Ihor Kulchytskyy, Marianna Malyar, Bohdan Fil’

Lviv Polytechnic National University

DIFFICULT ASPECTS OF LOCALIZING SOME TERMS IN APPLIED LINGUISTICS

© Kulchytskyy I. M., Malyar M. M., Fil’ B. M., 2014

The paper tackles the problem of faithful rendering of the terms ‘parsing’ and ‘stemming’ into the Ukrainian language. Nowadays, the use of these terms is extended beyond the domain of applied linguistics. The authors believe that the Ukrainian equivalents proposed adequately convey the meaning of the English terms.

Keywords: Ukrainian language, term, terminology, system of terms, applied linguistics, localization, word formation, lexicography.

The paper discusses expedience of using Anglicisms in the terminological system of applied linguistics on the example of the terms ‘parsing’ and ‘stemming’ applicable in natural language processing descriptions. The authors propose alternative Ukrainian equivalents compliant with the effective standards of terminology formation in Ukraine. The analysis relies on the studies conducted by terminologists, state standard ДСТУ 3966-2009 Terminology work: Principles and Methods of Developing Standards for Terms and Definitions and other authoritative lexicographical sources.

Any terminological system is part of the literary standard and is involved in its formation. Owing to the global nature of contemporary science, percentage of loan words in terminological systems is constantly growing due to the formation of global information space, social and economic processes aimed at world integration. However, the fact that Anglicisms predominate both in the category of borrowed terms in the contemporary Ukrainian terminology and in the Ukrainian language on the whole raises serious concern. Loans are often given preference for no particular reason.

The abovementioned terms are increasingly used in science. However, the impression is that, despite their English origin, they entered the Ukrainian terminology by traditional adaptation of the respective Russian equivalents. Analysis of Russian IT terms shows that terminology formation in Russia leaves space for improvement. To go on further from that, borrowing of terms via a mediating language is generally believed to be wrong.

Adaptation of the borrowed word forms to the Ukrainian standards would result in парс(инг)ування and стем(інг)ування, and the corresponding verbs would be парсувати and стемувати. This approach has its drawbacks, since even the adapted forms are viewed as loans.

In order to suggest proper Ukrainian equivalents to the English terms under consideration, their semantic structure should be analysed and major semantic features distinguished.

Analysis of the word to parse reveals that this verb denotes actions expressed in Ukrainian by such words as розкладати, розбивати на відповідні складові and описувати, пояснювати, характеризувати, i.e.  розбирати.

Therefore, we propose to use the term розбір as a Ukrainian equivalent to parsing, розбирати/здійснювати розбір instead of проводити парсинг, розбирач for парсер and as an alternative to синтаксичний аналізатор. Lack of semantic relations between meanings of the terms having forms similar to those mentioned implies homonymy, due to which the proposed terms should be included into dictionaries as separate entries.

Similar analysis of the term stemming shows that the process it denotes results in the stem of a word. Applying affixation to obtain a proper Ukrainian equivalent, namely by deleting the ending –а of the word основа and adding the affix -уват-, the term основувáти is obtained. The next step is to derive a noun expressing the process of extracting word stems from the verb основувати by adding -анн(я) [-нн(я)]. The resulting noun is основувáння.

Thus, to coin Ukrainian equivalents to the terms parsing — розбір and stemming — основува́ння, both morphological and non-morphological word formation patterns were applied. The term розбір was created as a result of splitting the meaning of the existing word and formation of a homonym, while its derivatives were formed by suffixation. The equivalent to the word to stem and its derivatives were obtained by using the derivational chain noun → verb → no with the stem основ-.