Neology and terminological dependency

The situation of the terminologies of cutting-edge sciences and technologies in such important languages as French and Spanish is rapidly changing. It can be demonstrated that they rely more and more directly on English-language terms and conceptual structures. This new situation calls for a review of the factors involved and how they affect neology as secondary term formation. This article seeks to characterize terminological dependency and to identify those parameters by which it can be measured. To do this, the authors first interviewed some Spanish-speaking researchers about their own practice, and then took three highly specialized micro-domains brought to light in the terminology work of graduate students of translation. After evaluating the validity of this latter approach, the authors analyse the three terminologies from linguistic and pragmatic points of view, concluding that, in the three fields, new terms are as closely modeled as possible on their existing English-language counterparts.