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Terminology and translation
M. Teresa Cabré
Pompeu Fabra University The relationship between translation and terminology has been addressed by various authors both in the field of translation and terminology. From the point of view of trans lation, terminology is considered a tool to solve particular problems, while in terminol ogy, translated documents may serve as a source for extracting terms when there are no original texts on the subject in the target language. In this paper we present the relations between translation and terminology in detail from the perspective of specialized translation and analyze the terminological problems translators face and the most appropriate strategies and resources to solve them. Finally, we present the different degrees of terminology involvement translators may have. I want to thank my colleague Natalia Seghezzi for the translation of the text.
1. The relations between terminology and translation
Terminology and translation present a series of coincidences. Firstly, terminology and translation are characterized by their long tradition as applied subjects, in contrast to their recently established character as disciplines. Terminology and translation arose from the practical activity caused by the need to express specialized thought or to solve comprehension problems. Second, due to their relatively recent scientific recognition, both translation and termi nology try to advance in the reaffirmation of their status as disciplines by placing emphasis on the features that distinguish them from other subjects and adhering to theories which sustain their autonomous nature as fields of knowledge. Thirdly, terminology and translation are interdisciplinary fields having a cogni tive, linguistic and communicative basis. As a result, their foundation principles come from the cognitive, language and communication sciences. Besides, both subjects are information and communication areas which have knowledge categories and units expressing them that are projected on communicative acts immersed in particular social contexts. Last but not least, language is the essence of both disciplines. Language is the expres sion system that reflects speakers’ conception of reality and allows individuals to interact and express their ideas and thoughts. Copyright © 2010. John Benjamins Publishing Company. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair usespermitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 7/27/2015 8:16 PM via UNIV OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN AN: 440659 ; Doorslaer, Luc van, Gambier, Yves.; Handbook of Translation Studies
Terminology and translation 357 Despite their similarities, translation and terminology are different fields of knowledge that focus on two different objects: translation deals with the study of the translation pro- cess and the analysis of the translated text, and terminology focuses on the lexical form and content nodes representing knowledge as structured in the experts’ mind. Terminology and translation are also explicitly distinguished by their purposes. Trans- lation is concerned with expressing in a language a semantic-pragmatic structure origi- nally produced in another language. Terminology aims at collecting specialized terms to compile them and produce terminological resources (glossaries, dictionaries, vocabularies or databases) intended to be readily accessible and useful to translation experts, among other professionals. Finally, translation and terminology bear an asymmetrical relationship. Specialized translation inevitably needs terminology to produce an adequate text. This is so because experts use terms for their texts. In practical terminological work terms are gathered from texts produced by specialists in real communicative situations. On the other hand, in the process of elaboration of glossaries, term extraction from original texts instead of trans- lated texts is a priority. Only in situations where there is no discourse on a subject in a given language, are translated texts used as terminological source.
2. Terminology as a field of knowledge
Terminology, as a field of knowledge, deals with the study of terms. Like any subject, ter- minology has its applied side, which can be found basically in the collection, analysis and, in some cases, standardizing of terminological units in glossaries or databases. Terminological units are the object of study of terminology as a field of knowledge and can be described from three different perspectives. Linguistically, terms are lexical units of language that activate a specialized value when used in certain pragmatic and dis- cursive contexts. The special value results in a precise meaning recognized and stabilized within expert communities in each field. From the cognitive point of view, terms constitute conceptual units representing nodes of knowledge which are necessary and relevant in the content structure of a field of spe- cialty and which are projected linguistically through lexical units. All the conceptual nodes together constitute the conceptual structure of a field. For specialists, the concept is the starting point for terminology work, while for translators the concept is the intermediate point between the original term and its equivalent. The first function of terms, therefore, is the representation of specialized knowledge. Thirdly, from the communicative perspective, terms are discourse units that identify individuals as members of a professional group and allow them not only to communicate and interact, but also to transfer their knowledge with a didactic purpose to train new experts, or simply spread special knowledge as information to the general public willing to Copyright © 2010. John Benjamins Publishing Company. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair usespermitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 7/27/2015 8:16 PM via UNIV OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN AN: 440659 ; Doorslaer, Luc van, Gambier, Yves.; Handbook of Translation Studies
Terminology and translation 359 requirements of any translation (terminology in translation) and, on the other, the transla- tors’ terminology needs (terminology for translation). In the first case the terminology work to be carried out by the translator is ad hoc ter- minology, while in the second, the aim is to develop glossaries useful to translators, and the method is that of systematic terminology work. When translating, translators face a diversity of problems posed either by the text to be translated or the different contexts of production and reception of the original and the translated text, among which only a few are terminological problems. Translators need to recognize when a problem is related to terminology in order to solve it with a terminologi- cal method. A translation problem is terminological only when it affects terms, i.e. lexical units with a precise meaning in a given special field. A terminological problem may be related to term understanding and the term pragmatic properties in the original text, or to the search for equivalents. The following are situations all translators may acknowledge having been involved in:
- Not knowing all or part of a term, its meaning, its grammatical use or pragmatic value in the source language.
- Not knowing if in the target language there is a lexicalized unit semantically and prag- matically equivalent to the term used in the original text.
- Doubting whether a given unit of the target language is the most appropriate equiva- lent among the alternatives found.
- Ignoring or having doubts about the phraseology used in a particular field of speciality. In order to solve the problems encountered in the understanding of the source text, translators use reference books to learn the meaning of units or their grammatical and pragmatic conditions of use. These reference works are often reduced to monolingual specialized dictionaries in the original language or bilingual and multilingual termi- nological databases. Translators expect to find the information they need to fully com- prehend the text to translate, and may also consult experts with competence in the source language. In the translation phase, translators must fundamentally solve equivalence problems, i.e. finding an equivalent or selecting the most appropriate equivalent. Unlike the logic of translation, solving terminological problems is not about finding a strategy to ensure equivalence, but finding an equivalent term. In some cases terminological resources do not resolve translators’ doubts. Sometimes this is due to the lack of reference terminology in the language of translation, but most of the time the cause is attributable to the lack of updated glossaries or their inadequacy for the specific needs of translation. Copyright © 2010. John Benjamins Publishing Company. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair usespermitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 7/27/2015 8:16 PM via UNIV OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN AN: 440659 ; Doorslaer, Luc van, Gambier, Yves.; Handbook of Translation Studies
360 M. Teresa Cabré Among the problems caused by the inexistence of terminology which reference works left unresolved, we can find the following cases related to the target language:
- It is not possible to find a lexicalized unit (term) because specialists do not use this language to communicate on the subject.
- There is no lexicalized unit satisfactory from the linguistic point of view because spe- cialists make systematic use of the loan.
- There is no standard unit agreed upon by the specialists or sanctioned by standardiza- tion or normalization bodies. In the quest for equivalents, translators start, at least in principle, from the assumption that all terminological units in the source text will have an equivalent terminological unit in the target language. If the search is unsuccessful and no equivalent is found (a situation that only occurs when the topic at issue has never been dealt with in the target language) translators may propose a solution, i.e. a new term, which should be accordingly acknowl- edged with a footnote. It is clear that to be able to propose a term translators must have acquired a sound knowledge of lexical morphology, lexicology, sociolinguistics and pragmatics. Besides, some degree of feasibility of use of the suggested term is required. When confronted with different alternative terms, to decide between choosing one possibility or coining a new term is not an easy task. It implies considering all the pos- sibilities and means of resolution for each type of problem and act accordingly. Broadly speaking, translators must consider other proposals and neological criteria established by standardization bodies, the general structure of language and lexical resources available (including loan and possible adaptations) and the grammatical possibilities to form new terms, the characteristics of the specialized area term system the new terminological unit will form part of and the linguistic viability of the proposed term, and the chances of being accepted and used by the expert group. Once all the possibilities have been considered, the translator must make a decision and choose the term to be used in the translation. This term must be sufficiently docu- mented so as to avoid the proliferation of terms coined by translators, as individual transla- tors are not sources of consolidated reference terminology. It is not always clear which position should be adopted before denominative variation. Given the presence of numerous equivalents, translators may consider the convenience and adequacy of formal diversity in the target text with respect to the original text, the relevance of formal diversity in relation to the area of knowledge, and the characteristics of each lexical variant in order to decide one of the following options:
- Respect the denominative variation of the original text and use all the variants indis- criminately, as if they all were completely interchangeable.
- Use the variants discriminately, selecting one or another for different uses.
- Select one or more variants as systematic forms of reference. Copyright © 2010. John Benjamins Publishing Company. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair usespermitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 7/27/2015 8:16 PM via UNIV OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN AN: 440659 ; Doorslaer, Luc van, Gambier, Yves.; Handbook of Translation Studies
362 M. Teresa Cabré Lexicographical works – general or specialized and online, digital or paper format – are a good source for obtaining and cross-checking knowledge on a given subject, and they are even more useful when the subject is approached from the point of view of the user’s interests. Aligned parallel corpora provide translators terminological equivalents in context. Besides this type of material, in order to increase the efficiency of their searches trans- lators must also take into account the value and reliability of the documents consulted and their sources. According to this criterion, it must be distinguished between informa- tive or descriptive documents from texts having an instructive or standardization purpose. Included in this second category are international and national standards as well as those standards elaborated by institutions with authority on terminology, and all compilations of terms directly or indirectly standardized by authorized institutions. Terminology banks have played an important role in the information society. As they were originally conceived as instruments for translation, they were basically bilingual or multilingual, and focused more on forms of designations than on the conceptual aspects of terms. Later, when terminology focused on the standardization processes of minority lan- guages, monolingual banks (with or without equivalents) allowed studying content-related aspects further. The primary advantage of terminology banks in relation to traditional glossaries is the possibility to be continuously updated, as well as their capacity to store a large number of terms and term-related information, which allows oriented and selected data retrieval. Initially, the purpose of translation-oriented terminology banks was facilitating translators the search work by providing a lot of information in one work. The under- lying idea was that the needs leading translators to search a terminology bank were similar to those that drove them to consult dictionaries (spelling of a term, meaning, grammatical information, area of use, equivalents pragmatic or normative adequacy of variants, etc.). However, this information was often blurred by the importance given to the concept-term relationship and standard forms in terminology theory, which rested importance to other type of data highly necessary for translators, such as contexts of use, grammar and variants. To fill these gaps and optimize the efficiency of specialized banks of information, current terminology data banks, as foreseen by Sager in 1990, are in fact knowledge data banks, as they:
- Integrate various related databases: textual, terminological, documentary and facto- graphic, plus a domain ontology.
- Contain a wide variety of data such as nomenclatures, specialized terms, collocations and phraseology, with the information necessary to identify all those units.
- Can be used as monolingual, bilingual or multilingual dictionaries indistinctively.
- Allow online access.
- Can be used as the basis for the production of dictionaries. Copyright © 2010. John Benjamins Publishing Company. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair usespermitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 7/27/2015 8:16 PM via UNIV OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN AN: 440659 ; Doorslaer, Luc van, Gambier, Yves.; Handbook of Translation Studies
Terminology and translation 363 A database of these characteristics is not only a tool for consultation, but rather a basic tool for dictionary editing and knowledge transfer. Thus, from being no more than an automated version of a dictionary aimed for restricted use, databases became multifunctional and flexi ble instruments catering for the search needs and interests of different user groups. In brief, from one and isolated database we are heading today towards a system envi ronment, from which access to remote information contained in various databanks is pro vided. This is possible thanks to intelligent search engines, which, given a query, gather and offer all the information about it found in different individual banks.
5.3 Bilingual textual resources
It should be mentioned that, for translators, parallel corpus (containing original texts and their translations) are very useful. While working, through translation memories transla tors progressively create parallel corpus they can use and profit from later on.
6. Translators’ terminological involvement
When confronted with a terminological problem, translators may adopt four different degrees of terminology involvement. At the first level of involvement, in order to solve a terminological problem translators basically consult dictionaries and specialized databases and, if they cannot find a solution, they resort to terminology consultation services. If the problem is not solved, translators may simply write the original term with quotation marks or explain the concept through a paraphrase. In this first level, translators are completely passive in terminology as they only need lists of consultation centres, data banks and specialized dictionaries, together with some adequate training to consult them properly. The second level of terminology involvement occurs when translators cannot find an official solution for the terminological problem and draw on their general linguistic com petence to fill the gap with a neological term, which must be documented in a footnote. In this way, the translation process is unblocked by proposing a well-formed unit in the target language. As in the first level, the translator does not participate in terminology work in this case, as the resolution of the terminological problem is approached from the logic of lexicology, and not from terminology. It is at the third level of involvement that, in order to find an equivalent, the translator acts as a terminologist from the methodological point of view: once the problem is located in the conceptual structure of the field, the terminological gap is filled by means of a new term proposal, which is done based on the observation of the patterns of term formation in the field of specialty, and pondered regarding its viability of use. In this case, the transla tor starts to be minimally active in terminology and acts as ad hoc terminologist. Copyright © 2010. John Benjamins Publishing Company. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair usespermitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 7/27/2015 8:16 PM via UNIV OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN AN: 440659 ; Doorslaer, Luc van, Gambier, Yves.; Handbook of Translation Studies
Terminology and translation 365 Pavel, Silvia & Nolet, Diane. 2001. The handbook of terminology. Ottawa: Translation Bureau. Pearson, Jennifer. 1998. Terms in Context. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Sager, Juan C. 1990. A practical course on Terminology Processing. Amsterdam & Philapdelphia: John Benjamins.
Further reading
Bergenholtz, Henning and Tarp, Sven (eds). 1995. Manual of specialised lexicography: the preparation of specialised dictionaries. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Cabré, M. Teresa. 1999. Terminology: Theory, methods and applications. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Translated version of M. Teresa Cabré. La terminologia. La teoria, els mètodes, les aplicacions. Barcelona: Empúries. L’Homme, Marie-Claude. 2004. La terminologie: principes et techniques. Montréal: Les presses de l’Université de Montréal. Montero, Silvia & Faber, Pamela. 2009. “Terminology competence in translation.” Terminology 15 (1): 88–104. Copyright © 2010. John Benjamins Publishing Company. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair usespermitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 7/27/2015 8:16 PM via UNIV OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN AN: 440659 ; Doorslaer, Luc van, Gambier, Yves.; Handbook of Translation Studies
