents were found in the target language, and the systematic collection of 100 country-specific (Ukrainian) and 70 region-specific educational terms (loanwords). These results highlight both the diversity of educational terminology and the necessity of addressing gaps through targeted terminological work.