Translation Patterns of English Terms into Spanish.

Abstract

As new concepts, objects or ideas are conceived in the field of scientific knowledge, so new terms appear to accommodate them. These terms are adapted to other languages in order to gain worldwide recognition. However, the procedure followed to transmit this terminology varies depending on the specificity of the field and on the richness of the target language. Sometimes, the target language has a similar term or phrase, which may be used to transmit the concept; i.e. an existing term can be adapted to convey the same idea. If this is not the case, a new term is introduced in the target language to express the concept or the term is literarily copied from the original language. In this paper, we intend to analyse the different procedures followed to adapt English terms to the Spanish language. The objectives of this paper are to observe and classify the different translation patterns of English terms into Spanish and to determine whether a procedure or standard organization exists which is taken into consideration when a new term is introduced to the Spanish lexicon. To date, we have not unveiled a standardised procedure for adapting an English term into Spanish. Hence, the need for standardised procedure to be followed when adapting new English terminology into Spanish will be proven.