| CRITERION |
DEFINITION |
EXAMPLES |
METHOD |
COMMENTS |
| Cultural neutrality |
Property of a word in relation with frequence
of its appearance in the language, according to the culture. |
Vin, parfum, gastronomie
and the diplomatical words are not culturally neutral in French. |
In order to obtain a sample with the weakest
margin of variance, the culturally non neutral words are rejected. |
|
| Trans-linguistic homography |
The spelling of a word in a language is identic
to another word in another language. It applies to the identicaly written forms for a same
meaning as to the "false friends". It is possible to distinguish the
homographies with or without diacritics. |
Example of identical written form: casa
in in Spanish and Portuguese means «house». Examples of «false friends»: red in spanish("network"),
red in English ; hier in French ("yesterday") and hier
in German ("here"). |
words that present this characteristic (with or
without the diacritics) were rejectied from the sample. |
Only homographies taken into consideration are
those between the targeted languages and/or languages highly present on the Internet (as
German). In order to avoid the statistical risk of homography with languages not targeted
by the study, the words with less than four letters are rejected. |
| Trans-linguistic homography with one
element of a compound |
|
Mardi gras in English. |
It is necessary to control the results of the
research in order to detect this sort of intruders. |
It is possible to deduct the score of the
foreign forms. |
| Trans-linguistic homography by loan |
When a word of a language is accepted in
another language without being modified. |
Anglicisms as business,
sandwich or software. Vice versa, deja vu in English (French homograph
without diacritics). |
Loaned words are rejectied from the sample. |
|
| Homography with an abbreviation |
|
Numeral sept ("seven"
in French) with the abbreviations of septembre (French) and especially September. |
Avoid these words. |
our rules protecte usfrom the words with less
than four letters. |
| Homography with a frequent proper noun |
|
Julio, "July" in
Spanish, and the very frequent spanish Christian name with the same signifiant. Windows also represents the name of a very well-known software in the
Internet area. |
Rejection of the words of this category. |
|
| Trans-linguistic pseudo-homography |
Word with an orthographical common error
corresponds to a word in another language. |
Ambasador in Rumanian and ambassador in
English. |
The case is rejected only if the targeted
language is English. |
|
| Non-equivalent meanings |
|
Prix in French means at the same time premio
and precio (Spanish), price and prime (English). |
Avoid these words or, if it is possible,
including all the meanings when comparing them. |
|
| Non-equivalent morphosyntax : noun,
verb |
English, has a very different syntax from the
other studied languages. Often the same form is used as noun and verbal variation, the
later one being equivalent – moreover – to various conjugation forms in the
other languages. |
Love is at the same time the noun and
the verb : it has the same form both in infinitive (preceeded by "to"),
and in present simple (I Love, you love, we love, they love),
etc., etc. |
Avoid these words |
This characteristic of the English language
force us to reject the verbs a priori, . |
| Non-equivalent morphosyntax :
adjectives, nouns |
The adjectives, invariable in English, inflect
in gender and in number in the other studied languages. The nouns, which, generally, only
inflect in number in the other languages, also inflect according to the case (nominative,
genitive, etc.) and to the determinatum/non determinatum difference in Rumanian. |
The english adjective yellow corresponds
to amarillo / amarilla / amarillos / amarillas, in Spanish.
The english noun instability / instabilities corresponds to the next rumanian
variations : instabilitate / instabilitatea / instabilității / instabilități
/ instabilitățile / instabilităților. (We are not including the
variations without diacritics). |
It is necessary to multiply the variations in
gender, number and case in the other languages, when it is required in order to mantain
the equivalence. |
|
| Lexical and semantical pluricentrism |
When a language has more than one normative
lexico-semantic centre. |
In Spanish-speaking countries we can came
over nafta and gasolina ("petrol"). Americano, in
some Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America, does not have the same meaning as in
other countries or in Spain ("belonging to the whole continent " or "belonging
to the United States"). |
It is necessary to multiply the national or
regional synonymic variations in order to mantain the equivalence, when it is possible. |
|
| Orthographical pluricentrism |
When a language has more than one normative
orthographical centre. |
It is the case for English and particularly of
the Portuguese. Some words are spelt differently in the United States and in England (theater
and theatre), in Portugal and in Brazil (electricidade and eletricidade). |
It is necessary to mutliply the national
orthographical variations in order to mantain the equivalence if possible. |
|
