Dealing with Abbreviations In Translation

（Edited by freelance Chinese translator li – English to Chinese or Chinese to English translation services）

Translating Abbreviations
This form of translation could be regarded as reformulation of abbreviations of one language to another. In most cases the order of initials change due to difference in the grammatical structure of the languages involved; e.g. UNO (ONU). At times, initials may be completely replaced; ISP (Internet Service Provider)—FAT (Fournisseur d'accès à l'internet). Still in other cases, they are reformulated into full words: WIA (Wounded In Action): les blessés de guerre. Some others are simply acquired into the target language as borrowed acronyms: laser

Following the above mentioned categories, a list of common international acronyms figures in the annex, especially those from international institutions, EU, UNESCO, WHO, and not leaving out acronyms of interstate and private persons organization, such as NGO and those of multinationals. Also, in this stage of modern InfoTech, this vocabulary would not be complete without some internet acronyms. They are categorized in 3 (three) groups: A Borrowed acronyms, B Inversion of order of letters and C Replaced initials.

Borrowed Acronyms
These are the acronyms that are identical in the two languages: English and French. These occur for the same reason that brings about the use of borrowed terms or loan words generally.
The issue of borrowed terms may be explained through one of the techniques of translation. Borrowed words usually arise from language contact of various linguistic communities. This may be due to wars, colonization, trade, etc., or for a need to maintain originality or local nuance of the SL text in the TL text or for simple stylistic reason which is the case with journalists. And at times it is simply the case of a weaker culture being subsumed by the stronger one. This is the case with most of the modern IT acronyms. That is why in French we have acronyms such as CDROM, DVD, FTP (File Transfer Protocol), email, even though the acronym couriel (for e-mail) now exists in French.

Acronyms by Inversion of Order
Some acronyms have the same letters in both English and French but not in the same order. For instance we have AIDS: SIDA, AU: UA, NGO: ONG, etc. The reason for this can be explained by the translation technique of transposition which has to do with the replacement of one grammatical unit or part of speech by another. This is inevitable since the grammatical structure differs from language to language. This difference is particularly highlighted in the position of adjective as regards French and English languages. Whereas in English, qualifying adjectives always precede their nouns, it is the opposite in French except for a few but frequently occurring adjectives. This explains why we have the following acronyms :

English French
AU (African [adjective] Union [noun]) — UA (Union [noun] Africaine [adjective])
IMF (International [adjective] Monetary [adjective] Funds [noun]) — FMI (Fond [noun] monétaire [adjective] international [adjective])
From the above, it can be noted that the words involved in the two languages are similar, which explains why the same initial letters occur in the acronym translation. On the other hand, the grammatical rules of the two languages mandate a different order or nouns and adjectives.

Acronyms by Replaced Initials
In this third group, the acronyms adopt entirely different initials because the equivalents of the words being reduced to initials are different in the other language. At this level, we have acronyms such as ILO (International Labour Orgnization) becoming OIT (Organisation intenational du travail); WHO (World Health organization) becomes OMS (Organisation mondiale de la santé); UFO (Unidentified Flying Object) becomes OVNI (Objet volant non identifié) etc.

At this juncture, it should be noted that for varied reasons some initials are rendered as full words in another language; e.g. POW (Prisoners of War) is les prisonniers de guerre. In French you always hear of TGV (Train à grande vitesse) whereas in English this acronyms simply translates to high speed train. And SVP (s'il vous plait) is simply rendered as please in English.

Of course, being conversant in the above-stated rules and techniques is not the only thing needed to confront problems of abbreviation, but their knowledge can be of great help to the translator. The remaining problems can then be solved by consulting the necessary translation tools which range from hard-copy dictionaries, glossaries etc. to online ones, such as the Acronym Finder (http://www.acronymfinder.com), which has over 470,000 definitions and, for specifically technical terms, Wiley InterScience Acronym Finder (http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/stasa/search.html). Above all, the translator needs a broad and deep general culture.