English EU terminology in Serbian

Abstract

The process of aligning Serbian legislation with the legislation of the EU has stimulated the creation of a large body of specialized lexis and the modernization of the existing lexicon. In this paper, I discuss the linguistic mechanisms of contact-induced secondary term creation processes in the Serbian language within the scope of EU legislation and activities under the influence of English. Regarding the standardization of EU legislation terminology, Peruzzo (2012: 177) explores the need for the uniformity of terminology within every language in the EU. Namely, every language should be allowed ‘normative flexibility’ in adopting EU legislative provisions, but should also guarantee the maximum degree of uniform interpretation and the terms used should be clear, simple and precise. This means that in every EU language, consistent use of uniform terminology is of vital importance not only within a single text, but also across different texts related to the same issue. Fischer (2010: 28) observes two steps in the creation of terms in the EU: (1) terms are created in the dominating languages, predominantly in the procedural languages of English, French and German, and (2) they are translated into all other languages. She concludes that in most languages terms are created on the basis of a source term by translation, and that the creation of EU terminology can be described as a process in which (1) multilingual primary term-creation for the dominant languages is followed by (2) a secondary activity, intra-conceptual term-transfer for most other languages.