From Regularities to Norms in the Secondary Formation of Romanian ICT Terms

Abstract

Starting from a parallel corpus of general use texts, this article investigates what kind of regularities are discernible in the formation of the terms used in the Romanian language of information and communication technology (ICT). After a brief presentation of the corpus that supported this research, the article begins with an introduction to the distinction made between the processes of primary and secondary term formation and considers it in relation to the concepts of translation regularities and norms as theorized by Gideon Toury. Starting from a concise examination of the sentence-based turn in translation studies, the final part of the article analyzes the main strategies used in the secondary formation of Romanian ICT terms (borrowing, loan translation, hybrid formation, and translation proper) and attempts to determine which of them could be seen as regularities that ampler studies could confirm as norms in this process.