Formation of modern English abbreviations in business and scientific communications and their translation into Russian

Kameneva Nataliia Alexandrovna ORCID: 0000-0002-4768-6383 PhD in Economics Associate professor, Department of Foreign Languages and Speech Communication, Moscow International University; Associate professor; Department of philosophy, history and intercultural communications; Moscow Technical University of Communications and Informatics (MTUCI) 17 Leningradsky prospekt, Moscow, 125040, Russia n-kameneva@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

Introduction

Over the past decades, modern languages have shown a tendency to strive to convey the maximum possible factual semantic information in a minimum amount of time. This factor explains the truly explosive growth in the use of various abbreviations in oral and written speech. The growing number of abbreviations that are used in modern languages is quite natural.

Abbreviations are an important component of many scientific, journalistic articles and commercial documentation, and if used effectively, they not only reduce space, but also significantly facilitate reading and understanding of the text. Translators often encounter complex sentences replete with terms for which we already have well-established abbreviated forms. This article examines the characteristic features of abbreviations and acronyms in journalistic and scientific texts and business documents. The article cannot cover all possible existing abbreviations available for consideration, but contains practical examples that linguists and translators often encounter.

The formation of English-language abbreviations

The language of journalism, commerce and science contains many abbreviations and acronyms. If an abbreviation is a shortened form of writing words or phrases in various ways (e.g. NYC – "New York City"), then an acronym is understood as a terminological unit composed of the first letters of words, but which is pronounced as one indivisible whole and a single word (e.g. Benelux, UNESCO, CAPTCHA – "the verification code of the Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart"), WMD ("a weapon of mass destruction") ^{[1; 5]}.

Shortening terms and creating abbreviations has become a fairly common way of word formation in modern linguistics ^{[3, p.107]}. The methods of word formation by means of abbreviations and various abbreviations are presented in the Table.

Table. Formation of modern abbreviations ^{[1; 4]}

In addition, this classification can also be supplemented with abbreviations formed by combining the initial letter of a word with another word: A-bomb ("atomic bomb"), A-life ("artificial life"), e-discourse ("network discourse"), e-commerce, etc. ^{[1, c.52]} There are no gaps in the abbreviations with the ampersand (&), the new terms are read together: R&D ("Research &Development"), S &P ("Standard & Poor's Rating Agency"). Latinisms often found in publications are printed in abbreviated form with dots (e.g., err., H. E., I.E., etc.) ^[5].  Undoubtedly, it is impossible to reflect all the variety of modern abbreviations in one article. 

Some publishers do not require the decryption of abbreviations and acronyms that are registered in official dictionaries and reference books. However, most specialized and scientific journals have their own design style, according to which the use of less familiar abbreviations should be limited to those terms that occur often enough to justify shortening – about five or more times in an article or chapter – and the terms should be spelled out when they first appear.

Abbreviations of various structures and origins penetrate into all layers of the lexicon of modern European languages. They accumulate information in a language sign for its faster transmission and assimilation. In addition, generally accepted abbreviations increase the effectiveness of communication, reflect the trend towards a more rational and convenient use of spoken languages, complement and enrich them.

In journalistic and scientific texts, in accordance with the tradition of the journal, the abbreviations used help to create the desired context. After the first mention of the term in its full form, abbreviations perform the function of key concepts that are later used in publications. In addition, they act as graphical visualizers of new terms and attract the attention of the reading audience to the relevant sections of the text, as well as serve as markers of the information space of the text and organize the architectonics of the text accordingly.

At the same time, it should be noted that an abbreviation that has recently appeared in the literature must correspond to the structure of a certain language and generally obey the rules of translation of the vocabulary of this language, semantic correspondences between the correlation units of the source language and the target language are established during the translation process. The abbreviation conveys the basic meaning of the term without additional connotations.

The plural of abbreviations consisting of capital letters is formed by adding the ending "s" ("URLs", "PhDs", "vols"). Abbreviations formed from lowercase letters, or abbreviations with dots, form plural forms using the apostrophe and the ending "s" (e.g., "do's" and "don'ts"). There are a number of exceptions such as: p. ("page") – pp. ("pages"), n. ("note") – nn. ("notes"), MS ("manuscript") – MSS ("manuscripts"). Some abbreviations form the plural by doubling the last letter.

Translation of abbreviations

When translating, it is important that abbreviations can perform various syntactic functions in accordance with the rules of English grammar, i.e. have plural forms, show the possessive case and the past tense, as well as use affixes and articles. All this often makes it difficult to understand abbreviations in texts and to translate.

The translation of various abbreviations is an extremely complex process aimed at achieving a delicate balance between the equivalence of the source text and the translation strategies used. As a rule, translators experience comparable, i.e. almost identical difficulties in translating abbreviations from their native language into a foreign language and from a foreign language into their native language.

The use of abbreviations in business, journalistic and scientific discourse, especially in periodicals and commercial documentation, is associated with the presence of a common terminological base.  At the stage of authentic perception, it is difficult to identify an abbreviation and problems relating it to a complete terminological unit. The ambiguity of abbreviations creates additional difficulties in recognizing their semantic content and leads to the appearance of homonymy of terminological units ^{[2, p. 96]}. For example, the abbreviation "BC" can mean: "Bankruptcy Court", "birth certificate", "before Christ" and "British Council" ^{[1, p. 18]}.

In the process of translating and adapting abbreviations, the solution of perceptual and cognitive tasks in understanding a given foreign language text is transformed into a translation one. At the stage of transcoding, the variability of translation correspondences comes into conflict with the requirement of a single meaning of the term and unambiguous equivalence of its translation into a given language. The translator must not only translate the original message, taking into account the interlanguage correspondence of the abbreviation, but also follow the norms of the translation language and the publishing practice of a particular publication. An obvious translation error can be considered as a violation of the implementation of the relevant communication.

The fundamental principle of the translation of abbreviations is the need to achieve a balance of equivalence of abbreviations in the original language and in the translated language. This principle can be implemented using several translation methods. Among the well-known methods of translating abbreviations are, first of all, replacing the abbreviation of the source language with an equivalent abbreviation of the translation language, full borrowing of an abbreviated term or concept, its transliteration, transcription, translation of the abbreviation, translation of the abbreviation and creation of an abbreviation in the translating language, transcription of the letter-by-letter pronunciation of the abbreviation.

In some cases, in the absence of appropriate abbreviations in the dictionaries of the target language, a descriptive translation of the abbreviation is also possible, in which the root of the abbreviation is interpreted taking into account its microtext. The new derivative abbreviation must be approved by experts in this field of knowledge.

Conclusion

As a result of the study, the following conclusions were made:

·The translation of abbreviations is a complex process involving cognitive, linguistic and cultural aspects. High requirements for the quality of translation and the growing volume of intercultural and business communication require that the translator not only knows the subject well, but also is well aware of foreign language translation, lexicographic and linguistic-cultural norms and traditions and is ready to constantly increase the translation correspondences of abbreviations and the development of new ones to optimize intercultural dialogue.

·It is important to keep in mind the normalization of the translated text, i.e. its compliance with literary and linguistic norms and cultural traditions of the target language.

·The use of abbreviations and acronyms in national languages is often justified, since abbreviations can save time, but their inadequate translation or use may cause translation errors

·Abbreviations invade the everyday speech of certain social groups and are registered in various specialized dictionaries, including electronic sources. This makes it possible not only to study, but also to analyze the process of formation of abbreviated words by native speakers.