Cover not available

Article published In: Babel
Vol. 65:1 (2019) ► pp.114–130

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

Interlingual transfer of social media terminology

A case study based on a corpus of English, Spanish and Brazilian newspaper articles

 | Universidad de Valladolid
 | Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
Published online: 4 April 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.00077.ort
Abstract
This article addresses the terminology used in the field of social media, a new field introduced by recent technological advances. As social media was first created in an English-speaking context, speakers of other languages have had to develop ways to express the concepts of this field in their own languages. It is thus relevant for translators and journalists to understand the linguistic means by which the transfer of such concepts occurs. In order to achieve this, a comparable corpus of newspaper articles on social media (Facebook and WhatsApp) written in English, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese was compiled and the procedures used by Brazilian Portuguese and Spanish journalists to convey frequently-used English terms were examined. The main translation procedures observed in the study are equivalence, calque, loan and paraphrase. Although most procedures occur in the texts written in both Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese, their frequency of use indicates linguistic preferences in the languages.
Résumé
L’article traite de la terminologie des réseaux sociaux, un nouveau domaine qui est apparu en raison des récentes avancées technologiques. Étant donné que les réseaux sociaux ont été créés et se sont développés dans un contexte anglophone, les utilisateurs d’autres langues ont besoin d’exprimer ses concepts dans leur propre langue. Par conséquent, il est important pour les traducteurs et les journalistes de comprendre la manière dont le transfert de ces concepts intervient d’un point de vue linguistique. À cet effet, nous avons compilé un corpus comparable d’articles de journaux consacrés aux réseaux sociaux (Facebook et WhatsApp), rédigés en anglais, en espagnol et en portugais brésilien, et nous avons examiné les méthodes qu’utilisent les journalistes parlant le portugais brésilien et l’espagnol pour exprimer des termes anglais fréquemment utilisés. L’étude montre que les principales méthodes de traduction observées sont l’équivalence, le calque, l’emprunt et la paraphrase. Bien que la plupart des méthodes interviennent dans des textes rédigés tant en espagnol qu’en portugais brésilien, leur fréquence d’utilisation indique des préférences linguistiques.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction and justification
  • 2.Aim
  • 3.Corpus design and compilation
    • 3.1Corpus design
    • 3.2Corpus features
  • 4.Translation procedures
  • 5.Analysis
  • 6.Results
    • 6.1English into Brazilian Portuguese
    • 6.2English into Spanish
    • 6.3Overall results
  • 7.Conclusions and future work
  • Note
  • Reference
References (36)
Reference
Albert, Connie S.; and Al Farooq Salam. 2013. “Critical Discourse Analysis: Toward Theories in Social Media”. In Proceedings of the Nineteenth Americas Conference on Information Systems, Vol. 21: 926–933. Chichago (IL) [URL]
Anthony, Laurence. 2014. AntConc (Versión 3.4.3) [Computer Software]. Tokio: Waseda University. [URL]
Asociación para la Investigación de Medios de Comunicación. 2014. Encuesta general de medios. Madrid: AIMC.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baker, Mona. 1992. In Other Words: A Coursebook on Translation. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bernardini, Silvia; and Adriano Ferraresi. 2013. “Old Needs, New Solutions: Comparable Corpora for Language Professionals”. In Building and Using Comparable Corpora, ed. by Serge Sharoff et al., 303–319. Berlin: Springer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bowker, Lynne; and Jennifer Pearson. 2002. Working with Specialized Language. A Practical Guide to Using Corpora. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Corpas Pastor, Gloria. 2001. “Compilación de un corpus ad hoc para la enseñanza de la traducción inversa especializada”. TRANS. Revista de Traductología 51: 155–184.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2004. “Localización de recursos y compilación de corpus vía Internet: Aplicaciones para la didáctica de la traducción médica especializada”. In Manual de documentación y terminología para la traducción especializada, ed. by Consuelo Gonzalo García; and Valentín García Yebra, 223–257. Madrid: Arco/Libros.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2008. Investigar con corpus en traducción: los retos de un nuevo paradigma. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Corpas Pastor, Gloria; and Míriam Seghiri. 2009. “Virtual Corpora as Documentation Resources: Translating Travel Documents (English-Spanish)”. In Corpus Use and Translating, ed. by Allison Beeby; Patricia Rodríguez Inés; and Pilar Sánchez Gijón, 75–107. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
García Rodríguez, Araceli; and Eva Rubio González. 2013. “Un paseo por la blogisfera de la literatura infantil y juvenil española: de los ‘blogslijeros’ a Facebook”. In Un paseo por la blogisfera de la literatura infantil y juvenil española: de los ‘blogslijeros’ a Facebook. Puntos de encuentro: Los primeros 20 años de la Facultad de Traducción y Documentación de la Universidad de Salamanca, ed. by Araceli García Rodríguez; and Eva Rubio González, 51–72. Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Instituto Verificador de Comunicaçao, 2016. Jornais e revistas. São Paulo: IVC.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Josselin, Amélie. 2005. Place et rôle des terminologies dans les dictionnaires généraux unilingues et bilingues: étude d’un domain de spécialité : volcanologie. Thèse doctorale. Lyon: Université Lyon II.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Maia, Belinda. 1997. “Do It Yourself Corpora... with a Little Help from Your Friends”. In PAC’97: Practical Applications in Language Corpora, ed. by Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk; and Patrick James Melia, 403–410. Lodz: Lodz University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2000. “Making Corpora a Learning Process”. In I Corpora Nella Didattica della Traduzione - Corpus Use and Learning to Translate (CULT), ed. by Silvia Bernardini; and Federico Zanettin, 47–60. Bologna: Cooperativa Libraria Universitaria Editrice (Clueb).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Molina, Lucía; and Amparo Hurtado Albir. 2002. “Translation Techniques Revisited: A Dynamic and Functionalist Approach”. Meta 47 (4): 498–512. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Newmark, Peter. 1988. A Textbook of Translation. Hertfordshire: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
NHS, 2014. National Reader Survey Oct13–Sep14. [URL]
O’Hagan, Minako. 2012. “The impact of new technologies on translation studies. A technological turn?” In The Routledge Handbook of Translation Studies, ed. by Carmen Millán; and Francesca Bartrina, 503–518. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pearson, Jennifer. 1998. Terms in Context, Studies in Corpus Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rabadán, Rosa; and Purificación Fernández Nistal. 2002. La traducción inglés-español: fundamentos, herramientas, aplicaciones. León / Valladolid: Universidad de León/ITBYTE.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Roberts, Roda P. 2004. “Terms in General Dictionaries”. In A New Spectrum of Translation Studies, ed. by José María Bravo Gozalo, 121–140. Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Roberts, Roda P.; and Amélie Josselin. 2005. “Le Traitement des Termes dans les Dictionnaires Généraux”. In De la Mesure dans les Termes. Hommage à Philippe Thoiron, ed. by Henri Bejoint; and François Maniez, 324–348. Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sánchez-Gijón, Pilar. 2003a. “És la web pública la nova biblioteca del traductor?” Tradumàtica: Traducció i tecnologies de la informació i la comunicació. [URL]
. 2003b. Els documents digitals especialitzats: utilització de la lingüística de corpus com a front de recursos per a la traducció. Tesis doctoral. Barcelona: Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schwartz, H. Andrew et al. 2013. “Personality, Gender, and Age in the Language of Social Media: The Open-Vocabulary Approach”. Plos One 8 (9): 1–16. [URL]
Seghiri, Míriam. 2006. Compilación de un corpus trilingüe de seguros turísticos (español- inglés-italiano): aspectos de evaluación, catalogación, diseño y representatividad. Málaga: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Málaga. [URL]
. 2008. “Creating Virtual Corpora Step by Step”. In Researching and Teaching Specialized Languages: New Contexts, New Challenges, ed. by P. Sánchez Hernández, 435–449. Murcia: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Murcia.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2017. “Metodología de elaboración de un glosario bilingüe y bidireccional (inglés-español/español-inglés) basado en corpus para la traducción de manuales de instrucciones de televisores“. Babel, 63 (1): 43–64. [URL]
Thurlow, Crispin; and Kristine Mroczek. 2011. Digital Discourse. Language in the New Media. Oxford: OUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Varantola, Krista. 2002. “Disposable Corpora as Intelligent Tools in Translation”. Cadernos de Traduçao 1 (9): 171–180.
. 2003. “Translators and Disposable Corpora”. In Corpora in Translator Education, ed. by Federico Zanettin; Silvia Bernardini; and Dominic Stewart, 55–70. Manchester: St. Jerome.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vinay, Jean-Paul; and Jean Darbelnet. 1958. Stylistique comparée du français et de l’anglais. Paris: Didier-Harrap.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zanettin, Federico. 2002. “DIY Corpora: The WWW and the Translator”. In Training the Language Services Provider for the New Millennium, ed. by Belinda Maia; Johann Haller; and Margherita Urlrych. Oporto: Facultade de Letras, Universidade do Porto.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2012. Translation-Driven Corpora. Corpus Resources for Descriptive and Applied Translation Studies. Manchester: St. Jerome.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zappavigna, Michele. 2012. Discourse of Twitter and Social Media. London: Continuum Books.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Rull García, Irene & Kathryn P. Bove
2022. Ghosting, Breadcrumbing, Catfishing: A Corpus Analysis of English Borrowings in the Spanish Speaking World. Languages 7:2 ► pp. 119 ff. DOI logo
Chernovaty, Leonid, T. Andrienko, S. Potapenko & L. Slavova
2021. Rendering English pharmacological terms into Ukrainian: Translation and didactic dimensions. SHS Web of Conferences 105 ► pp. 03001 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 14 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue