2. Old new words.
Take first existing words with new senses. These do not normally refer to new
objects or processes, and therefore are rarely technological. However creneau,
which started as a metaphor as creneau de veme can normally be translated
technically as market outlet or informally as 'a range of demand for a particular
type of product, depending on the type of readership, of which envisage three
types:
1) Expert.
2) Educated generalize who may require extra explanations of the topic or the
SL culture.
3) The ignorant, who may need linguistic as well as technical and cultural
explanations at various levels.
Since this term seems unlikely to acquire permanence, or to be important in
any TL culture, any initial one-to-one translation is misguided, and the
translator has to select the appropriate functional and descriptive TL sense
components as economically as possible in the context, possibly adding a
negative component where the origin is germane. You cannot standardize
the translation of a neologism when its future is in doubt. If 'urban renewal
is tending to be limited to houses, habilitation may be appropriate.
3. Coinages.
It is a well known hypothesis that there is no such thing as a
brand new word; if a word does not derive from various
morphemes then it is more or less phonaesthetic or
synacsthetic. All sounds or phonemes are phonaesthetic,
have some kind of meaning. Nevertheless the etymology of
many words, in particular dialect words, is not known and
can hardly be related to meaningful sounds. The best
known exception to the hypothesis is the internationalism.
The computer term byte, sometimes spelt bite, is also an
internationalism, the origin of the V being obscure. Both
these words have phonaesthetic qualities quark is
humorously related to quack.
4. Derived words.
The great majority of neologisms are words derived by
analogy from ancient Greek and Latin morphemes
usually with suffixes such as -ismo, -ismus, -ija, etc.,
naturalized in the appropriate language. However, now
that this word-forming procedure is employed mainly
to designate (non-cultural) scientific and
technological rather than cultural institutional terms,
the advance of these internationalisms is widespread.
Normally, they have naturalized suffixes.
5. Abbreviations.
Abbreviations have always been a common type of
pseudo-neologism, probably more common in French
than in English (fac, philo, sympa, Huma, copter, Urn,
fab, Video). Unless they coincide (prof, bus) they are
written out in the TL.
6. Collocations.
New collocations (noun compounds or adjective plus noun)
are particularly common in the social sciences and in computer
language. The computer terms are given their recognized
translation if they do not exist, you have to transfer them and
then add a functional descriptive term we have not the authority
to devise our own neologism, is a universal concept, at least in
any culture where there is both greater sexual freedom and a
powerful women's movement and I think we are entitled to have
a go. A term for the time between design and production or
between ordering and delivery of a product, has at present to be
translated in context; which could be a (political) universal,
applying as much to the USSR as to El Salvador or Vietnam,
probably has to be explained, unless dominoes are familiar to the
TL culture and a literal translation.
7. Eponyms.
Eponyms, in my definition any word derived from a proper name
(therefore including homonyms), are a growth industry in Romance
languages and a more modest one in the English media. When derived
from people's names such words, but if they refer to the referent's ideas
or qualities, the translator may have to add these in Italian. The
technical term for a method of high-jumping, can be transferred for
specialists and succinctly defined for non-specialists. When derived
from objects, eponyms are usually brand names, and can be transferred
only when they are equally well known and accepted in the TL. Such
generalized eponyms as 'Parkinson's Law. In general, the translator
should curb the use of brand name eponyms. New eponyms deriving
from geographical names appear to be rare most commonly they
originate from the products (wines, cheeses, sausages etc) of the
relevant area in translation the generic term is added until the product
is well enough known. Many geographical terms have connotations,
the most recent for English being perhaps with further details
depending on context.
8. Phrasal verbs.
New phrasal words are restricted to English's facility in
converting verbs to nouns (e.g., work-out; trade-off1,
check-out (dans, supermarkets), lookalike, thermal cut-
out, knock on (domino) effect1, iaid-back, sit-in) and are
trans-lated by their semantic equivalents. Note that phrasal
words:
a. Are often more economical than their translation.
b. Usually occupy the peculiarly English register between
informal and colloquial, whilst their translations are more
formal. They have more (physical) impact than their
Graeco-Latin English or Romance language equivalents.
9. Transferred words.
Newly transferred words keep only one sense of their
foreign nationality; they are the words whose
meanings are least dependent on their contexts. If they
are frequently used, they change or develop additional
senses, and can sometimes no longer be translated
back straight into their languages of origin. They are
likely to be media or product rather than technological
neologisms, and, given the power of the media, they
may be common to several languages, whether they
are cultural or have cultural overlaps, but have to be
given a functional descriptive equivalent for less
sophisticated TL readerships.
10. Acronyms.
Acronyms are an increasingly common feature of all non-Hiterary
texts, for reasons of brevity or euphony, and often to give the referent
an artificial prestige to rouse people to find out what the letters stand
for. In science the letters are occasionally joined up and become
internationalisms requiring analysis only for a less educated TL
readership. Some enzymes are internationalisms. Acronyms are
frequently created within special topics and designate products,
appliances and processes, depending on their degree of importance; in
translation, there is either a standard equivalent term or, if it does not
yet exist, a descriptive term. Acronyms for institutions and names of
companies are usually transferred. Acronyms are sometimes created or
move into common language for referents that have been in existence
for a long time. the translator must look out for acronyms created
simply for the purpose of one text difficult to locate if he has to
translate only an extract. When acronyms are as important in the SL as
in the TL, they may be different in both language.
11. Pseudo-neologisms.
The translator has to beware of pseudo-neologisms where, for
instance, a generic word stands in for a specific word. I have tried
to give a comprehensive unidiomatic view of how to translate the
words that teeter on the edge of language, that may stay, may
vanish, depending on the real or artificial needs of their users,
many of them not yet processed by language and therefore extra-
con textual others, designating new objects and processes, are
assured of their place. And the only generalization lean make is
that the translator should be neither favorable nor unfavorable in
his view of new words. His responsibility is to see that the
mental and the material world that is inhabited by people
should be accurately and, where possible, economically reflected
in language, This consideration overrides the rather large
number of contextual factors with which this chapter has been
concerned.