This paper reports on an investigation of the functions of the English causal discourse markers ‘because’ and ‘so’ and their Lithuanian counterparts and analyses the Lithuanian translation equivalents of these discourse markers using the multilingual open translation project TED Talks as a data resource. The results revealed that the discourse marker ‘because’ and its Lithuanian counterparts express ideational cause, followed by its rhetorical equivalent. However, the discourse marker ‘so’ and its Lithuanian counterparts express rhetorical consequences, followed by the rhetorical specification.

The Bologna Process envisioned the idea of the development of transversal skills in the course of higher education. Recent research on education acknowledges the fact that higher education including university studies is already facing the turn towards inclusive transversal skills development. The current research focuses on the development of student transversal skills in university studies. It is aimed at the investigation of the phenomenon of the development of student transversal skills in university studies. The objective of higher education covers more than simply employability of graduates although employment outcomes are important. Higher education is a versatile process, which provides students with the possibilities to develop their knowledge, skills, attitudes in order to enable them to actively participate in the wider society by being involved in active citizenship and successful professional careers. Our research reveals that the development of transversal skills depends on both internal personal characteristics and external social factors including colleague influence, exchanging ideas and also institutional impact. The research participants also reveal their perception that their transversal skills are substantially improved on their university studies; however, they also stress their perceived needs for developing certain transversal skills which are necessary in professional work life, such as communication and foreign languages, ability to apply innovations and creativity, analytical skills and critical thinking, learning to learn and time management.

Globalization and the fast growth of technology have made our world more connected than it has ever been before, thus giving more significance to the issue of crosscultural gaps and the ways of translating them. The need to understand each other and to share new technology, medicine, literature, or knowledge is very high. Each language is unique and revolves around that country᾿s culture and morals. As Culler (2007) puts it, if languages were simply a nomenclature for a set of universal concepts, it would be easy to translate from one language to another. One would simply replace the French name for a concept with the English name. If languages were like this, the task of learning a new language would also be much easier than this. But anyonewho has attempted either of these tasks has acquired, alas, a vast amount of direct proof that languages are not nomenclatures and the concepts of one language may differ radically from those of another. Each language articulates and organizes the world differently. Languages do not simply name existing categories; they articulate their own. And here arise cultural gaps and problems of equivalence because each language has its own culture, and those differences between cultures may cause more severe complications for the translator than do differences in language structure.

The newest research has proved the importance of discourse for second language learning and teaching at more advanced levels. TED-MDB multilingual discourse-annotated corpus, created within the framework of TextLink, COST action IS1312, appears to be a handy tool for illuminating qualitative differences between the first and the second language discourse marker use. The current research focuses on the pragmatic use of English discourse marker and with its Lithuanian counterpart ir paying attention to the cases when the connectives and/ir perform different functions, e. g., discourse structuring, etc. It was established by the research that the use and translation of the connectives vary. They may be translated by the discourse markers provided by dictionaries, or might be transferred into a different discourse marker or are simply omitted. The research leads to a conclusion that language learners and teachers may use the corpus resources for raising linguistic awareness about the pragmatic use of discourse markers.