Slang is a nonstandard informal vocabulary peculiar to a group. In this digital age, the reproduction and evolution of slang words has become faster due to the digital platforms that they are often...Show moreSlang is a nonstandard informal vocabulary peculiar to a group. In this digital age, the reproduction and evolution of slang words has become faster due to the digital platforms that they are often used in. Research has been done on the lexical aspects of slang and slang in general (Sornig (1981); Metcalf (2002)), and on forms of digital slang (McCulloch (2019)), but none view slang as a mode of translation and applied it to to other types of text besides messages on social media. This thesis will address where digital slang terms come from, and if their origins can help explain how likely they are to be understood by someone who speaks regular English. To do so I will annotate a slang translation of Harry Potter, and research the etymological origins of the slang to try to discover - using Metcalf’s (2002) FUDGE theory - which slang terms are more likely to be understood. I expect to find that the slang terms that more closely resemble regular English words are more likely to be understood.Show less
This research is a literature and jurisprudence study into the effect of the differences in legal interpretation between the EU legal system and the US legal system regarding competition law on the...Show moreThis research is a literature and jurisprudence study into the effect of the differences in legal interpretation between the EU legal system and the US legal system regarding competition law on the translation of competition law terminology into Dutch. Both EU and US competition law addresses broadly the same categories of anticompetitive behaviour - agreements, monopolisation, mergers - but the wording and interpretation of the legislative provisions varies. EU competition law is originally based upon US antitrust law, and therefore shares a lot of the same terminology. The US antitrust law has undergone some fundamental changes in its interpretation, which has in turn driven EU and US terminology further apart. Nowadays, there are vast differences in economic interpretation, political interpretation and legal interpretation. These differences in interpretation have influence on the translation of competition law terminology from US English and EU English, respectively, into Dutch. In the jurisprudence it is shown that the ECJ interprets textually and teleologically, where the US Supreme Court uses conservative purposivism. This leads to differences in the meaning of the same term. Generally, the US Supreme Court find an additional proof of inefficiency necessary in order to establish a competition violation. Both EU competition law and Dutch competition law do not need this additional proof. Therefore, the semantic meaning of competition law terminology is narrower in the US than in the EU. For translation into Dutch it must be assessed on a case-to-case basis whether it is necessary to add ‘inefficiënte’ before a US term so that the target text reader has the same understanding of the legal term as the source text reader.Show less
This thesis aims to find out whether or not the procedures mentioned in Byrne’s Scientific and Technical Translation Explained (2014) are applicable to animal names and scientific nomenclature. A...Show moreThis thesis aims to find out whether or not the procedures mentioned in Byrne’s Scientific and Technical Translation Explained (2014) are applicable to animal names and scientific nomenclature. A secondary goal is to create a list of Dutch names for animals in the Gekkonidae family, following the naming guidelines set by Linnaeus (1758) and the International Code for Zoological Nomenclature (1999). After translating the names for 58 genera and 609 species, it was found that the retaining procedure mentioned by Byrne was highly applicable to zoological nomenclature, and a list of animal names for all species in 21 genera in the Gekkonidae family has been made.Show less
This thesis examines whether the conditions are right for a codification of a Euro-English. English has emerged as Europe’s undisputed lingua franca (ELF), and much earlier research on ELF...Show moreThis thesis examines whether the conditions are right for a codification of a Euro-English. English has emerged as Europe’s undisputed lingua franca (ELF), and much earlier research on ELF primarily revolved around identifying salient features for the purpose of a codification of ELF. Even though several salient features have been found in ELF, there is also increasing evidence of fluidity and flexibility, which brings the viability of a codification into question. Therefore, this thesis includes a case study, comprised of a corpus-based comparative analysis of English as a Lingua Franca in the professional organizational (PO) and leisure (LE) domains, in order to determine whether there is variability in salient ELF features. The results of the case study did not show any significant variability in the supposed salient ELF features in either domain. However, the features did not appear frequently enough in order to be considered as salient. Nevertheless, some evidence of variation was found in the features used by speakers of different lingual backgrounds, which could indicate that linguistic background plays a role in which particular forms are utilized at a particular point in a given ELF interaction. These findings, even though unexplored, support the observation that there are different ‘local Englishes’ in Europe, which makes the viability of attempting a description of ELF questionable. It can thus be concluded that a codification of Euro-English is unlikely at this point and that it makes more sense for English to continue as a lingua franca or to argue for a multiglossic recognition of Euro-Englishes.Show less
