Anglicisms, your cup of tea

1569

Everywhere you go, you come across English and like every proper lingua franca, it does not leave any other language unaffected.

For this reason, we welcomed Georgeta Ciobanu in Luxembourg on the 12th of November for a presentation on “Knowledge of Languages in Contact for Translators and Terminologists” and in particular on the case of Anglicisms. She is a renowned terminology expert, certified ECQA terminology trainer and professor at the University Politehnica of Timişoara (Romania). Within the scope of a European project on anglicisms, namely the “English element in European Languages“, she conducted in-depth research and published several books on this topic.

Georgeta CiobanuDuring the presentation, professor Ciobanu explained both the narrow and the broad definition of “anglicism”, as well as the differences between the approach of traditional and modern linguistics. Besides, she  focused on the basic terminology related to languages in contact and the process and tendencies of language adaptation (adoption – adaptation – integration), pointing out the difficulties in spelling, pronunciation, (un)stressed syllables, morphology and word formation you may encounter when dealing with Anglicisms in your target language as a translator or terminologist.

In order to make the session more interactive, Georgeta Ciobanu challenged the audience with questions on concrete and well-chosen examples and thereby making us aware of the typical character of Anglicisms. She also underlined that “term adaptation is only possible by applying terminology knowledge and considering the peculiarities of language for specific purpose (LSP) in various subject fields” and during this process, it is key to pay extra attention to the conceptual equivalence, register, synonymy, jargon, elliptic structures and abbreviations. Furthermore, we learned that ontologies make it easier to compare definitions in case of equivalences and thus are very useful for a better understanding of the meaning of terms.

Professor Ciobanu concluded the presentation with a very wise lesson: terminology work is team work and all parties involved (among others translators, terminologists, experts, customers and product developers) should work together, especially when it comes to cases that require further consideration.

Find the full presentation here.

Written by Leen Boel
Terminologist trainee at TermCoord