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.
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