Translating Neoclassical Compounds in Computer Terminology: A Comparative Analysis of Four Examples in English and Spanish: micro/mini, mono/uni

Abstract

Computer terminology has recently become an important source for many terms that have entered our general vocabulary in English and Spanish (Aguado de Cea: 1992, J. Barry: 1991, S. Yates: 1996). Thus, certain words such as cyberspace, hypertext, telecommunications and videogame have recenlty become very popular. Most of these terms result from the combination of a word and a classical element originating from Greek and Latin, i.e. auto-, bi-, cyber-, hyper-, mega-, meta-, mono-, tele-, etc. These terms are generally called neoclassical compounds (V. Adams: 1971, Bauer: 1980, M.F. Lang: 1990). Since English is the source language in computer terminology this type of neoclassical compounds have rapidly spread through several languages. This paper intends to analyze some of these classical elements from a contrastive perspective and to describe specifically two pairs of examples that are etymologically related in English and Spanish: mono- and uni-, on the one hand, and micro- and mini-, on the other. So, our analysis will be based on the main problems affecting the translation in Spanish of some examples of neoclassical compounds related to computer terminology in English.