Dr. Carlos F. Márquez Linares Dr. Enrique F. Quero Gervilla Doctoral Programme in Languages, Texts and Contexts Faculty of Translation and Interpreting university of granada

Conciseness Term Formation Requirement

As illustrated in the previous sections, the DT of terms in the field of Business meets certain term formation requirements, while contradicting others to varying extent. The only term formation guideline which can be objectively considered to be broken by DT is conciseness.

Indeed, the terms retrieved by DT are normally extensive, e.g.: concentrated ownership: концентрация активов компании в руках одного или небольшой группы акционеров (IFC) (kontzentratcyja aktivov v rukah odnogo ili nebol’shoj gruppy aktcionerov; L.t.: the concentration of the assets in the arms of one (shareholder) or a small group of shareholders).

Nevertheless, the DT method does not favor an unwieldy form with irrelevant or superfluous components. Some term forms generated by DT border on Semantic Calque (see A. 3.2.2. “Loan Translation or Calque”). For example, the term procurement lead time has the following equivalent in the Russian language: время реализации заказа (UNTERM) (vremja realizacii zakaza; L.t.: time of the order implementation). The term explains the form of the English term (“the interval in months between the initiation of procurement action and receipt into the supply system of the production model <…> (Farlex) but, at the same time, does not provide extensive details.

The term foreclosure, meaning “a situation in which a homeowner is unable to make full principal and interest payments on his/her mortgage, which allows the lender to seize the property, evict the homeowner and sell the home, as stipulated in the mortgage contract <...>” (Investopedia) has the following descriptive form in Russian: обращение взыскания (IFC) (obrashhenie vzyskanija; L.t.: imposition of penalty). This relatively concise term form can be considered as descriptive because it reveals the implicit semantic components of the term, i.e. it explains the meaning of the term.

The DT of terms can meet all the term creation guidelines, provided the term is created properly, i.e. without general, elusive, ambiguous, and irrelevant components. As part of LSP, there is no reason why Management terms should not follow the requirements conventionally attributed to terms. The term conciseness rule is the most contradictory of all the restrictions.

Although conciseness is a basic guiding line for all term formation methods, it is also the least reliable one in regard to term accuracy and transparency.

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