BENHAMIDA, LAUREL; PHD
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN, 1989
LANGUAGE, LINGUISTICS (0290); EDUCATION, LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE (0279);
LANGUAGE, MODERN (0291)
A study was conducted of francophone translators and interpreters as adopters
and agents of planned
lexical innovations promoted by the French government. The two major research
questions were: (a)
whether there are relationships between sociocultural, sociolinguistic, and
socioprofessional variables
and reported adoption, variable adoption, or rejection of planned innovations;
and (b) whether the
francophone translators and interpreters, schools training them, and terminological
banks and
organizations serving them are functioning as agents of diffusion, in unregulated
contexts, for the official
terms. The data are based on three questionnaires sent to individual francophone
translators and
interpreters in francophone countries (but not France), schools training translators
and interpreters in
francophone countries (but not France), and to terminological banks and organizations
serving
francophone translators and interpreters. Indicators of the sociolinguistic
profile of individuals were found
to be good predictors of reported adoptive usage, while additional variables
need to be specified and
tested for the prediction of reported variable usage by sociolinguistic context.
While the majority of
respondents are members of the group which believes translators and interpreters
should be active
agents of diffusion, missing data on this item suggests that it is controversial.
Mother tongue French and
years of experience were good discriminators of group membership. Schools, as
a group, were not
found to be functioning as active agents of diffusion. Language activity/affiliation
of a school was a good
predictor of school policy, however French identity correlated negatively with
support of official terms.
Terminological resources were found to be diffusing both official terms and
competing alternatives as
well as providing information to users about the source of authority for an
innovation. It is suggested that
translators and interpreters, schools training them, and terminological organizations
could be powerful
agents of diffusion of planned lexical innovations primarily through their many
weak links with
francophones worldwide. Evidence of some of the difficulties in implementing
the planning of an
international language by a national government, such as loyalty to regional
sources of authority or client
demands, was found in the data analysis.
Social
Systems Simulation Group
P.O. Box 6904 San Diego, CA 92166-0904 Roland Werner, Principal Phone/FAX (619) 660-1603 |