Marcel Thelen
(Posted on July 30,
2005)
Department
of Translation and Interpreting Terminology: what makes up the
distinction between term and word In the
process of specialised translation, terms can in some cases clearly and
without any problem be distinguished from words, whereas in others this is
not so obvious, especially in cases where terms turn out to behave like words
as in such disciplines like psychology, sociology, art & art criticism,
leisure & tourism, etc. For the translation of terms, I discern a
number of steps of which - in the translation process- term recognition
is one of the most important ones. I have a number of research issues in this
respect: ▪
What is it that triggers the translator’s decision to translate
the item in question as a term or as a word: is it, for example, the
item’s morphology or etymology, the item’s meaning description
and/or context hints as given in (specialised) dictionaries, indicators in
the item’s context, the item’s behaviour in the source text
regarded in terms of intertextuality, the
explicitness and clarity of the subject area in question, the
translator’s experience, etc? ▪
Can these triggers be used as guiding or discovery procedures? ▪
What can the translator do and what aids does he have at his disposal
to make the appropriate decision: is this only term extraction tools or is
there more? ▪
What is the use of the pre-translation macro-textual and micro-textual
analysis? ▪
Are all these issues issues at all in the
presence of translation memories and term banks? ▪
How can corpus linguistics help? ▪
Do the above research issues regarding term recognition also play a
role in interpreting and if so, is this role the same as in translation; if
not, what makes up the difference? ▪
In what way do theory and practice co-operate to help the translator /
interpreter? ▪
Is it possible to generalise the findings of this type of research
into rules and where will these rules be accommodated best: in theory or in
practice? In
particular for students of specialised translation, it is important to know
how and if words can be distinguished from terms. If an item is a term, it
should be translated by a term (if there is one available - if not, the
appropriate translation procedures should be applied), if it is not, the
freedom of translation is greater and the student can decide what to do
(under the constraints of the translation brief and the constraints of the
target language & culture). Also for the teacher of specialised
translation, in particular the teacher of terminology, the term-word
distinction is important from a didactic point of view: how should he explain
the difference between words and terms and provide the student with
appropriate aids to solve problematic cases? Also for the professional
translator the answers to the above questions can be relevant. Finally, the
outcome of this research may also be of relevance to the discipline of
terminology (and terminography): do terms and words
behave similarly? If so, why have now one discipline instead of two, viz.
terminology and lexicology? If there is a difference in behaviour, then what
is it and how should it be accounted for? |
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