Metaglossia: The Translation World

Foreign words turn the focus on our native tongue The Nation The debate over the pronunciation of 'Thai-glish' reveals the challenges faced by the Thai language in an era of globalisation...

La voz inglesa holding, que significa 'sociedad financiera que posee o controla la mayoría de las acciones de un grupo de empresas', puede sustituirse por grupo.
Cada vez es más frecuente encontrar el término inglés en lugar de sus equivalentes en español: «El impulsor del holding de la abeja debía comparecer el pasado jueves tras ser arrestado un día antes», «Las irregularidades del holding Rumasa comenzaron en los años 70».
Este anglicismo es propio de la jerga empresarial y puede traducirse también por consorcio, grupo financiero, grupo industrial o grupo de empresas, según el contexto.
Así pues, en los casos citados anteriormente lo adecuado habría sido: «El impulsor del grupo de empresas de la abeja debía comparecer el pasado jueves tras ser arrestado un día antes», «Las irregularidades del grupo Rumasa comenzaron en los años 70».
Cabe recordar, además, que si se opta por la utilización de la voz inglesa, lo adecuado es escribirla en cursiva.

'operación' o 'intervención', mejor que 'cirugía'
La palabra cirugía se aplica a la disciplina médica que se ocupa de la curación mediante operaciones, por lo que se recomienda no emplearla como sinónima de operación o intervención quirúrgica.
Este uso tal vez esté calcado del inglés, pues en esa lengua surgery tiene, entre otros significados, el de ‘operación’ e ‘intervención’, pero en español son preferibles estos últimos términos, asentados incluso en el ámbito médico, donde cirugía suscita rechazo con este sentido por considerarse impropio y confuso, según explica el Diccionario de términos médicos, de la Real Academia de Medicina.

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Institute delays changes to borrowed words

SAOWANEE NIMPANPAYUNGWONG
THE NATION October 4, 2012 1:00 am
The Royal Institute yesterday said up to 90 per cent respondents to a Net survey disagreed with corrections to the spellings of 176 words borrowed from the English language, which carried tone marks indicating pronounciation.

A proposal to correct the words in the institute's official dictionary of 2011, faced mixed responses, and the institute's secretary-general Kanokwalee Chuchaiya said yesterday no changes would be implemented yet.

The idea for the changes was proposed by Royal Institute member Kanchana Naksakul.

About 100,000 copies of the new dictionary are being printed to mark His Majesty's 84th birthday.

Kanokwalee said the manuscript was based on the 1999 edition with some corrections and word additions for certain fields such as law, history, music and royal words. Also added were His Majesty's creations such as Kaem Ling (Monkey Cheeks), klaeng din (soil treatment) and setthakij por piang (sufficiency economy).

An internal opinion poll about the plan will be completed by October 31 and the result presented at the Royal Institute Council's fourth meeting on December 12, she said.

Meanwhile, about 90 per cent of the institute's officials opposed the plan to change spellings and offered several suggestions, Kanokwalee said. These suggestions will be tabled at the December meeting and the institute will also gather public opinion through websites and online posts, she added.

Former Royal Institute councillor Chai-anan Samudavanija said the institute should also seek other people's opinions, because everybody used the language.

Changes that will impact many people should be agreed upon widely especially among state agencies that had to use them in official documents.

Author Nittaya Kanchanawan said the written language helped put everyone on the same page, while people can pronounce words any way they wanted. She said words borrowed from other languages were either transliterations or given new meanings, such as "big bags", which to Thais means stuffed bags used to build temporary embankments.

Recently some Chinese scholars have complained that the inclusion of many English abbreviations such as NBA (National Basketball Association) in a newly published Chinese dictionary violates current laws and regulations governing the use of Chinese language.

They claimed that the main body of the newly published "Modern Chinese Dictionary" includes 239 entries containing letters from the Latin alphabet, which are treated as if they are common Chinese words.

In a joint letter, around 120 scholars said that as an authority on the correct use of the Chinese language, the dictionary's inclusion of so many English words is a threat to the purity of the Chinese language, resulting in linguistic damage probably unprecedented in modern history.

While the perceived damage is yet to be assessed, I think the threat these scholars alert us to is very real.

Sadly, their initiative has not gone down well with the general populace. Most of the media comments call these scholars alarmist, conservatives who are eminently out of touch with reality, or pedants seeking attention by creating a stir.

'Practical' objections

The objections are "practical": If we're not allowed to use GDP, CPI, or CT, we would be hard pressed to find any Chinese equivalents so succinct and expressive. We might face the dilemma of never being able to suggest these wonderful things.

Or is it because these abbreviations obfuscate so well?

I REFER to the letter “Keep Bahasa Malaysia pure and leave foreign words out” (Sunday Star, Aug 26).

I fully agree with the writer that more and more English words are finding their way into Bahasa Malaysia.

Prior to the introduction of the present spelling system Malindo (acronym of Malaysia and Indonesia) in 1972, Bahasa Malaysia was almost pure.

When the present system was introduced it was aimed at uniformity of Bahasa Malaysia which was the lingua franca of South-East Asia.

This system changed the spelling structure of certain words, vowels and signs like the ‘e’ tanda which was unique to Malaysia.

Words beginning with ‘ch’ like ‘changgih’ had the ‘h’ dropped to read as ‘canggih’. ‘Sh’ became ‘sy’ like in sharat to syarat.

When there are two vowels in the old system like the word ‘kampong’ it was changed to ‘kampung’. Purists raised protests then but the national interest over-shadowed it.

Setswana writing and translation may never be the same again, thanks to a new Setswana dictionary that welcomes hundreds of borrowed words into its vocabulary, paving the way for translators and authors to follow the lead and break free from the long held notion of using only pure Setswana.

The effects of the new Setswana dictionary and its influence on the way Setswana is written from now on could be far reaching. The new dictionary, Tlhalosi ya Medi Ya Setswana, is written for use by people of all ages; primary, secondary, tertiary education students, and other users of Setswana will look to it as a resource. It is the third Setswana dictionary since Morulaganyi Kgasa published the first one in 1976, which was followed by the second edition in 1998 by Kgasa and Joseph Tsonope.
Writers of Setswana are traditionally cautious with their word selection, preferring to go for what would be seen as pure and acceptable language of our forefathers, rather than selecting words that are used casually in informal settings. This conformity to tradition is known as, "setswana se se phepa" (pure Setswana). Writers of Setswana are largely conservative, guarding against borrowing words from other cultures, despite the fact that the words which are resisted are used every day.
The new Setswana dictionary recently launched by Medi Publishing, and authored by Thapelo Otlogetswe from the University of Botswana could rub the traditionalists the wrong way with its free spirited 'borrowing' that seems to make more than 50 percent of its content. Many of these words did not make it into previous Setswana dictionaries.
Borrowed words in the new Setswana dictionary include; AIDS, foramo (forum), meloterama (melodrama), memorantamo (memorandam), setatamente (statement), sepeti (speed), phanele (panel), waene (wine), wina (win), washene (washing) and waelese (wireless). The dictionary is also rich with obscenity; the author has included this vocabulary so that the user knows such a word is vulgar and hopefully refrains from using it.

La edición 2014 del Diccionario de la Real Academia Española (Drae) incluirá dos aportes de los hispanohablantes de Estados Unidos al idioma español: espanglish, con 'e', y estadounidismo. Estos aportes fueron entregados por la Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española (Anle).

Dozens and dozens of words used daily in the English language are originated from the Arabic language, or might even come from other languages and pass through Arabic into English.

Fernando Ávila, delegado de la Fundéu BBVA, da este y otros consejos de ortografía.

Poet Daljit Nagra revels in the extraordinary word horde of Hobson-Jobson, the legendary dictionary of British India.

Hobson-Jobson has resulted in more English words of Indian origin entering the OED than of any other country - dinghy, bungalow and shampoo to name a few. Since its first publication in 1886, Hobson-Jobson has been continuously in print for 140 years and has amused, inspired and seduced generations of writers from Rudyard Kipling to Salman Rushdie.

Dr Kate Teltscher of Roehampton University is producing a new edition for publication later this year as part of the Oxford World Classics series and she is entranced. She says it breaks all the rules about dictionaries. It's madly scholarly yet hugely idiosyncratic and fun.

Hobson-Jobson was compiled by two extraordinary polymaths Henry Yule and Arthur Burnell, who corresponded with scholars, diplomats, missionaries, intelligence officers and army personnel across the globe to produce their 1000 page lexicon.

In this programme, actor Tim Pigott-Smith reads entertaining and intriguing entries from Hobson-Jobson, and playwright Tom Stoppard describes how it inspired a famous scene in his play Indian Ink.

Courriel ou mail, mot-clic ou hashtag, réseautage ou networking: le français peine à s'imposer sur l'anglais pour rendre compte des nouvelles réalités numériques et économiques, vecteurs pourtant essentiels à l'expansion de la langue de Molière au XXIe siècle.
Est-ce un simple effet de mode ou une tendance lourde? Les francophones parviennent difficilement à créer de nouveaux mots pour décrire l'économie et les nouvelles technologies, ont regretté de nombreux experts réunis début juillet au premier Forum mondial sur la langue française à Québec.

Lire l'article sur Jeuneafrique.com : Et si le futur du français passait par les affaires et l'ère numérique ? | Jeuneafrique.com - le premier site d'information et d'actualité sur l'Afrique

In 1872 two men began work on a lexicon of words of Asian origin used by the British in India. Since its publication the 1,000-page dictionary has never been out of print and a new edition is due out early next year. What accounts for its enduring appeal?

Hobson-Jobson is the dictionary's short, and mysterious title.

The subtitle reveals more: "A glossary of colloquial Anglo-Indian words and phrases, and of kindred terms etymological, historical, geographical and discursive. By Colonel Henry Yule and AC Burnell."

But even the word "discursive" doesn't quite prepare the reader for what is to come.

"It's a madly unruly and idiosyncratic work," says poet Daljit Nagra.

"Not so much an orderly dictionary as a passionate memoir of colonial India. Rather like an eccentric Englishman in glossary form."

Continue reading the main story
30 words from India

B - bandana, bangle, bazaar, bungalow
C - catamaran, char, cheroot, chintz, chit, chokey, chutney, cummerbund, curry
D - dinghy, dungarees
G - guru, gymkhana
H - hullabaloo
J - jodhpur, juggernaut, jute
K - khaki, kedgeree
L - loot
P - pariah, pundit, purdah, pyjamas
S - shampoo
V - veranda
Take the entry for the Indian word dam. The dictionary defines it as: "Originally an actual copper coin. Damri is a common enough expression for the infinitesimal in coin, and one has often heard a Briton in India say: 'No, I won't give a dumree!' with but a vague notion what a damri meant."

That is the etymology of dam. But Yule and Burnell have more to say.

"And this leads to the suggestion that a like expression, often heard from coarse talkers in England as well as in India, originated in the latter country, and that whatever profanity there may be in the animus, there is none in the etymology, when such an one blurts out 'I don't care a dam!' in other words, 'I don't care a brass farthing!'"

There is a huge delight in language that's evident throughout the dictionary, says Kate Teltscher, reader in English Literature at Roehampton University, who is preparing the new Oxford World Classics edition.

I have always thought jangili is a Kiswahili word. But Ngugi wa Thiong’o gives me a good idea why the word is not found in the pages of D.V. Perrott’s Essential Swahili Dictionary.

Langues . Les protestations montent dans la province contre des mesures favorisant l’usage de l’anglais.

À force de manipuler une documentation inspirée du Common law dans un milieu régi par le droit civil, lorsqu'on n'est pas trop obnubilé par les formes étrangères, on en vient à reconnaître les lieux de non-chevauchement des institutions et des langues anglaise et française et c'est là où se trouvent les traquenards de la traduction les plus intéressants. C'est de cette manière que, au cours de nos recherches, nous avons repéré un certain nombre d'équivalents qui pourraient à l'occasion rendre service à ceux qui doivent traduire des textes à caractère juridique. Comme toujours, il ne s'agit pas de traductions définitives, mais davantage d'une contribution à une « équivalence dynamique » en traduction juridique. Nous avons ajouté le troisième chapitre à cet ouvrage afin de dénoncer et de devancer le « réflexe de l'anglicisme », soit l'incapacité chez le locuteur d'abandonner la forme du lexème étranger (le calque ou l'emprunt) pour n'en retenir que le concept et le mot juste en langue d'arrivée.

Those Rwandans who went to school in the 80s, even if they only knew Kinyarwanda, unwittingly also learned quite a mouthful of French along the way.

Gardienne, maîetresse, directrice, crayons, taxi, convoyeur, chauffeur, pédiatrie, feux rouges, cuisinière, ministre, président, gouvernement, député, commission... Those are a few among the innumerable French words still being used - either in full or slightly distorted form - in Kinyarwanda.

After 1994, English also became an official language, and while many of the French words remained, others got an "English" equivalent: many people no longer work ku biro (au bureau) but mu ofisi (at the office).

Small blind, dealer, slow-roll... Le « parler poker » est truffé de termes anglo-saxons. Une intrusion linguistique étrangère qui irrite les puritains de la langue de Molière, mais qui attire aussi par son aspect souvent imagé.

Halte aux anglicismes ! Mais au nom de la défense de la langue française, est-ce que l’on ne va pas parfois un peu trop loin ?