THE TRANSLATION OF NEOLOGISM

(NEOLOGISM & THE PHENOMENON AROUND)

Summited as An Assignment of Translation in ELT Subject

HERLINDA PUTRI1302662

MAGISTER OF ENGLISH EDUCATION

INDONESIA UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION

2014

NEOLOGISM – GENERAL DEFINITION

Descriptions referring to some dictionaries (Merriam Webster Dictionary,

Princeton University Thesaurus, The American Heritage Dictionary, Collins

Thesaurus) are similar, that neologism could mean as new-word, new usage,

and/or new expression. It could also be about the creation of new words or senses.

Furthermore, description of the term neologism in linguistic area referring to

Collin English Dictionary is a new coined word, or a phrase of familiar word,

used in a new sense. In addition, there is what so called neologism-symptom in

psychology area referring to Merriam Webster Dictionary and The American

Heritage Dictionary. It is when the invention of new words regarded as a

symptom of certain psychotic disorder e.g. those with schizophrenia –

meaningless for others but the speaker.

Newmark (1988) defined the term neologism in both language and

linguistic aspect, that it is newly coined lexical units or existing lexical units that

acquire a new sense. The neologism can be for a long time – or seems to be a real

new word, and also can be like just a temporary word.

The word “new” in those new word, new usage, new expression, and new

senses, means that the word, the usage, the expression, and the senses, did not

exist before. It could be years before or even longer – hundred years – in the

development of neologism.

According to the understanding of the author’s (of this paper) on

Newmark’s description (1988), neologism is a part of logical consequences of

various aspects of human development in language area. For example in

technology, new objects and processes are continually created. They need to be

named. Meanwhile in social sciences area, there are slangs and dialects coming

into the mainstream of language; transferred words, and make up the rest.

TYPES OF NEOLOGISM

Newmark (1988) categorized neologism into several types. They are:

Old Word with New Senses

They tend to be non-cultural and nontechnical. They are usually translated

either by a word that already exists in the TL, or by a brief functional or

descriptive term. For example, the word “bibi” in Bahasa Indonesia had a

literal meaning of “aunty” – but nowadays, it could also mean “housemaid.

Existing collocations with new senses are a translator's trap: usually these

are normal descriptive terms which suddenly become technical terms; their

meaning sometimes hides innocently behind a more general or figurative

meaning; e.g. "high-speed train” comes from TGV (train de grande vitesse)

– high-speed train in France, in French.

Existing collocations with new senses may be cultural or non-cultural; if the

referent (concept or object) exists in the TL, there is usually a recognised

translation or through-translation. If the concept does not exist or the TL

speakers are not yet aware of it, an economical descriptive equivalent has to

be given. For example “polisi tidur” – in British English also “sleeping

policeman” – means “speed bump”. Speed bump is often found in resident

living areas in order to keep the children playing around save.

There is also the possibility of devising a new collocation in inverted

commas, which can later be slyly withdrawn-Translators also have to be

aware of the reverse tendency, which is to use 'technical' collocations such

as ‘critical mass or ‘ in a generalised sense. This often leads to jargon which

can be corrected in the translation of informative texts. For example tug-of-

love – an informal British noun – in French becomes lute a” amour parenta.

However, in Indonesian, it could be without “-”. It is just translated into hak

asuh (or to be more specific, hak asuh anak).

New Coinages

Definition of coinage referring to Collins Thesaurus is invention of new

word(s) or phrase(s). It is a well known hypothesis that there is no such

thing as a brand new word; if a word does not derive from various

morphemes then it is more or less phonaesthetic or synacsthetic. All sounds

or phonemes are phonaesthetic, have some kind of meaning. Nevertheless

the etymology of many words, in particular dialect words, is not known and

can hardly be related to meaningful sounds.

Quark, a fundamental particle in physics, comes from a nonsense word used

by James Joyce in the novel Finnegan’s Wake: Three quarks for Muster

Mark! It is possible that this meaningless-word was invented by James Joyce

to get a rhyme. Furthermore, there is also the word “quark” in food – a kind

of cheese.

Derived Word

This word-forming procedure is employed mainly to designate (non-

cultural) scientific and technological rather than cultural institutional terms,

the advance of these internationalisms is widespread. For example

'bionomics' has given way to 'ecology' and 'ergonomics' (second sense) to

'biotechnology'. The translator has to consult the appropriate ISO

(International Standards Organisation) glossary, to find out whether there is

already a recognised translation; secondly, whether the referent yet exists in

the TL culture; thirdly how important it is, and therefore whether it is worth

'transplanting' at all or when it found out that the first translator did the same

– in other words, that the translated word is already establish in TL.

Abbreviations

They have always been a common type of pseudo-neologism; e.g.

Mendikbud is an abbreviation in Bahasa Indonesia, means Minister of

Education.

Collocations

New collocations (noun compounds or adjective plus noun) are particularly

common in social science and in computer language. If the collocations do

not have recognised translation, it is not allowed for translators to give their

neologism – they should add a functional-descriptive term. For example

‘high-tech industries’ refer to the industries with more developed aspects in

technology.

Eponyms

Newmark (1988) defined it as any word derived from proper name; e.g.

Hallidayan could mean ‘the followed of Halliday. The words are also able to

be derived from object – mostly the brands – but only when they are well

known and accepted in the TL, and are normally have to be translated in

denotative terms. For example the word “tippex” could mean “erase” – to

tippex means to erase, either generally or using correction fluid.

Phrasal Words

They are restricted to English’s facility in converting verbs to nouns, e.g. sit-

in, check-out, etc. They could be more economical than their translation, for

example in Indonesian language. “We are going to sit in the English

Grammar class” – means that the subject “we” did not officially take the

English Grammar class.

Transferred Words

Are kept only one sense of their foreign nationality, e.g. ‘pencak silat’,

‘kung fu’, ‘sari’, ‘kebaya’, etc.

Acronyms

An increasingly common feature of all non-literary text; for reasons of

brevity or euphony, are often to give the referent an artificial prestige to rose

people to find out what the letters stand for. For examples: LBH stands for

Lembaga Bantuan Hukum, and OPEC stands for Organization of the

Petroleum Exporting Countries. And there is also WALS, stands for World

Association of Lesson Study, which were first developed in 2006 because

this year 2014 its conference is for the 8th.

Pseudo-neologism similar to Abbreviation

NEOLOGISM – THE PHENOMENONThe more formal the language, the more conservative translators should be

in respect of neologisms.

There was once an issue, in Indonesia, about “Vickynisation” – a short

time neologism of, more likely things in Vicky ways, and even Vickybulary

(Solopost, 2013).

Totok Sugiharto, a linguist and a grammar expert (pakar lingustik dan tata

bahasa) from Universitas Indonesia (UI), explained that there are four things

Vicky did against rules of grammar (empat pelanggaran tata bahasa). They are:

1. afiksasi – penggunaan imbuhan (affixation)

2. kolokasi atau sanding kata (collocation)

3. hukum DM – Diterangkan Menerangkan (word order)

4. struktur sintaksis dan semantic (syntactic and semantic structure)

The Vicybulary, in the phenomenon, are listed below:

For several words, Vickibulary seems interesting. For example Idiot

means the impotence of intelligence, while Gila – Crazy (either in mental health

or in daily pragmatics term) means Disorientation of Rationality – it is most

probably too over-modified for the word “disorientasisasi”/”disorientationtation”.

And besides, those words do not meet the conditions of Schizophrenia symptoms

– as explained in the box below.

(Mental Health practical guide – Schizophrenia, 2011)

Neologism Words such as cable television (1966), CD-Rom (1988),

flashback (1966), environment (1972), hip-hop (1985), or piña colada (1967) were

new words in their times. Today, however, they are all familiar to the general

public. There are a lot of different viewpoints concerning neologisms and their

age. The main problem is to state when the new word becomes a neologism. Some

scholars think that if it feels like the word is a neologism – it is a neologism. Some

scholars claim that the word should not be older than 25 years so that it could be

considered a neologism. One of the methods used by scholars in any science is the

classification of the phenomena under investigation. For instance, in linguistics

we study different parts of speech; we know the functions of words in sentences.

What concerns neologisms, we have to state that the question of classification of

neologisms has not been settled yet; there is no single way of classifying them. In

different classifications worked out by scholars different aspects of neologism

have been taken into account. (Usevičs, 2006).

The Internet Era as part of the development of technology also gives

contribution in neologism. The letter ‘e-’ before many words referred to anything

electronically, as marker of culture and technology (Mc Donald, 2013). There are

E-Mail, E-Commerce, E-Book, E-newsletter, E-publishing, etc.

The Creation of Neologisms (Conclusion)Translators, as explained previously, are not supposed to

create their own neologism. However, they are allowed only in

conditions that they have authority – and for one or some reasons

they think it is important and has condition that no other translation

already exists.

A FRAME OF REFERENCE FOR THE TRANSLATION OF NEOLOGISMS

Type Contextual factors Translationprocedures

A. Existing lexical itemswith

new senses

I. Value and purpose of 1. Transference [with

neolog inverted commas)

L Words

2. Collocations

2. Importance of neolog to (a)

SL culture; (b)TL culture; (c)

general

TL neologism (with

2. composites)

TL derived word

B. New

forms

3. Recency 4. Naturalisation

1.New coinages

4. Frequency

5. Likely duration

5. Recognised TL

translation

2. Derived words

(including blends)

3.Abbreviations

4. Collocations

6, Translator's authority 7. Functional term

7. Recognised translation S. Descriptive term

8, Existence of referents in 9. Literal translation

5.Eponyms Phrasal

6. Words Transferred

7. Words (new and old

TL culture 9.

Transparency or

opaqueness of neolog

10. Translation procedure

combinations (couplets

etc.)

referents)

Acronyms (new and

8. old referents)

9.Pseudo- neologisms

10.Internationa lisms

10. Typeoftext U. T hrough -tra nsl ation

12. Readership 12, Internationalism

12. Setting

13, Fashion, clique,

commercial

14. Euphony

15. Is neolog in competition with

others?

16. Is neolog linguistically

justified?

17. Is neolog likely to become

internationalism?

18. Is neolog (acronym) being

formed for prestige

reasons?

19. Milieu

20. Status and currency of Neologism in SL

References

Newmark, P. 1988. A Textbook of Translation. An Interactive Approach to Language

Pedagogy. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.

Mental Health, practical guide. 2011.

McDonald, L. 2013. The Meaning of “E-”. Neologism as Markers of Culture and

Technology. Retrieved from:

http://www.yorku.ca/etopia/docs/conference/McDonald.pdf

.Usevies, S. 2006. Neologism in British Newspaper. Retrieved from:

http://www.dukonference.lv/files/proceedings_of_conf/53konf/valodnieciba_l

iteraturezinate/Usevics.pdf

Yustiningsih, R. 2013. Demam Vickynisasi. Inilah Vickybulary yang Beredar di

Jejaring Sosial. Retrieved from: http://www.solopos.cpm/2013/09/14/demam-

vickynisasi-inilah-vickybulary-yang-beredar-di-jejaring-sosial-447451

The Dictionaries.