Glossaries and guidance

The Government’s terminology work aims to promote clear communication and to harmonise the terms used in different languages in government texts.

Glossaries are compiled in cooperation with experts from different administrative branches. The glossaries produced through major cooperation projects contain between 150 and 900 concepts. They usually include definitions of concepts and terms in different languages, along with other descriptions of content and diagrams illustrating the relationships between concepts. These glossaries are published in the Government Termbank Valter or as separate publications. 

The Prime Minister’s Office also compiles narrower glossaries on topical issues. The purpose of these glossaries is to offer recommendations on terms, mainly in Finnish, Swedish, English, but also sometimes in Russian, in order to harmonise the terminology used by translators and other operators in the field. They are published as files on this page.

The language specialists at the Prime Minister’s Office also contribute to specialised administrative glossaries produced by other operators or comment on their glossaries. These glossaries are published in Valto, the joint publication archive of the Government (use e.g. ‘sanasto’ as a search term), the TEPA Term Bank maintained by the Finnish Terminology Centre, and the Terminologies Tool maintained by the Digital and Population Data Services Agency. 

The Prime Minister’s Office also draws up a variety of guidelines, especially to support legislative drafting in Swedish and to solve problems that arise when writing text in English, compiles translation memories consisting of ministries’ texts and maintains a list of glossaries produced by operators in different sectors.

Other glossaries

In addition to the other glossaries listed below, our Finnish website provides information and links (in Finnish only) to more useful glossaries, guidance and translation memories as well as to glossaries compiled by other government agencies and public bodies.

• Nato Glossary (en-fi-sv)
• Financial Markets Glossary (fi-sv-en)
• Health and Social Services Reform Glossary (fi-sv-en)
• Terms of the Month 2012-2014 (fi-sv-en)
• Ministers and Ministries (fi-sv-en-de-fr-es-ru)
• Glossary of Government Document Types (fi-en)
• Prime Minister’s Office Departments and Units (fi-sv-en-de-fr-ru)
• Glossary of Government Job Titles (fi-sv-en)
• Terms relating to Finnish Regional Government Reform and the Names of Regions, Counties and Municipalities (fi-sv-en-ru)
• Intelligence Gathering Glossary (fi-sv-en)
• Glossary of Legislative Terms and Phrases (fi-sv-en)
• Climate and Energy Glossary (fi-en)
• Influenza A(H1N1) (Swine flu) Glossary (fi-sv-en)
• Government Rules of Procedure Glossary (fi-en)
• Bird Flu Glossary (fi-en)

Material related to Finland’s Presidency of the Council of the EU

• EU2019 Finland’s Presidency language versions (fi-en-sv-de-fr)
• EU2019 Presidency Style Guide for Texts in English
• Traduction de contenus en ligne pour la présidence tournante du Conseil de l’Union européenne (FR) 
• Übersetzen von Webinhalten für den EU-Ratsvorsitz (DE)