Metaglossia: The Translation World

Les campagnes américaines drainent avec elles des expressions on ne peut plus anglo-saxonnes qui peuvent devenir des casse-têtes pour les traducteurs et journalistes français.

Romney needs a diplomatic glossary; Libyan demonstrators apologize; and other top Thursday stories...

Consulates are not embassies: It went mostly unnoticed at the time, but in Mitt Romney’s televised statement yesterday on the attacks on U.S diplomatic missions in the Middle East, he repeatedly referred to “our embassy at Benghazi.” There is no U.S. embassy in Benghazi. Embassies are only in capitals, Tripoli, in the case of Libya. The attack was on a U.S. consulate in Libya’s second city.

Pro-America demonstrations: Protesters stormed the U.S. Embassy in Yemen, where fortunately no one was injured. Meanwhile, after the attack in Benghazi, a number of demonstrators turned out with completely different messages — apologetic, pro-American, and anti-al-Qaida. Some read “we are sorry” in English and Arabic. Another English sign read, “Thugs are killers don’t represent Benghazi or Islam.” Another read, “Chris Stevens was a friend to all Libyans,” referring to the slain U.S. ambassador. Others in Arabic read, “No no no to al-Qaida.”

A glossary of terminology relating to digital fonts and typefaces; defininitions and descriptions for typographic features...

Discussion among translators, entitled: Create a TM from a translated document.

For any other politician, I would hesitate to use such a loaded term when describing their actions, but LePage has given us a special license to use that word.

At a town hall in April, LePage declared that state workers in middle management were "about as corrupt as can be." His spokesperson claimed that this was a legitimate charge, even with a complete lack of evidence of any misdeeds, because one of the dictionary definitions of corruption is "spoiled or contaminated."

The next day, LePage doubled down on his attack, writing in a letter to state workers that they had been "corrupted by the bureaucracy" and that it was "union bosses" who had done the contaminating.

The LePage definition of corrupt isn't used much now. Webster's New World College Dictionary lists it as "obsolete," but it is a technical meaning of the word. Perhaps LePage, as part of his new state education plans, just wanted to teach us some etymology and show that corrupt came from the Latin corrumpere (to destroy or spoil) and rumpere (to break -- also the root of "rupture").

A different definition of the word might apply to LePage: The first meaning listed by Merriam-Webter's Dictionary of Law, which states that corruption is characterized by improper conduct "intended to secure a benefit for oneself or another."

Dictionnaire de la comptabilité et de la gestion financière is a unique
English-French dictionary of accounting and financial management terms. With updates made to reflect and integrate the terminology used in International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and in auditing standards (ISA and CAS), this international dictionary covers more than 16,400 English terms and over 22,000 French terms – including more than 850 new entries.

Designed to assist accounting professionals, students, managers, translators, writers and others working in French, this extensive resource
will help users find precise and nuanced answers to all their questions
concerning accounting and financial management terminology.

Higgs-Boson-Particle, BuzzWord by Macmillan Dictionary. Find the latest, popular new words in English.

A glossary of Mechanical Engineering terms available in English, German, French, Spanish, Russian, Czech, Swedish, Finnish and Norwegian bokmal.

Discussion among translators, entitled: Need help with activating and sdl termbases and activating Translation Memory in Trados 2011.

I don't have an answer. I don't believe we have enough practical experience to prove that any particular answer is correct. I can suggest certain characteristics of a terminologies that can serve veterinary medicine adequately.
The mechanics of the terminology must be sound.
The terminology must handle synonyms properly. Each of us developed our own internal dictionary while we learned at (at least one of) more than 25 veterinary schools and while listening to hundreds of different experts. Some of us like acronyms, some don't. Bottom line is that there are multiple correct ways to refer medical concepts and a useful terminology should allow users their preferences.
The terminology must (employ mechanisms to) evolve gracefully. How many medical discoveries have been made since YOU graduated from veterinary school? Our profession is constantly adding new knowledge and our need for new content to describe what we know never ends. Sometimes, we learn enough more about a disorder (Boxer cardiomyopathy) that it needs a new name (Arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia). This means that a functional terminology will change over time and new versions will be produced. New versions must not destroy the value of data collected using previous versions. That's what's meant by "evolve gracefully."
The terminology must support information retrieval and aggregation. This usually means that a terminology should be organized into (at minimum) a subtype hierarchy. The number of levels of the hierarchy is completely arbitrary and depends, mostly, on the needs of the analyst doing the retrieval and aggregation. Other knowledge management structures such as those employed by formal ontologies (http://obofoundry.org/) are likely useful, though they increase complexities and the difficulties associated with maintenance and distribution.

Sous le regard bienveillant des spotters, les kopites déploient le tifo bariolé des Reds dans le Spion kop d’Anfield Road et entament le You’llneverwalkalone. Pendant ce temps, les tifosi, dignes héritiers du pila paganica montrent que le 2e homme est bien là, supporter des rossoneri, en soufflant dans leurs vuvuzelas, faisant vibrer l’enceinte. Les teppisiti sont restés à la maison, écartés des tribunes pour la phase finale, afin d’éviter l’affrontement avec les hooligans. Ils pourront toujours suivre la retransmission en multiplex, en tripotant leurs paninis vintages…

2Assurément, si vous coincez sur plusieurs mots, et que vous êtes un fan de foot, ce dictionnaire du football peut vous convenir. Benoît Meyer découpe son ouvrage en quatre parties quantitativement inégales, conciliant une partie, la plus importante, un peu plus des 2/3 du livre, au dictionnaire lui-même, et trois autres parties, qui ont un caractère plus encyclopédique, consacrées aux clubs de football, aux stades et aux équipes nationales.

3La première partie, donc, est consacrée au dictionnaire lui-même, de 1-1-8 à zone technique. Vous pouvez ainsi apprendre, en début d’ouvrage, à mieux connaître les tactiques de jeu : de l’antique 1-2-7 aux plus récents 3-4-3 et au 4-3-2-1 utilisé par l’équipe de France en 1998. Vous pouvez savoir également à quelles équipes sont attribués des noms, par exempleles Aigles, les Aiglons, les Merengues, les Roja, les Galactiques, la Celeste, les BafanaBafana… Vous pouvez découvrir que les animaux sont très présents dans le football : l’aile de pigeon, le hérisson, le renard des surfaces, les crocodiles, le coup du crapaud, le corbeau, les condors, le bourrin, les fennecs, le ouistiti ou encore la panthère noire. Vous naviguez au sein de plusieurs langues : le pasuckuakohowog amérindien, le soccer d’Amérique du Nord, le cuju chinois, les torcidores brésiliens, le capocannoniero italien, l’asqaqtuk inuit, la bronca espagnole, la clericuscup du Vatican, la Mannschaft allemande, le penalty anglais… Vous y trouverez peut-être la poésie de certains termes comme la feuille morte, la flèche blonde, le major galopant, les sang et or, le pibe d’oro ou le pichichi. Évidemment, les mots d’argot sont également expliqués : pion, attentat, mine, manchot, balayeur, café-crème… et les antonomases comme une arconada, une panenka, une papinade. Il y a une petite place laissée au football féminin : avec un extrait d’une chanson de Mickey 3D pour définir la footballeuse : « Avec son petit chignon sur la tête/Et son petit short un peu serré/Ses chaussures blanches et ses chaussettes/Jusqu’auxgenoux bien remontées/La petite footballeuse de Sherbrooke/Avait les jambes un peu musclées », ou avec l’entrée par la coupe du monde féminine. Cette place peut être considérée comme insuffisante, notamment au regard du succès du football féminin au cours des jeux olympiques de 2012 et de son importance dans certains pays comme les États-Unis et le Japon.

LANGUE GHOMALA ET CONCEPTS SCIENTIFIQUES
Par KOM Bernard, Chercheur Indépendant
Douala - Cameroun
Août 2012
Le souci du progrès, quelle ambition bien naturelle chez les peuples. Que ce soit en pays riches ou en pays pauvres, en occident ou dans le tiers monde, le souci du développement constitue un crédo permanent chez les autorités politiques, administratives ou traditionnelles et autres.
Et pour parvenir à la réalisation quotidienne de cet objectif commun, il est indispensable qu'une mobilisation des ressources disponibles soit faite systématiquement dans tous les différents domaines: Politique, Agriculture, Urbanisation, Éducation, culture, Science etc. Cette dynamique le plus souvent impulsée par les pouvoirs publics, sont quelques fois aussi l’œuvre d'initiatives indépendantes.
Pour revenir au cas du continent africain en proie à moultes difficultés de développement, une préoccupation culturelle permanente est la promotion des langues locales, lesquelles sont le plus souvent menacées d'abandon ou de disparition. Mais cependant, malgré l'immensité du travail à faire dans ce sens, une certaine recherche linguistique a plus ou moins lieu en vue de préserver ou d'améliorer ce qui existe déjà.
Le GHOMALA, comme beaucoup d'autres langues africaines, dites à tons, se trouve aujourd'hui être enseigné sur la base de l'écriture phonétique internationale. Or, un tel enseignement assez exclusivement basé sur la phonétique, même s'il a certains avantages, contribue malheureusement à enfermer la langue à l'usage par écrit, à grande échelle.
Dans le développement qui suit, il s'agit d'oser donner une autre dimension au niveau actuel d'intégration de la langue ghomalà dans les habitudes linguistiques quotidiennes. A cet égard, il serait indispensable d'en justifier au préalable la nécessité, de définir de nouveaux concepts ensuite, ainsi que leurs modes d'utilisation.
1- Quelques définitions préliminaires
i) Le son: C'est est une sensation auditive provoquée par une vibration, d'après le E-book de la sonorisation.
ii) Langue à tons: C'est une langue pour laquelle une différence de tonalité dans la prononciation de mot entraîne des significations différentes. C'est le cas du Ghomalà, par exemple, où Mtze peut désigner ‘‘devant’’, "la chèvre", "l'habit", ou "les testicules", selon les tonalités adoptées. La majorité des langues du monde sont tonales, et de telles langues existent sur tous les continents.
iii) Langue vernaculaire: La langue vernaculaire, ou le vernaculaire, est une langue parlée seulement à l'intérieur d'une communauté en général réduite.
iv) Langue véhiculaire: La langue véhiculaire, qui est une langue de communication entre des communautés d'une même région, dont les langues vernaculaires diffèrent plus ou moins.
v) Homographes: Ce sont des mots qui s'écrivent de la même manière, tout en se prononçant ou non de façons différentes. S'ils se prononcent de la même façon, ils sont alors également homophones.
iv) Diacritique: C'est un signe accompagnant une lettre. Il peut être placé avant, après, au-dessus, en-dessous ou autour de celle-ci, dans le but de modifier la valeur phonétique de la langue, permettre une lecture plus précise, éviter une ambigüité entre les homographes.
vii) La phonétique: Du grec « phônêtikos », où « phônê » qui signifie la « voix », le « son », est une branche de la linguistique qui étudie les sons utilisés dans la communication verbale.

LD OnLine is the leading website on learning disabilities, learning disorders and differences.

The education field is so full of acronyms and specialized words that it can seem like a confusing alphabet soup! Find out what AYP, IEP, 504, and many other abbreviations and words mean in this glossary of frequently used terms.

Roofing terminology is unique, just like medicine has its own terminology that most people don't know, so does roofing. So, if roofing isn't your profession, you may find yourself stumped at some words.

When I first started learning about fragrance, the hardest part for me was simply understanding the language.
Like any specialized field – the perfume industry has a vocabulary that gives the men and women who discuss it a common language to build their discussions from.
Very useful when describing a products whose characteristics cannot be seen.
From the outside however – this specialized language can make the conversation appear elitist and it is a barrier to the regular guy who just wants to learn what fragrance is best for his needs.

A brief history of my interest in terminology management and how I gained full control over my bilingual term lists regardless of CAT tools...

The first time I thought about terminology management was back in 1996, when I was already three years in the translation business. Until then I had always translated using a bilingual list of words for each project, and I didn’t keep a system in place to consistently use my legacy terminology in future projects. That was when I met a translator who showed me his very systematic, elaborate big-momma glossary, which he updated after every project in a Word file formatted like a bilingual dictionary. Not that this approach was the best one – far from it: the file itself was heavy and slow, i.e. searching was a nightmare and my fellow translator preferred to use it in print format, printing an updated version after every couple of months. But this made me realize that 1) I had to devise a way to store and retrieve the bilingual terminology I learned with each project (browsing the dictionaries and other resources all over again for the same term seemed hardly productive), and 2) I had to find better ways to do it than with a single, heavy Word file. I spent the next couple of years using other smaller Word files for each domain (say, one for industrial engineering, one for NGO terminology) or Excel files for all-around glossaries for each of my language pairs. Having terminology stored as Excel files helped me a lot when I decided to adopt Wordfast, my first CAT tool, about 10 years ago. Which was not a perfect solution, since I still didn’t have a productive way to search and manage my terminology. And when I started using other CAT tools, the situation grew even worse, because now I had several terminology databases ‘inside’ each of my CAT tools (although with Wordfast the terminology was stored as text files, a neutral, as opposed to proprietary, format). I missed a tool that would allow me to store and search all my terminology in a single interface, not necessarily integrated with a CAT tool, since I could still export, say, Trados glossaries into Excel/text files. And above all I missed a tool that would give me the piece of mind of knowing that my terminology was safe and searchable regardless of a CAT tool. Imagine a translator who relies entirely on a CAT tool to store all his terminology, and then some glitch happens with the database, and gone is the hard-won bilingual terminology of several years – I didn’t want that to happen to me. Can a translator afford not to have a safe terminology management system? Anyway, I experimented with a couple of standalone terminology tools, but none suited my needs the way I had envisaged. It became clear that what I wanted was a small, uncomplicated dictionary application that I could easily update, importing content from neutral formats such as Excel CSV (comma-separated variables) or non-formatted text files (which were themselves the results of exporting databases from proprietary CAT tool formats) and exporting bilingual lists to such neutral formats to be used in CAT tools. A tool like that would make me independent of the various CAT tools I was using. Then about 5 years ago I found a tool (*) that was not only the best for what I needed, with a professional-looking interface and powerful searching capabilities (light years ahead of the searching with Word or Excel), but it also was a freeware application. And I’ve lived happily (and, when it comes to terminology, CAT-tool independent) ever since. Even now, after almost two years using a single CAT tool during 98% of my time, I find my terminology tool very useful – I repeat: for my own needs. But what about you, fellow translators? What do you do to manage your bilingual terminology?

What it's really like to study in the US, as told by current international students. Hear their stories and advice on scholarships, student visas, culture shock, campus life and more.

An A-Z explanation of all the more complicated terms in football...

The new season is almost upon us and that means watching seamless amounts of games, reading scores of match reports and generally breathing and living football. And don’t we just love it? However, the game has changed somewhat in recent years, with different tactics, different formations and different positions all put to use by managers these days. For example, who would have thought Vicente Del Bosque would go through Euro 2012 without playing a striker. After all, David Moyes has tried that one for years…

Still, there’s a number of phrases and terms that still make the mind boggle in the beautiful game and although we don’t have the ridiculous number of names or complicated terms like American Football or in fact cricket for that matter, there’s still a few things that could do with some explanation. To help you out, we’ve put together an A-Z of football terminology that will help you through the season:

Table of Contents: Issue 18
Special issue on Terminology, Phraseology and Translation - July 2012

EDITORIAL

Lucile Desblache
HTML [EN] [FR] [DE] [PL] [IT]
PDF [EN] [FR] [DE] [PL] [IT] P 1
Margaret Rogers
Guest editor's introduction
[about the author] [HTML] [PDF] PP 2-6
FEATURES

Dionysios Kapsaskis explores globalisation issues with Michael Cronin, Dublin City University.

Margaret Rogers interviews David Bennett, freelance translator.

Lucile Desblache interviews Myriam Salama-Carr, Director of the Centre for Translation and Interpreting, on recent changes in Translation Studies and developments in scientific translation.

[VIEW]

[VIEW]

[VIEW]

ARTICLES (Issue 18)

Alan K. Melby
Terminology in the age of multilingual corpora
[abstract] [about the author] [HTML] [PDF] PP 7-29
Elizabeth Marshman, Julie L. Gariépy and Charissa Harms
Helping language professionals relate to terms: Terminological relations and termbases
[abstract] [about the author] [HTML] [PDF] PP 30-56
Clara Inés López Rodríguez, Miriam Buendía Castro and Alejandro García Aragón
User needs to the test: evaluating a Terminological Knowledge Base on the environment by trainee translators
[abstract] [about the author] [HTML] [PDF] PP 57-76
Isabel Durán Muñoz
Meeting translators’ needs: translation-oriented terminological management and applications
[abstract] [about the author] [HTML] [PDF] PP 77-92
Renate Trurnit-Verbic, Université de Nice-Sophia Antipolis et Hélène Ledouble
Amalgames de la terminologie allemande : Problématique pour l’accès aux données terminologiques multilingues et la traduction
[abstract] [about the author] [HTML] [PDF]
PP 93-112
Mojca Pecman
Etude lexicographique et discursive des collocations en vue de leur intégration dans une base de données terminologiques
[abstract] [about the author] [HTML] [PDF]
PP 113-138
Tamara Varela Vila and Elena Sánchez Trigo
EMCOR: a medical corpus for terminological purposes
[abstract] [about the author] [HTML] [PDF]
PP 139-159
Marella Magris
Variation in Terminologie, Terminographie und Phraseographie
[abstract] [about the author] [HTML] [PDF]
PP 160-174
Katia Peruzzo
Secondary term formation within the EU: term transfer, legal transplant or approximation of Member States’ legal systems?
[abstract] [about the author] [HTML] [PDF]
PP 175-186
Maribel Tercedor Sánchez, José Manuel Ureña Gómez Moreno, and Juan Antonio Prieto Velasco
Grasping metaphoric and metonymic processes in terminology
[abstract] [about the author] [HTML] [PDF]
PP 187-205
REVIEWS

Rudvin, Mette and Elena Tomassini (2011)
Interpreting in the Community and Workplace. A Practical Teaching Guide
Reviewed by Jan Cambridge [HTML] [PDF] PP 206-207
Ángela Collados Aís, Emilia Iglesias Fernández, E. Macarena Pradas Mecías and Elisabeth Stévaux (eds) (2011).
Qualitätsparameter beim Simultandolmetschen Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven
Reviewed by Reviewed by Estel·la Oncins Noguer [HTML] [PDF] PP 208-210
Bernal Merino, Miguel Á. (ed.) (2011).
"Video Game Localisation." TRANS. Revista de Traductología, 15.
Reviewed by Rocío Baños Piñero [HTML] [PDF]
PP 289-291
Remael, Aline, Pilar Orero and Mary Carroll (eds) (2012).
Audiovisual Translation and Media Accessibility at the Crossroads
Reviewed by Aikaterini Tsaousi [HTML] [PDF] PP 214-216
Federici, Federico M. (ed) (2009).
Translating Regionalised Voices in Audiovisuals
Reviewed by Adriana Tortoriello [HTML] [PDF] PP 217-219
Bartoll, Eduard (2012).
La subtitulació. Aspectes teòrics i pràctics
Reviewed by Estel·la Oncins Noguer [HTML] [PDF] PP 220-221
Stolze, Radegundis (2011).
Übersetzungstheorien. Eine Einführung.
Reviewed by Anna Maszerowska [HTML] [PDF] PP 222-223
Sonzogni, Marco (2011).
Re-Covered Rose: A case study in book cover design as intersemiotic translation(2011)
Reviewed by María López Ponz [HTML] [PDF] PP 224-225
Cienki, Alan and Cornelia Muller (eds) (2008).
Metaphor and Gesture
Reviewed by Sara Rovira Esteva [HTML] [PDF]

A special issue of the Journal of Specialised Translation on Terminology, Phraseology and Translation is out. The Jostrans is an open-access journal and aims to create a forum for translators and r...

Le Comité des Constructeurs Français d’Automobiles édite cette année encore son dictionnaire du vocabulaire de l’automobile.

Toute l'actualité en image "Des Mots et des Autos", c’est le nom du dictionnaire qui est édité régulièrement par le CCFA, le Comité des Constructeurs Français d’Automobiles. La première édition date de 1995 et la dernière en date remontait à septembre 2010. Comme la société tout entière, et ce qui la compose, l’automobile est en perpétuelle évolution et les termes qui lui sont appliqués également. Une commission composée entre autres de représentants de l’Académie Française, des ministres des Transports et de l’Education Nationale, des constructeurs français, d’ingénieurs ou encore d’universitaires, s'est rassemblée pour définir la terminologie de chaque mot se rapprochant de l’automobile et en a édité un dictionnaire.

Information page on The Pavel, Terminology Tutorial...