Santrumpos terminijoje

Abbreviations in terminology GINTAUTAS Matematikos ir informatikos institutas GRIGAS abbreviations are used in all fields of science, they are also used in terminology. What abbreviations can be directly borrowed from other languages, usually English, which to translate, which to create your own, and will be discussed in this article. In addition, the abbreviations are not only written, but also read by voice. Therefore, we must also talk about their pronunciation. There are many abbreviations used in computer science. This is due to the fact that most of the terms in computer science are related to computers, 0 computers, computer networks and the Internet were pioneered by Americans. Therefore, the terminology of computer science was formed in the English language, which likes to use abbreviations. 1. OWN AND BORROWER TERMS An abbreviation is an abbreviation of a polyword term, made (usually) from the first letters of the main words that make up the term. A term may have an abbreviation or not. If it does, then the ratio of the use of the whole term and its abbreviation is important: 1) the whole term is more known and used than its abbreviation, 2) the abbreviation and the whole term are used approximately equally, 3) the more commonly used abbreviation, the whole term is little known and rarely used. The relationship between the term and its abbreviation may vary in different languages. In Lithuanian, abbreviations are used less often than in English. Therefore, when translating terms or taking them from the English language, the abbreviation should belong to the same group (with the same number as in English, or smaller). The division into groups is not accurate, because the words "little", "rare" do not express a quantitative measure. However, if the same rules are followed in all the languages considered, the inaccuracies should be reduced. 194 Gintautas Grigas | Santrumpos terminijoje We will consider individual groups of terms according to their use in foreign languages, mostly English. 1. The full term is better known and more commonly used than its abbreviation. Such abbreviations are not always given in the dictionaries, especially in their Lithuanian parts. At the beginning of an article or book, the abbreviation is explained, usually by giving the full term for the first time, and its abbreviation in parentheses. It is now used only as an abbreviation. For example: certificate revocation list, CRL —atSaukty revocation list; network interface card, NIC infra-red spectrometer, IR spectrometer —infraraudonasis spektrometras. 2. The abbreviation and the full term shall be used more or less equally. The whole term is convenient because it (usually) reflects the essence of the concept, and the abbreviation because it is short and (usually) its letters resemble all the words of the term by the first letters. Usually, such a concept has a fluent English name —term, for example: operating system, OS —operacinė sistema, OS; data base, DB —data base, DB; data base management system, DBMS —duomenij baziy valdymo sistema, DBVS. The Lithuanian abbreviation is naturally formed from the first letters of the Lithuanian words of the concept name, i.e. it is not transferred from another language. Sometimes a Lithuanian abbreviation may coincide with another language abbreviation (1 and 2 for example), but this is just a coincidence, not a rule. The English term may not have an abbreviation, for example: hard disk, HD —hard disk; floppy disk, FD — floppy disk. The term hard disk does not have a Lithuanian abbreviation, and the disk is short and without abbreviation. In such cases, when translating from English, the abbreviation should be replaced by the corresponding full name of the term. When the context is clear, the mark can be omitted and the concept can be named only by the relative term (disk). 3. Abbreviation more commonly used, the whole term is little known and rarely used. Such terms are abundant in computer science. Three subgroups can be distinguished within this group: 3.1 The full polynomial English term is informative enough, but it is more common to use an abbreviation, for example: Terminology | 2006 | 13 195 compact disk. CD — compact disc; recordable compact disk, CD-R — single-use jraSymo compact disc; CD-RW (Rewritable Compact Disk) CD-RW (Rewritable Compact Disk) For these terms, we managed to find Lithuanian equivalents that are more informative than English ones, so abbreviations are not necessary. In most cases, however, Lithuanian abbreviations may be used. This group is similar to the second one. 3.2. Informative components of a polyword term (individual words). Typical examples—- the names of color schemes: (red-green- -blue), RGB —(raudéna-- alia-mélyna), RGB color model; (cyan-magenta-yellow), CMY — (cyan-magenta-yellow), CMY color model; (cyan-magenta-yellow-black), CMYK —(cyan-magenta-- yellow-black), JPEG) color model. Color names are written in parentheses because they do not form a term. In the RGB color model, each color is represented by the amount of the three primary colors: red, green and blue in that color. The color code is represented by three numbers describing the part of each color component. To perceive the color code. need to know what primary color represents each component. When using the English model name, only the first letter R (red) would be informative, and the other two should be remembered that the letter G denotes green color and the letter B blue. It is much easier to use the Lithuanian abbreviation RŽM. Each letter will then correspond to the first letter of the primary color name, making it easier to read or write color codes that are constantly needed in computing. Therefore, it is appropriate to call the color models Lithuanian abbreviations. Such abbreviations are also used in descriptions of color models (Fledžinskienė 2000). 3.3. The term is not informative. Only the abbreviation is used. These are the names of various communication protocols, formats, formal languages, for example: (Post Office Protocol- ), POP — (Post Office Protocol- ). POP protocol; (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol- ), SMTP —(Simple Mail Transfer Protocol- ), SMTP protocol; (Hypertext Markup Language), HTML —(hipertekstiniy documents aprasy language), HTML language; (basic input output system), BIOS —(basic input/output system), BIOS system. 196 Gintautas Grigas | Abbreviations in terminology Many such terms can be considered proper names. For example, it is said that the POP protocol is one, a specific protocol. However, it is not always possible to draw a line between generic and proper names. For example, the BIOS system is a component of the operating system that performs certain functions, but is different on different computers. A typical example of non-informativeness is the pair of email protocols POP and SMTP. The first is used to receive messages, the second —to send. However, the English names explain little. It is unlikely that many English speakers would be able to decipher these abbreviations. The names of programming languages are often considered proper names, although some argue that they should be considered generic, similarly to the names of natural languages (e.g., Lithuanian, Polish). Direct (verbal) translations of the names of such concepts into Lithuanian would also be uninformative, and semantic translations would lose their connection with English. Therefore, they would hardly survive. Of course, there are many such English abbreviations and finding suitable Lithuanian names for all of them would be a difficult task. With all this in mind, such abbreviations should not be translated into Lithuanian, but used as symbolic names of objects. Since these abbreviations are not revealed or syllabled when read, they must be accompanied by related terms, such as POP protocol, POP mail protocol. In cases where an abbreviation is used to describe a species in conjunction with another generic term, the generic term of the abbreviation may be omitted. For example, a server that uses the POP protocol is called a POP server (not a POP protocol server). This decision was taken in the encyclopedic dictionary (Dagienė 2005). It should be noted that such abbreviations are treated similarly in other languages, 2. COUNCIL OF ABBREVIATIONS The pronunciation of abbreviations is explained in the normative publication (LKRS 1992: 73). The abbreviation is read in a row by naming the Lithuanian letter names. For example, DB reads dé-bé, DBVS —dé-bé-vé- -es. However, only examples of pronunciation of abbreviations of Lithuanian origin are given. This leads to doubts about how to pronounce abbreviations from abroad or how to pronounce their letters in the language from which the abbreviation originated. or in Lithuanian? Terminology | 2006 | 13 197 The argument in favour of pronouncing abbreviation letters in a foreign language is an accurate reflection of their origin. Arguments against the pronunciation of the letters of the abbreviation in a foreign language are as follows: 1. You need to know the names of the letters in a foreign language, and only those who know that language can pronounce them correctly. 2. Not all abbreviations have a known origin. In addition, there are abbreviations of mixed origin, for example, the second part of the name of the computer program interface RHIDE is derived from English: IDE = integrated development environment, and the first is the initials of Robert Hohner (a personal name of German origin), who improved this interface, 3. Lithuanian is a phonetic language (or rather, close to phonetic). Therefore, it is unusual to pronounce differently than to write. The following arguments can be given for the abbreviation letters to be pronounced in Lithuanian: 1. In other languages, the letters of the abbreviations are called their own language. I have never heard English people pronounce letters in abbreviations of other languages differently than they are called in the English alphabet. For example, Lithuanian television (LTV) is called [el-ti-vi] in English, the Latin CV (curriculum vitae) is called |si-vi], the Greek abbreviation ISO (from Greek isos —like) is pronounced [ai-sou]. If an Englishman would pronounce the abbreviation UAB [u-a-bé], he would hardly understand that it is UAB. The Germans call LTV [el-te-fau]. The German spelling dictionary (DUW 2003) provides the pronunciation of some abbreviations derived from English, for example CD [tse:'de:], DVD [de:fau'de- :]. 2. In information technology, letters are not divided into languages (Unicode 2003). There are no English, German or Lithuanian letters. All of them, with or without diacritics, belong to the same alphabet, in this case the Latin one. All this shows that the letters in abbreviations are naturally pronounced as such. as they are called in the language in which the abbreviation is used. Therefore, in Lithuanian text, abbreviations should be read in Lithuanian (in English — in English, in German — in German, etc.). Of course, there may be one more exception. For example, the abbreviation BBC is pronounced bi-bi-si. This was historically so, because a few decades ago we wrote on Bi-Bi-Si. Moreover, this abbreviation came to us not in written, but in oral form (through BBC radio). However, there should not be too many exceptions. A few years ago 198 Gintautas Grigas | Abbreviations in terminology santtumpa WWW claimed such an exception — many said in English: [dabl ju-dabl ju-dabl ju]. Now we are used to pronounce it in Lithuanian — [vė-vė-vė- ]. The abbreviaAtskirais atvejais, kai iš santrumpos raidžių galima sudaryti skiemenis, tion can be read in syllables, for example, MIME protocol [mime protocol- |, GIF file (file) [gif file (file) |. 3. CONCLUSIONS When creating and using Lithuanian abbreviations, the following rules should be observed: 1. The abbreviations of Lithuanian terms with more than one word (if necessary) are made from the corresponding Lithuanian term, i.e. they are not translated from other languages. 2. Abbreviations are used less frequently in Lithuanian than in other languages. Therefore, a term that has an abbreviation in another language may not have it in Lithuanian. (3) Abbreviations which in other languages completely replace the entire non-informative term may be transferred to Lithuanian as parts of the term indicating the species. 4.Abbreviations which in other languages completely replace the whole term, but the words of that term (e.g. names of colours) are informative and important in the use of the term, are not translated into Lithuanian, but form an abbreviation of Lithuanian words. 5.Abbreviations shall be pronounced in succession by listing the Lithuanian names of their letters, irrespective of the language from which the abbreviation originated. Grigas G., Jevsikova T. 2005: Enciklopedinis kompiuterijos žodynas, Vilnius, TEV. DUW 2003: German Universal Dictionary. 5, Dudenverlag. Fledžinskienė G., Kaulakienė A., Žalkauskas V. 2000: Computer color terms. —Terminologija 7, 2000. LKRS 1992: Lithuanian spelling and punctuation. Prepared by N. Sližienė, A. Valeckienė, Vilnius. Unicode 2003: The Unicode Standard. Version 4.0. The Unicode Consortium. Received 2006-11-27 Gintautas Crrigas Akademijos g. 4, Vilnius E-mail [email protected] Terminology | 2006 | 13 199 Matematikos ir informatikos institutas