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

Linguistic Economy or Conciseness

Linguistic economy (conciseness) implies that a term should be as short as possible. A concise term has a number of advantages related to its use: it can be easily retrieved, reproduced, etc., e.g. the Russian term квартальный отчёт (kvartal'nyj otchjot), as a product of Calque from the English term quarterly report (Academic), obviously has priority over the term ежеквартальный отчёт эмитента эмиссионных ценных бумаг (IFC, 2004) (ezhekvartal'nyj otchjot jemitenta jemissionnyh cennyh bumag; L.t.: a quarterly report by an emissive security issuer) with a descriptive form from the perspective of convenience, not accuracy. The transparency requirement can be impaired once the requirement for conciseness is implemented. The more characteristics that are reflected in a term form, the more accurate the term is. The Russian term квартальный отчёт (kvartal'nyj otchjot), is less precise than the English term. Its form and usage were fixed in the source language and represent the results of special field development and monolingual term formation: “a quarterly report is an interim report that management issues to shareholders each quarter during the fiscal year. The quarterly report has been a fixture of the U.S. investment scene since the 1940s, when the New York Stock Exchange made it a requirement for its listed companies” (Investor Glossary). The Russian term components are not explicit, which justifies the usage of a long form of the term.

Term formation processes tend to favor conciseness over accuracy; however, a particular subject field determines the relevance of a certain requirement, i.e. whether it is reasonable and suitable to use long complex terms. In particular, the field of Management, which appears to be between strictly codified terminologies and close-to-informal language terminologies, shows the tendency of using concise term forms, which facilitates communication within the field. The Management term by-laws (bye-laws) comprises a lot of semantic components, which can be

retrieved from its definitions: “by-laws (IFC) are internal documents, a set of rules that enable each organization to conduct its affairs” (Srinivas, 2014); “the bylaws of a corporation contain the rules and procedures that govern the rights and powers of shareholders, directors, and officers” (All Business); “the official rules and regulations which govern a corporation's management” (InvestorWords). The term by-laws represents a case of generalization, while the term foreclosure (IFC) comprises the elements which were included in its form over the course of history: “the legal process by which an owner's right to a property is terminated, usually due to default” (InvestorWords); “legal proceeding in which "the bank can take possession of and sell a mortgaged property” when the borrower does not meet his or her contractual obligations” (About.com).

In Russian both by-laws and foreclosure have less concise equivalents, making semantic components explicit:

• 
  foreclosure: обращение взыскания (obrashhenie vzyskanija; L.t.: penalty infliction) (IFC)); poterja, lishenie prava vykupa (poterya, lichenie prava vikupa; L.t.: a loss, the deprivation of the right to buy something out) (Lingvo); переход заложенного имущества в собственность залогодержателя (perehod zalozhennogo imushhestva v sobstvennost' zalogoderzhatelja; L.t.: the process when a mortgaged property is handed over to a mortgagee (i.e. becomes his or her property) ) (Lingvo); lishenie prava vykupa zakladnoj (lishenie prava vikupa zakladnoy; L.t.: the deprivation of the right to buy out a mortgage) (Economicus);
  
• 
  by-laws: внутренние документы, правила и положения компании (vnutrennie dokumenty, pravila i polozhenija kompanii; L.t.: the private documents, rules and regulations of a company) (IFC); уставные нормы (корпорации); устав (корпорации); подзаконный акт; постановление органа местной власти; автономные правила (ustavnye normy (korporacii); ustav (korporacii); podzakonnyj akt; postanovlenie organa mestnoj vlasti; avtonomnye pravila; L.t.: authorized norms (of a corporation), a charter (of a corporation), a subordinate regulatory act, an administrative bill, autonomous rules) (Lingvo). This term will be discussed in depth in the section “B. Case Study” of the present piece of work.
  

5.