An Introduction to The National Language Research Institute:
A Sketch of its Achievements
Third Edition(1988)/
HTML Version(1997)
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II.2.18 A Study of Specialized Terminology:
The Problems with Technical Terms
(Report 68, 1981. 286 pages)
This book reports on surveys and considerations of technical
terms from a variety of viewpoints. The contents are as
follows:
Chapter 1 Introduction: We described two approaches to
the definition of "technical terms" and gave concrete evidence for
the increase in the proportion of technical terms in modern
Japanese.
Chapter 2 International Comparison of Scientific Forms: We
demonstrated quantitatively that the "distance" of
scientific terms from basic vocabulary is greater in
Japanese than in English in 10 specialized fields and showed that
it was greater in Japanese than in German, French and Russian in
the field of physics. We also examined the mutual
comprehensibility of Chinese and Japanese technical terms and
described the extent of their visual similarity.
Chapter 3 Terminology in Private Enterprise: The results of
this survey showed that the difference between business terms
used in two different companies was greater than the difference
among the terms used by the various strata and specialized
fields within each company. In addition, we noted the
emergence of "company dialects" and showed that while the
standardization of machine names has spread, there is still a
tendency for older speakers to use the common machine names.
Chapter 4 Vocabulary and Sentence Structure in Technical
Texts: We estimated the percentage of technical terms in 8
fields including chemistry, sports, cooking, etc., and
compared features of sentences in technical texts
(explanatory discourse) with those in novels and movie
scripts.
Chapter 5 Technical Terms Excluded from Dictionaries: We
demonstrated that a large number of words frequently used in
technical texts are not listed in dictionaries of technical
terms, giving examples from mechanical engineering,
and described the lexical composition of technical terms in
this field.
Chapter 6 Changes in Technical Terms: We noted the
instability in the use of Chinese loan words for technical
terms in engineering which were translated in the Meizi Period,
due to the tendency to use GAIRAIGO, 'European (in most
cases English) loan words,' for technical terms in this field.
In contrast, sports terms were stable, because the use of
GAIRAIGO has always been high for technical sports terms.
Appendix: List of the Technical Research Texts Used in this Study
Supplementary Tables:
1. Contrastive Table of Scientific Terms in English and
Japanese
2. Cross Reference Listing of the Scientific Terms in
Glossaries of Mechanical Engineering
MIYAZIMA Tatuo directed this research.
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