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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION................................................................................................3
CHAPTER I: NOTION OF TRANSLATION.....................................................5
CHAPTER II: ACRONYMS………………………………….........................13
CONCLUSION..................................................................................................20
BIBLIOGRAPHY..............................................................................................22
Introduction

Translation typically has been used to transfer written or spoken SL texts to


equivalent written or spoken TL texts. In general, the purpose of translation is to
reproduce various kinds of texts—including religious, literary, scientific, and
philosophical texts—in another language and thus making them available to wider
readers.
If language were just a classification for a set of general or universal concepts, it
would be easy to translate from an SL to a TL; furthermore, under the circumstances the
process of learning an L2 would be much easier than it actually is. In this regard, Culler
believes that languages are not nomenclatures and the concepts of one language may
differ radically from those of another, since each language articulates or organizes the
world differently, and languages do not simply name categories; they articulate their
own The conclusion likely to be drawn from what Culler writes is that one of the
troublesome problems of translation is the disparity among languages. The bigger the
gap between the SL and the TL, the more difficult the transfer of message from the
former to the latter will be.
The difference between an SL and a TL and the variation in their cultures make the
process of translating a real challenge. Among the problematic factors involved in
translation such as form, meaning, style, proverbs, idioms, etc., the present paper is
going to concentrate mainly on the procedures of translating CSCs in general and on the
strategies of rendering allusions in particular.
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means
of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates
writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist
partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh (ca. 2000 BCE) into Southwest
Asian languages of the second millennium BCE.

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Translators always risk inappropriate spill-over of source-language idiom
and usage into the target-language translation. On the other hand, spill-overs have
imported useful source-language calques and loanwords that have enriched the target
languages. Indeed, translators have helped substantially to shape the languages into
which they have translated.
Due to the demands of business documentation consequent to the Industrial
Revolution that began in the mid-18th century, some translation specialties have
become formalized, with dedicated schools and professional associations.
Because of the laboriousness of translation, since the 1940s engineers have sought to
automate translation (machine translation) or to mechanically aid the human
translator. The rise of the Internet has fostered a world-wide market for translation
services and has facilitated language localization.
Translating culture-specific concepts in general and allusions in particular seem to
be one of the most challenging tasks to be performed by a translator; in other words,
allusions are potential problems of the translation process due to the fact that allusions
have particular connotations and implications in the source language (SL) and the
foreign culture (FC) but not necessarily in the TL and the domestic culture. There are
some procedures and strategies for rendering CSCs and allusions respectively.
The present paper aims at scrutinizing whether there exists any point of similarity
between these procedures and strategies and to identify which of these procedures and
strategies seem to be more effective than the others.

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Chapter I
Notion of translation
Translation peers always encounter with different changes in equivalence within
different language levels range from physical forms into meanings. Catford (1988)
defined translation as the replacement of textual material in one language (SL) by
equivalent textual material in other language (TL). Generally, almost all
translation scholars emphasize the role of equivalence in the process or product of
translation directly or indirectly. Therefore, it is in the center of the translation studies.
It must be said that some scholars do not seem to refer to role of equivalence directly,
however, if some one looks at their studies s/he will easily find out that equivalence
would shed light on his/her studies. As a consequence, the nature of equivalence and its
contribution and taxonomy will be defined in the following lines.
Equivalence, inevitably, is involved in any theory of translation which can be
understood by the comparison of various texts cross linguistically. Catford (1988)
considers different shifts within languages and contends that there are various shifts
when any of translation is carried out by translators. He, heavily, focused on the
different linguistic elements as crucial variables in equivalence definition and
equivalence finding. Accordingly, he divided the shifts across languages into level and
category shifts. Level shifts include studies like morphology , graphology…… etc. and
category shifts consist of structural, class, unit and intra-system shifts.
There are other notions and assumptions described, explained and interpreted by
translators and translation scholars. The work of Nida and Taber, Vinay and Darbenet,
House and Baker are specifically dedicated to the equivalence, Baker (1992) regarded
some different equivalents in his effort toward the notion and practice of translatics. She
distinguished between grammatical, textual, pragmatic equivalents, and several others.
Vinay and Darbelnet (1995) regarded translation as equivalence-oriented study. They
said that equivalence is the ideal method in many practical problems of translatics.

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Nida and Taber (1964) focused on formal and dynamic equivalence; their flexible
binary oppositions were revised several times. House (1977) contended that equivalence
is either overt or covert; hence, she derived here theory of translation based on this
taxonomy.
Translatics or translation like many disciplines of science was scientifically
developed in the second half of the century. Because of the fact that all theories of
translation refer to equivalence as the most crucial factor centrally or peripherally.
Dealing with the process of finding equivalence is the most significant issue existing
among translaticists. Although finding equivalence is subjective, this subjectivity must
be based on the taxonomies defined by translation scholars.
Studying of factors effecting in the process of selecting equivalence started under the
classifications of translation theoretician. Generally, all translators cope with finding
equivalence in order to convey the translation units better. During this study and
finding, any translation scholar contemplate about the possible factors which appear to
affect it. Some scholars define a borderline between the equivalence which is related to
form and the equivalence that is relevant to meaning, however, all of them have
something in common that is the approval of some problems which impede finding
equivalence. One of the most important theories of equivalence is the Catford's theory.
Catford (1988) defined his theory based on different levels of equivalence. Afterwards,
he explained the conditions in which all translators deal with the equivalence finding.
He divided factors affecting equivalence finding into two different branches. The first
one was the linguistic factors and the second one was the cultural factors. These two
variables impress the equivalence finding process in various kind of translation.
Language translation is the facilitating of oral or sign-language communication,
either simultaneously or consecutively, between users of different languages. The
process is described by both the words interpreting and translation.
In professional parlance, interpreting denotes the facilitating of communication from
one language form into its equivalent, or approximate equivalent, in another language
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form; while translation denotes the actual product of this work, that is, the message thus
rendered into speech, sign language, writing, non-manual signals, or other language
form. This important distinction is observed in order to avoid confusion.
An interpreter is a person who converts a thought or expression in a source language
into an expression with a comparable meaning in a target language in "real time". The
interpreter's function is to convey every semantic element (tone and register) and every
intention and feeling of the message that the source-language speaker is directing to
target-language recipients.
Interpreting takes a message from a source language and renders that message into
a different target language (ex: English into Azeri). In interpreting, the interpreter will
take in a complex concept from one language, choose the most appropriate vocabulary
in the target language to faithfully render the message in a linguistically, emotionally,
tonally, and culturally equivalent message. Translation is the transference of meaning
from text to text (written or recorded), with the translator having time and access to
resources (dictionaries, glossaries, etc.) to produce an accurate document or verbal
artifact. Lesser known is "transliteration," used within sign language interpreting, takes
one form of a language and transfer those same words into another.
A very common misconception of translation is that it is rendered verbatim, as a
word-for-word syntactic translation of an utterance. A literal, verbatim translation of a
source-language message would be unintelligible to the target-language recipient
because of grammar differences, cultural and syntactical context. The intended meaning
of the message is: "you are traversing" or "you are out of town". That is the overall
meaning, tone, and style in the target language rather than a senseless word-for-word
translation (note: the example's translation can also be singular, past or present tense,
depending on context: another responsibility of an interpreter).
In court translation, it is not acceptable to omit anything from the source, no matter
how fast the source speaks, since not only is accuracy a principal canon for interpreters,
but mandatory. The alteration of even a single word in a material can totally mislead the
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triers of fact. The most important factor for this level of accuracy is the use of a team of
two or more interpreters during a lengthy process, with one actively interpreting and the
second monitoring for greater accuracy.
Translators have time to consider and revise each word and sentence before
delivering their product to the client. While live translation's goal is to achieve total
accuracy at all times, details of the original (source) speech can be missed and
interpreters can ask for clarification from the speaker. In any language, including signed
languages, when a word is used for which there is no exact match, expansion may be
necessary in order to fully interpret the intended meaning of the word (ex: the English
word "hospitable" may require several words or phrases to encompass its complex
meaning). Another unique situation is when an interpreted message appears much
shorter or longer than the original message. The message may appear shorter at times
because of unique efficiencies within a certain language. English to Spanish is a prime
example: Spanish uses gender specific nouns, not used in English, which convey
information in a more condensed package thus requiring more words and time in an
English translation to provide the same plethora of information. Because of situations
like these, interpreting often requires a "lag" or "processing" time. This time allows the
interpreter to take in subjects and verbs in order to rearrange grammar appropriately
while picking accurate vocabulary before starting the message. While working with
interpreters, it is important to remember lag time in order to avoid accidentally
interrupting one another and to receive the entire message.
On the surface, the difference between interpreting and translation is only the
difference in the medium: the interpreter translates orally, while a translator interprets
written text. Both interpreting and translation presuppose a certain love of language and
deep knowledge of more than one tongue.
However, the differences in the training, skills, and talents needed for each job are
vast. The key skill of a very good translator is the ability to write well, to express
him/herself clearly in the target language. That is why professional translators almost
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always work in only one direction, translating only into their native language. Even
bilingual individuals rarely can express themselves in a given subject equally well in
two languages. And many excellent translators are far from being bilingual - they may
not be, and need not be, fluent speakers of the source language (the language of the
original text being translated). The key skills of the translator are the ability to
understand the source language and the culture of the country where the text originated,
and, using a good library of dictionaries and reference materials, render that material
into the target language.
An interpreter, on the other hand, has to be able to translate in both directions,
without the use of any dictionaries, on the spot.
There are two types of interpreting: consecutive and simultaneous. In the most
popular form of simultaneous interpreting the interpreter sits in a booth wearing a pair
of headphones and speaking into a microphone. Strictly speaking, "simultaneous" is a
misnomer: the interpreter can't start interpreting until s/he understands the general
meaning of the sentence. Depending on how far in the sentence the subject and the verb
are located, the interpreter into English may not be able to utter a single word until s/he
heard the very end of the sentence in the source language! This should make it evident
how hard the task of the interpreter really is: s/he needs to be translating the sentence
into the target language while simultaneously listening to and comprehending the next
sentence. You can experience the difficulty of the task even if you are monolingual: just
try paraphrasing someone's speech with a half-sentence delay, making sure you
understand the next sentence while paraphrasing the previous one.
One of the key skills of the simultaneous interpreter is decisiveness: there is simply
no time to weigh the merits of variant translations or to recall just the right idiom in the
target language. Any delay and you may loose a few words (and possibly a thought)
that the speaker uttered. And since the speaker may be far away, or even in a different
room than the interpreter, the loss may be permanent.

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During consecutive interpreting the speaker stops every 1-5 minutes (usually at the
end of every "paragraph" or a complete thought) and the interpreter then steps in to
render what was said into the target language. A key skill involved in consecutive
interpreting is note-taking, since few interpreters can memorize a full paragraph at a
time without loss of detail. But interpreter's notes are very different from those of a
stenographer, because writing down words in the source language makes interpreter's
job harder when he or she has to translate the speech into the target language. Many
professional interpreters develop their own "ideogramic" symbology, which allows
them to take down not the words, but the thoughts of the speaker in language-
independent form. Then the interpreter's output is more idiomatic and less source-
language bound.
In spite of the vast differences in the skills of translators and interpreters, there is one
thing that they must share, besides deep knowledge of both languages: they must
understand the subject matter of the text or speech they are translating. One of the main
reasons why the Automatic Translation projects that were popular since 1950's failed is
precisely that reason. Translation is not a matter of substituting words in one language
for words in another. It is a matter of understanding the thought expressed in one
language and then explaining it using the resources of another language. In other words,
what an interpreter does is change words into meaning, and then change meaning back
into words -- of a different language. So interpreting is basically paraphrasing. And just
like you can't explain to someone a thought if you didn't fully understand that thought,
nor can you translate or interpret something without mastery of the subject matter being
relayed. This is why making sure that the interpreter is knowledgeable in the subject
matter of the conference or the workshop they are interpreting at is just as important as
making sure that s/he is an experienced interpreter.
In (extempore) simultaneous translation (SI), the interpreter renders the message in
the target-language as quickly as he or she can formulate it from the source language,
while the source-language speaker continuously speaks; a spoken language SI
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interpreter, sitting in a sound-proof booth, speaks into a microphone, while clearly
seeing and hearing the source-language speaker via earphones. The simultaneous
translation is rendered to the target-language listeners via their earphones. Moreover, SI
is the common mode used by sign language interpreters, although the person using the
source language, the interpreter and the target language recipient (since either the
hearing person or the deaf person may be delivering the message) must necessarily be
in close proximity. NOTE: Laymen often incorrectly describe SI and the SI interpreter
as 'simultaneous translation' and as the 'simultaneous translator', ignoring the definite
distinction between translation and translation.
In consecutive interpreting (CI), the interpreter speaks after the source-language
speaker has finished speaking. The speech is divided into segments, and the interpreter
sits or stands beside the source-language speaker, listening and taking notes as the
speaker progresses through the message. When the speaker pauses or finishes speaking,
the interpreter then renders a portion of the message or the entire message in the target
language.
Consecutive translation is rendered as "short CI" or "long CI". In short CI, the
interpreter relies on memory, each message segment being brief enough to memorize.
In long CI, the interpreter takes notes of the message to aid rendering long passages.
These informal divisions are established with the client before the translation is
effected, depending upon the subject, its complexity, and the purpose of the translation.
On occasion, document sight translation is required of the interpreter during
consecutive translation work. Sight translation combines translation and translation; the
interpreter must render the source-language document to the target-language as if it
were written in the target language. Sight translation occurs usually, but not
exclusively, in judicial and medical work.
Consecutively-interpreted speeches, or segments of them, tend to be short. Fifty years
ago, the CI interpreter would render speeches of 20 or 30 minutes; today, 10 or 15

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minutes is considered too long, particularly since audiences usually prefer not to sit
through 20 minutes of speech they cannot understand.
Often, if not previously advised, the source-language speaker is unaware that he or
she may speak more than a single sentence before the CI translation is rendered and
might stop after each sentence to await its target-language rendering. Sometimes,
however, depending upon the setting or subject matter, and upon the interpreter's
capacity to memorize, the interpreter may ask the speaker to pause after each sentence
or after each clause. Sentence-by-sentence interpreting requires less memorization and
therefore lower likelihood for omissions, yet its disadvantage is in the interpreter's not
having heard the entire speech or its gist, and the overall message is sometimes harder
to render both because of lack of context and because of interrupted delivery (for
example, imagine a joke told in bits and pieces, with breaks for translation in between).
This method is often used in rendering speeches, depositions, recorded statements, court
witness testimony, and medical and job interviews, but it is usually best to complete a
whole idea before it is interpreted.
Full (i.e., unbroken) consecutive interpreting of whole thoughts allows for the full
meaning of the source-language message to be understood before the interpreter renders
it in the target language. This affords a truer, more accurate, and more accessible
translation than does simultaneous translation.

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Chapter II
Acronyms

An acronym is an abbreviation of several words in such a way that the abbreviation


itself forms a pronounceable word. The word may already exist or it can be a new word.
Webster's cites snafu and radar, two terms of World War Two vintage, as examples of
acronyms that were created.
According to the strictest definition of an acronym, only abbreviations that are
pronounced as words qualify. So by these standards, for example, COBOL is an
acronym because it's pronounced as a word but WHO (World Health Organization) is
not an acronym because the letters in the abbreviation are pronounced individually.
However, opinions differ on what constitutes an acronym: Merriam-Webster, for
example, says that an acronym is just "a word formed from the initial letters of a multi-
word name."
Abbreviations that use the first letter of each word in a phrase are sometimes
referred to as initialisms. Initialisms can be but are not always acronyms. AT&T, BT,
CBS, CNN, IBM, and NBC are initialisms that are not acronyms. Many acronym lists
you'll see are really lists of acronyms and initialisms or just lists of abbreviations. (Note
that abbreviations include shortened words like "esp." for "especially" as well as
shortened phrases.)
A pronounceable word formed of the initial letters or other parts of several words.
An acronym generally comprises all upper case letters. SONET, for example, is the
acronym for Synchronous Optical NETwork, a North American standard for fiber optic
transmission systems. SONET became internationalized as SDH, an unpronounceable
initialism for Synchronous Digital Hierarchy. Acronyms occasionally comprise all
lower case letters. For example, bit is the acronym for binary digit, which is the basic
unit of information in a binary numbering system. Bit also is a word unto itself, and
with multiple meanings, including a small piece of something. Acronyms sometimes
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comprise both upper case and lower case letters. Sesame, for example, is the acronym
for Secure European Systems for Applications in a Multivendor Environment.”
Over the past several years a number of TLAs, ETLAs and other acronyms have
found their way into common usage. In fact, hacker Paul Boutin reportedly stated that a
shortage of three-letter acronyms would be the biggest problem in computing in the 90s.
Whereas we have survived that decade intact, there is a definite shortage of available
acronyms.
There is currently no metric available3 for determining the value of a given acronym.
As a result, it is not possible to determine which acronyms should be preserved and
which should be recycled. It is our vision that useless acronyms should, over time,
gradually be replaced by more valuable acronyms.
The problem solved by this paper is to construct a classification scheme for
acronyms that is both extensible and personalized. More formally, let A be an acronym
made up of the individual characters a1, a2, ..., ak (thus A consists of k letters). Now, let
A+ represent the sequence of words that results from expanding A. (It should be
obvious to even an idiot that A+ is not uniquely defined by A.) We define I(A) to be the
translation of , where can be either A or A+.
The remainder of this paper may or may not be structured. We never read this
section, so we consider it a waste of space. If you are reading this, you are frittering
away valuable time.
In this section we present the simplest form of the acronym system. In later sections
we will discuss how to extend and personalize the scoring system.
This definition serves as the basis for the first distinction between good acronyms
and bad acronyms: they should be words. That is, it is desirable for an acronym to be
oratable (written O(A)=TRUE). For example, SIGMOD is a better acronym than
VLDB; OIL is better than SQL.

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Secondly, we prefer acronyms that can be interpreted as real words. Continuing the
preceding example, OIL is a better acronym than SIGMOD because even though
SIGMOD is oratable, it has no translation.
There are numerous examples of bad acronyms: XML, NLM, TTFN, etc. Oratable
acronyms include KIF, LOL as well as many acronyms that have entered the vernacular
like SCUBA and LASER.
Acronyms that constitute real words are rarer; it is this scarcity that makes them
more desirable. Examples include OIL, COD, PINE, AIDS etc. Even rarer are the self-
descriptive acronyms. The only example we can think of is SPOOL. (If you can think of
others, you should find something more productive to do.)
Whereas all reasonable persons agree on the basic classification system, the values
chosen for tags are controversial. Thus, the values associated with each tag are not
fixed, but depend on the user. When personalization is incorporated into ACRONYM,
the value of an acronym is the sum of and the user- defined value of all valid tags.
This classification scheme delivers that which was promised. The value of any
acronym can easily be determined. The scheme is extensible and can be personalized. In
short, we anticipate a Turing award any day now.
The word is a portmanteau term combining back andacronym, coined in 1983 and docu
mented from 1994:
An "acronym" is a pronounceable word derived from the initial lettersof a phrase: Fo
r example, the word radar comes from " Ra dio Detection a nd R anging". Letters from t
he originating phrase areused to construct a pronounceable word. By contrast, a backron
ymis constructed by starting with a word (or an initialism) and,beginning with the first l
etter, using each letter to begin each wordof a phrase. The word then becomes an acrony
m or initialism of thenewly formed phrase. In this sense, a backronym is the reversal of
an acronym.
Since an acronym is defined as a word, and a backronym isconstructed from an acro
nym, it logically follows that the phrasemust come from a word. However, this rule is c
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ommonly broken,even by dictionaries providing examples such as DVD (an initialism,s
ee image) and SOS (a representation of the emergency signal usedin Morse code).
Types
Backronyms can be classified along various types. Note that thesetypes are not all ex
clusive of each other, that is, a backronym canbe mnemonic , pure , and recursive . How
ever, a backronymcannot be both pure and replacement .
A pure backronym occurs when the root word was not previouslyor commonly kno
wn as an acronym or abbreviation. Examples:
The word " wiki", from the Hawaiian word meaning "quick". Sinceits application to
consumer generated media, some havesuggested that "wiki" means "What I Know Is".
Adidas has been written about in All Day I Dream About Sports:The Story of the Ad
idas Brand . Adidas comes from the name ofthe shoe company's founder, Adolf
Dassler, whose nickname wasAdi ( Das sler). It has also been alternatively backronyme
d as"All Day I Dream About Sex", a backronym popularized by theband Korn, who rec
orded a song of the same name for theirsecond album Life Is
Peachy. In Spanish, a popular and sarcasticbackronym for Adidas is "Asociación De Idi
otas Dispuestos ASuperarse" (which could be translated as "Association Of IdiotsWillin
g To Improve").
• Kiss is simply the name of the band, but is often referred to as"Knights In Satan's
Service".
Sometimes the backronym is so commonly heard, that it is generallybut incorrectly b
elieved to have been used in the formation of theword, and amounts to a folk
etymology. Examples of these include:
Perl does not stand for Practical Extraction and Report Language (although it appea
rs in Perl
documentation. .), becauseaccording to , Perl is not an acronym. Many programmers ma
kethis misunderstanding.

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posh, which did not originally stand for " Port Out, Starboard
Home" (referring to 1st class cabins shaded from the sun onoutbound voyages east, and
homeward heading voyages west).The musical Chitty Chitty Bang
Bang popularised this erroneousetymology.
Golf is not an acronym for "Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden" ashas been suggest
ed. It is actually derived from the Scottishname for the game, gowf . This word may, in
turn, be related tothe Dutch word kolf, meaning "bat", or "club", and the Dutchsport call
ed Kolven.
The treatment of a word as an acronym even though it is not. For example, ping is a
utility used to test a path from one host computer to another across an IP-based network
in what is essentially a command to echo the packet from the remote host computer
back to the originating host. Ping is a word, not an acronym. However, Dr. David L.
Mills reverse-engineered ping into an acronym for packet Internet groper and a great
many people believe that was the original meaning. It was not.
The word is a blend of backward and acronym, and has been defined as a "reverse
acronym". Its earliest known citation in print is as "bacronym" in the November 1983
edition of the Washington Post monthly neologism contest. The newspaper quoted
winning reader "Meredith G. Williams of Potomac" defining it as the "same as an
acronym, except that the words were chosen to fit the letters."
An acronym is a word derived from the initial letters of a phrase: For example, the
word radar comes from "Radio Detection and Ranging."
By contrast, a backronym is constructed by taking an existing word already in
common usage, and creating a new phrase using the letters in the word as the initial
letters of the words in the phrase. For example, the United States Department of
Justice assigns to their Amber Alert program the meaning
"America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response," although the term originally
referred to Amber Hagerman, a 9-year old abducted and murdered in Texas in 1996.

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Backronyms can be constructed for educational purposes, for example to
form mnemonics. An example of such a mnemonic is the Apgar score, used to assess
the health of newborn children. The rating system was devised by and named
after Virginia Apgar, but ten years after the initial publication, the
backronym APGAR was coined in the US as a mnemonic learning aid: Appearance,
Pulse, Grimace, Activity, and Respiration.
Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step programs use backronyms as teaching
tools, similar to slogans such as "one day at a time," or "Let go, let God," but often with
an ironic edge. For example, a slip may be expanded as "Sobriety Losing Its
Priority," and denial as "Don't Even Notice I Am Lying."
Backronyms are often created as jokes, often expressing consumer loyalties or
frustration. For example, the name of the restaurant chain Arby's is a play on "RB,"
referring to "roast beef" as well as the company's founders, the Raffel brothers. An
advertising campaign in the 1980s created a backronym with the slogan "America’s
Roast Beef, Yes Sir!"
Many companies or products spawn multiple humorous backronyms, with positive
connotations asserted by supporters or negatives ones by detractors. For
example, Ford, the car company founded by Henry Ford, was said to stand for "First on
Race Day" among aficionados but disparaged as "Fix Or Repair Daily" and "Found On
Road, Dead" by critics.
Sometimes the backronym is so commonly heard, that it is widely but incorrectly
believed to have been used in the formation of the word, and amounts to a folk
etymology or an urban legend. Examples include posh, an adjective describing stylish
items or members of the upper class. A popular story derives the word as an acronym
from "Port Out, Starboard Home," referring to first class cabins shaded from the sun on
outbound voyages east and homeward heading voyages west. The word's actual
etymology is unknown, but it may relate to Romani påš xåra "half-penny" or to
Urdusafed-pōśh (one who wears 'white robes'), a derogatory term for wealthy people.
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Other examples include the brand name Adidas, named for company founder Adolf
"Adi" Dassler but falsely believed to be an acronym for "All Day I Dream About
Sports;" wiki, said to mean "What I Know Is," but in fact derived from
the Hawaiian phrase wiki wiki meaning "fast;" or Yahoo!, incorrectly claimed to mean
"Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle," but in fact chosen because Yahoo's
founders liked the meaning of the word itself.
As lexicographer Jesse Sheidlower points out in his book The F-Word, acronyms
were rare prior to the twentieth century, and most etymologies of common words or
phrases that suggest origin from an acronym are false.

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Conclusion

It is often said that some of the essential qualities of a good translator are: sound
knowledge of his working languages and general knowledge. Furthermore, it is
recommended that the translator should work into his mother tongue or first language.
In fact this is a prerequisite for gaining employment into international organizations.
This implies that the translator is deemed to be naturally more fluent in his first
language which is supposed to be the language of his immediate environment for his
formative years. Meanwhile, regarding translation of abbreviations to borrow the
expression of E.B. Sgarbossa in her article in 2005 August edition of the ATA
Chronicle, the "source language may turn out to be the source of trouble."
As mentioned earlier, abbreviations often stand for names of organizations,
associations, and educational institutions. Mastery of the language of the target text may
not be as important in this case as familiarity with the source-language culture. For
instance, abbreviations of multinationals, such as P&G (Procter and Gamble) G.E.
(General Electric) would be easily comprehensible to an Anglophone American
translator, but as he should be translating into Azerbaijani he would be confronted with
abbreviations such as BN (Bibliothèque Nationale) FO (Force Ouvrière), etc.which are
promptly discernible to a francophone translator. The difficulty is even higher with
abbreviations of multinationals. In the field of education, one can find plenty of local
abbreviations denoting either names of institutions or degrees. For instance, as a
Nigerian, I know that names of National universities are usually abbreviated to begin
with the prefix Uni-, Unilag (University of Lagos), Unilorin (University of Ilorin), and
state-owned universities end with the suffix -su, Lagos State University (LASU), Edo
State University (EDSU), etc. But as I normally translate into Azerbaijani, I will be
confronted with abbreviations such as HEC (Ecole des hautes études commerciales)

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LEP (Lycée d'enseignement professionel), etc. These are issues in the field of cultural
references.
In spite of the cultural issues, to deal with problems of abbreviations a good translator
must have the latest information worldwide at his disposal, through reading of
newspapers, journals, international magazines, the consulting of which has been
facilitated by the Internet. And of course while on the job, there are also popular online
dictionaries, as earlier mentioned in this paper, to get around the complex task of
translating acronyms,.
Another useful tool for the translator to have at his disposal a glossary of abbreviations
of the subject field he is working on. In some cases; the translator may also have to
consult his client or the author or the source text for more clarification of the terms.
In summary, one last exit route for the translator (especially if he is going from English
into Azerbaijani), is to simply render the acronyms as borrowed concepts, as they figure
in the original text. In this era of globalization, the issue of translating acronyms is
becoming less emphasized due to the constantly widening vocabulary, thanks to the
modern information technology. We are being faced with a deluge of new acronyms
daily and before these get officially translated from English into Azerbaijani, the
Azerbaijani speaker is already using the English acronym and is used to it.

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Bibliography

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(Ed), Routledge encyclopedia of translation studies. London & New York:
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3. Cohen, A.D. (1984). On taking tests: what the students report. Language
testing, 11 (1). 70-81.
4. Culler, J. (1976). Structuralist poetics: structuralism, linguistics, and the
study of literature. Cornell: Cornell University Press.
5. Graedler, A.L. (2000). Cultural shock. Retrieved December 6, 2006
from http://www.hf.uio.no/iba/nettkurs/translation/grammar/top7culture.html
6. Harvey, M. (2003). A beginner's course in legal translation: the case of
culture-bound terms. Retrieved April 3, 2007
7. Hervey, S., & Higgins, I. (1992). Thinking Translation. London & New
York: Routledge.
8. Jaaskelainen, R., (2005). Translation studies: what are they? Retrieved
November 11, 2006 from http://www.hum.expertise.workshop.

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