A trilingual creation of terms of the computer language in English, French and Igbo

Abstract

Like humans, computers have their own language. This language is specific to them and is the main medium of communication between computer systems. A computer language consists of all the instructions to make a request to the system for processing a task and it includes various languages that are used to communicate with a computer. This language can only be made available in other languages by their being created in those languages. Term creation or Terminology cannot exist outside the cultural environment of its birth: Language. In other words, terms cannot be created outside language. We were able to collect lexical items of the computer language in English and found the French equivalents. We then created the Igbo terms of the computer language. Our creating terms in the Igbo language makes it possible for the computer language to be assimilated into the Igbo culture and be adapted and used by Igbo speakers. Nevertheless, there are challenges in the of creation terms. The thrust of this paper is to create terms in the computer language domain, explain how the terms were created, make a comparison of some of the terms in the three languages and suggest ways of making the terms created to be available to translators and native speakers of Igbo language. Keywords: computer language, cultural environment, term creation, terminology