Barriers to technical terms in translation

Abstract

The present study investigates the frequency of use of neologisms (new terms) coined by the Academy of Persian (Farsi) Language and Literature (APLL) for foreign technical words, compared to borrowings from foreign languages in the translations of scientific and technical documents. It also seeks to find a relationship between familiarity with APLL-coined terms and their frequency of occurrence in translations of such literature. To achieve these goals, fifty-five PhD students of nine disciplines in humanities, medicine, technology, engineering and basic sciences were randomly selected. Then, nine technical texts, each including twenty technical terms followed by a twenty multiple-choice item test, along with a familiarity questionnaire based on the same twenty terms were given to the participants of each discipline with the aim to elicit the data required. Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test and Spearman's Correlation Coefficient were applied to analyze the data. The results indicated a significant difference between the frequency of APLL-coined terms and that of borrowings (Z = −5.140, Sig = .000). In addition, a positive correlation was obtained between familiarity with APLL-coined terms and their frequency in the translation of technical texts (r = .593, p.05). In fact, as the familiarity with APLL-coined terms increased, so did their frequency. These findings are suggestive enough for APLL and similar organizations as well as for language planners to increase the frequency of use of their coined terms either by enhancing their familiarity rate (i.e. the ease with which coined terms are recognized) by users or by naturalizing neologisms (i.e. enhancing their familiarity rate) in any way possible, thereby encouraging users to employ them further in their writings and translations.