Keynesian Terminology in Romanian: A Case Study

Abstract

In The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), Keynes lays the foundations of what is today known as macroeconomics; trying to establish the causes of unemployment and inflation, he introduces a set of terms related to saving, consumption and investment: marginal propensity to consumption, marginal propensity to spend, propensity to liquidities, propensity to savings. His book was translated into Romanian in 1970, although the basic terms pertaining to Keynesianism had already been disseminated via courses in the history of economic ideas. The present paper assesses the way in which Keynesian terminology has been translated into Romanian: hesitations, overlaps can be identified (e.g. both motives and incentives are rendered as mobiluri; however, the major concern is the incongruity related to the terms inducement and propensity, both translated into Romanian as înclinaţie). It also attempts to offer a possible explanation of this incongruity for the Romanian terminology of economics.