Adaptation of gymnastics terms from English into Serbian

Abstract

Abstract Within the framework of an ever-increasing influx of English-based sports terms into Serbian, the paper will elucidate certain issues related to the actual and recommended adaptation of gymnastics terms in everyday use, as a contribution to A New English-Serbian Dictionary of Sports Terms. The analysis is based on a corpus of approximately 600 gymnastics terms in English and Serbian, compiled from official texts. The terms are critically examined from the perspective of adaptation of English units into the system of Serbian, at the level of content and form. Accordingly, the analysis will focus on the applied translation procedures and the method of transliteration. Given that the existing gymnastics terminology in Serbian includes numerous poly-lexical and poly-morphemic units, some of which do not comply with the linguistic standard of Serbian, the actual terms in use are also critically examined from the aspect of terminological standardization. This overview will thus be followed by a proposal for ways to standardize gymnastics terms in compliance with the model implemented in the existing English-Serbian dictionary of sports terms (Englesko-srpski rečnik sportskih termina) published in 2006.