Environment terms and translation students

Abstract

This article reports on a pilot study that aims to shed some light on how translation students construe specialized terms. More specifically, we verified their ability to associate environment terms with specific conceptual situations (as understood by Frame Semantics [Fillmore 1976; Fillmore and Baker 2010]). Respondents (27) were asked to complete a questionnaire containing 10 different questions that assessed the association of terms with conceptual situations from different angles. Results show that respondents can associate related terms and link sets of terms to conceptual situations and can make distinctions between the different components of conceptual situations when asked to produce lists of terms or select terms from a predefined list. However, when asked to assess the similarity or difference between specific terms, respondents are less likely to produce the anticipated answer. Our findings suggest that teaching and learning activities inspired by Frame Semantics may be helpful for students to structure their terminological analysis and deal with challenges such as ambiguity and fine semantic distinctions. We hope this can ultimately contribute to helping them make informed, precise and coherent terminological choices.