The EU English Terms Including the Word Market and Their French and Lithuanian Equivalents

Translation of terminology is an essential factor and often a challenging task in the translation of legal acts. Various databases are available to facilitate the translation process and ensure its quality. The main inter-institutional terminology database of the European Union is IATE (“Inter Active Terminology for Europe”). The aim of the paper is to conduct a contrastive analysis of a group of English, French and Lithuanian economic terms based on the information provided in IATE. The object chosen for the research is the English, Lithuanian and French multi-word terms including the word market. In total, 266 terms were collected from IATE: 90 English terms and their equivalents in French and Lithuanian. The paper presents a classification of the terms into semantic categories according to various aspects of markets (object of the market, place of the market, duration of the market availability, degree and nature of competition among the market participants, production stage of the items offered in the market, etc.), compares the formal structure of the English terms and their French and Lithuanian equivalents and reveals the tendencies of term formation in the investigated languages. Finally, the paper discusses the problem of synonymy of the terms and the data provided in the term entries of IATE.