Abbreviations in English Shipbuilding Terminology and Their Translation into Romanian

Abstract

Abbreviations represent a substantial element in the English and Romanian word stock as well as in their shipbuilding terminologies. This paper is an analysis of the English abbreviations and their Romanian versions in an attempt to assess the availability of the latter language to shipbuilding Anglicisms. The research mainly consisted in the creation of a data bank to comprise the abbreviations that occur in English shipbuilding glossaries, dictionaries and lexicons and whose versions were included in similar Romanian lexicographic works. A first step in this project was the determination of the meanings assigned to the notion of abbreviation, which has been described to convey rather controversial meanings in English lexicology. The translational perspective of this approach was constructed on the concepts of foreignization and domestication, advanced by Venuti in the mid 1990’s. Our analysis was designed to highlight the English touch on the vocabulary of the Romanian shipbuilding terminology, at the same time disregarding both the quantitative and qualitative aspects of this influence. These aspects were waived because terminologies, like any other compartment of languages, are vivid organisms in a continual strive to develop, enrich and expand.