Translation procedures in secondary term formation across languages in online glossaries: Universal or language-specific?

Abstract

Online terminological glossaries may play a key role in translating and disseminating terms in multiple languages, especially in those highly specialized domains where no other terminological sources are available. The influence of English as a lingua franca is undeniable in the process of shaping target language terminologies. The purpose of this paper is to explore types of secondary term formation and the related translation procedures as reflected in specialized online glossaries in the domain of start-up companies to find out whether they are universal or language-specific. The study investigates 28 online glossaries in five languages with a total of 1,566 terms. It is hypothesised that contact-based term formation with a considerable influence of English is significantly more frequent than interpretative term formation with little or no such influence. It is also proposed that among the translation procedures transference is of the highest occurrence. According to the third hypothesis, languages differ in their preference for various translation procedures. Statistical tests have confirmed all three hypotheses. In addition, our findings also shed light on the lexical gaps in the target languages under investigation.