Document Type : Original Article
Authors
1 PhD in linguistics, Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz
2 MA in librarianship and information science
Abstract
Background and Objectives: Words are the most important units of languages, means of communicating concepts, ideas, feelings, without words, we cannot talk about the objects, phenomena and concepts of the external and internal world. Words are the basic tools of thought, because they play a crucial role in the process of thinking. To think about the world and its phenomena, it is necessary to classify them based on similarities and differences. This classification is a kind of information organization represented in word formation. Along with the introduction and transfer of knowledge, technologies and new equipment’s into Iran, new scientific concepts and terminology enter into Persian. These scientific concepts and terminology will increase the number of borrowed words, direct or indirect; Indirect borrowed words are equivalents that may be appropriate or inappropriate for Persian. If the appropriate equivalents are made by the specialists of the area and in cooperation with linguists, they will more easily be accepted by the scientific society. But unfortunately, the problem is that these equivalents are sometimes made by non-specialists who are unfamiliar with linguistic problems, and therefore these new terms are not always appropriate.
Methodology: In order to study Persian technical terms of the field, first, the main sources, books and articles were identified and examined by the quantitative content analysis method. The second stage of the research is descriptive and is carried out by studying and analyzing the rules of term coinage based on the Guidelines and Principles of Word formation by the Academy of Persian Language and Literature. The corpus of the study is comprised of all the papers and books in the field, compiled in the fourth edition of the Bibliography of scientometrics by Hamid Reza Jamali Mahmouei, as well as the most recent papers and books published in the field. In this research, sampling has been applied and those books and articles have been selected for review which focus on the basics and concepts. The reason is that in these sources more terms and concepts could be found. Finally, 5 books and 60 articles were studied. Overall, 605 terms were extracted. 180 terms out of these 605 terms were mentioned in only one of the sources, and since they were not found in other sources of research, there was no possibility of determining the degree of uniformity and consistency in the equivalents. However, it was possible that in other sources, different equivalents were used instead. Findings and results of the research largely reflect the present status of the technical terms of this field of knowledge. The statistical method used in this research is descriptive statistics.
Findings: According to the statistics, 18% of the technical terms have more than one Persian equivalents, that is, one out of almost every six English terms in scientometrics. A closer look at the terms suggests that in some equivalents, in particular, the translation of proper names into Persian or, in other words, the transliteration of proper names has led into several different forms. However, some equivalents have been made through lexical borrowing, although they are phonetically and phonologically Persianized.
The linguistic origins of improper equivalents are as follows:
Using phrases instead of compound forms
Using prepositional phrases (PP)
Not paying attention to the rule “the shortest form is the optimal form” in word formation
Ignoring the vital role of affixes (Persian prefixes and suffixes) in forming Persian equivalents
Not paying attention to the important role of linguistic context and linguistic type on equivalent- finding.
Not paying enough attention to the fine semantic differences and delicacies of technical terms and their Persian equivalents.
Discussion: According to the findings, in the field of scientometrics, as in other disciplines, inconsistency, turbulence and sometimes linguistic mistakes are seen in equivalents. The factors of these inconsistencies are categorized in 6 categories as the lack of attention to the number of lexical components of the term, using ill-formed structures, using phrasal groups, paying no attention to the lexical category of the components of the technical terms, choosing long terms, using no affixation, lack of attention to the context and genre and neglecting differences and semantic delicacies of words.
Another finding is less synonymy and polysemy in scientometrics, in comparison to the fields like linguistics. Perhaps the reason lies in the fact that scientometrics is a newly-introduced academic field and naturally less Persian texts are created. Undoubtedly, it is expected that by an increase in the number of researchers in the area and authoring more Persian texts in this field, an increase in the number of inconsistencies, synonyms and homonyms will be observed. It is necessary to mention that in recent years, in Iran, a special attention has been paying to Farsi as the language of science on the basis of macro language policies. In this regard, various linguistic and non-linguistic strategies are approved to develop Persian standard technical terms. In this regard, the approval of a scientific department in Persian Academy of Language and Literature is necessary to supervise and approve the equivalents. In addition, producing and using standard bilingual dictionaries and frequently dictionaries also increase the uniformity of equivalences and hence the transparency of Persian texts in scientometrics.
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