Methodology and Technique for Assessing the Terminology Consistency in Translations: Based on Latvian and Russian Economic Texts

Abstract

Relevance of the issue: the topicality of the issue of terminology consistency in translations of economic texts is currently emphasized by the Latvian State Language Center and determined by the fact that many economic terms emerged in Latvian and Russian relatively recently, during the transition from a planned economy to a market economy. It remains disputable how to define and assess the terminology consistency in translations of economic texts. The corpus of the study comprises Latvian and Russian textbooks on economics of three generations (1990s, 2000s and 2010s), and in addition to them - bilingual and multilingual dictionaries of economic terms published in Latvia and Russia since 1990. The paper proves that that terminology consistency in translations of economic (and not only) texts can be assessed and compared (between text corpora and time periods) using scientific methodology and a special technique. The method of research are linguistic discourse analysis, which includes both quantitative and qualitative methods. General results, which also form the scientific novelty of this study include: (1) the put forward conceptual understanding of the terminology consistency as the structural component of the overall quality of terminology translation as well as the definition of the terminology consistency in translations; (2) the elaborated original methodology and technique for assessing the terminology consistency in translations not in the categories of ‘good-bad’, but in the conditionally ambivalent categories ‘consistent-inconsistent’ (for the incidental identification of processes occurring in the studied economic discourse); (3) the explained essence of discourse in translation studies, which is the target text within the background processes of the social reality that determine the creation (synthesis) and perception (analysis) of the translation.