A usage-based diachronic study of translated terminology

The essential attributes and pragmatic features of terms are reflected in their actual use. The diachronic dimension of terminology use has become a major concern in recent decades; however, few considerations are given to the use of translated terminology. In this paper, we report on a diachronic study on the use of the translated Chinese term zibenhua (资本化, capitalisation/capitalise) under Cabré’s theory of doors. We built a corpus by collecting the texts containing the translated term zibenhua from the People’s Daily (1950–2019) to investigate the changes in its use and the potential reasons for these changes. A usage-based methodology for researching the translated terminology is also described.