The Null Horizons of Word-For-Word in Sci-Tech Translation: A Study of Bilingual Glossaries of Automobile Terms

Abstract

With the age long invasion of African local cultures by Western technological inventions, translating scientific-technical texts into local languages became imperative. However, terms for coding those western inventions in our local languages have not fully evolved, due mainly to the linguistic and cultural divergences between the western languages and African languages, the former, of wider diffusion than the latter. Colonization of African countries by the West did not help matters, as it entailed setbacks to efforts geared towards asserting the authenticity of African linguistic and cultural identities across nations of the continent, occasioned by suppressive colonial administrative policies. This situation has serious implications for interactions between the illiterate and literate population in contact with the use of western technological inventions at different levels of their uses in Nigeria. Our survey of the Automobile Industry, South-East of Nigeria, reveals some snags arising from divergences between igbo and English stemming from the dearth or paucity of equivalent terms in Igbo for the expression of many automobile concepts existing in English. This naturally poses a great obstacle to effective communication between English speakers and the great percentage of the Igbo youth population currently engaged in the industry as mechanics, who are not proficient in English. The trend thus underscores the need for deep-rooted Igbo Terminological researches in the automobile industry as a tool for translation, on one hand, interpreting and orientation of the illiterate Igbo masses in the industry, on the other hand. On the strength of the foregoing, this paper, outlines the limits of the literal translation (word- for- word translation) technique in the igbo equivalent definitions of some English Automobile Terms in a Bilingual Glossary of Automobile Terms.The said limits are hereby analyzed through a descriptive approach.