1 / 2017-12-01 20:55:03

Contrasting terms

terminology,,term formation,,word formation,,naming

The present study focuses on the linguistic aspects of terminology in order to investigate the main term formation principles used in German and Greek. In this respect, terms are analysed in this study as naming units formed in a particular language in order to designate a specific concept. Main aim of this paper is to contrast German and Greek terms of different special languages in order to study the various word formation processes applied for the formation of equivalent concepts. Greek and German equivalents are collected by the use of glossaries and terminological databases. Representative terms are selected from different domains. Each selected term is analysed with regard to the morphological properties of each language and compared to equivalent one.

The linguistic analysis of term formation is part of the work delivered especially by terminologists, terminographers as well as domain specialists. Their work is related both to the primary naming of a new concept in a given source language as well as to secondary term formation in a target languages (cf. Sager 1990: 80). Since the increasing terminological needs cannot be practically covered in all languages by terminologists, terminographers or domain specialists, translator and interpreters are often dealing with cases of zero equivalence, especially when the target language is a terminologically less developed one, as for instance Greek. In such a case, they assume the role of a denominator and form a new terminological name. A contrastive analysis of terms in two morphologically comparable languages like German and Greek supports the naming work of translators and interpreters, especially those of the less terminologically developed language.