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Article published In:
Terminology
Vol. 29:1 (2023) ► pp.103–132

A usage-based diachronic study of translated terminology

Exemplified by the translated term 资本化 (zibenhua, capitalisation/capitalise)

ORCID logo | Nanjing University
| Nanjing University
| Nanjing University

The essential attributes and pragmatic features of terms are reflected in their actual use. The diachronic dimension of terminology use has become a major concern in recent decades; however, few considerations are given to the use of translated terminology. In this paper, we report on a diachronic study on the use of the translated Chinese term zibenhua (资本化, capitalisation/capitalise) under Cabré’s theory of doors. We built a corpus by collecting the texts containing the translated term zibenhua from the People’s Daily (1950–2019) to investigate the changes in its use and the potential reasons for these changes. A usage-based methodology for researching the translated terminology is also described.

Keywords: diachronic study, the use of translated terminology, the theory of doors , zibenhua (capitalisation/capitalise)
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The corpus and methods
    • 2.1The corpus
    • 2.2Methods
      • 2.2.1Analysis of textual similarity
      • 2.2.2Analysis of collocations and contexts
      • 2.2.3Analysis of co-occurrence networks
  • 3.Results and discussion 1: Diachronic changes in the use of zibenhua
    • 3.1Diachronic changes in the linguistic aspect
      • 3.1.1The major collocational patterns of zibenhua
      • 3.1.2Changes in the collocational patterns of zibenhua
      • 3.1.3The increasing productivity of zibenhua
    • 3.2Diachronic changes in the conceptual aspect
      • 3.2.1The cross-domain trend
      • 3.2.2The changing core attributes of zibenhua
    • 3.3Diachronic changes in the communicative aspect
  • 4.Results and discussion 2: Interaction between the use of zibenhua and the historical context
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 31 January 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/term.21044.don
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