Translators and interpreters as adopters and agents of diffusion of planned lexical innovations: The francophone case

A study was conducted of francophone translators and interpreters as adopters and agents of planned lexical innovations promoted by the French government. The two major research questions were: (a) whether there are relationships between sociocultural, sociolinguistic, and socioprofessional variables and reported adoption, variable adoption, or rejection of planned innovations; and (b) whether the francophone translators and interpreters, schools training them, and terminological banks and organizations serving them are functioning as agents of diffusion, in unregulated contexts, for the official terms. The data are based on three questionnaires sent to individual francophone translators and interpreters in francophone countries (but not France), schools training translators and interpreters in francophone countries (but not France), and to terminological banks and organizations serving francophone translators and interpreters. Indicators of the sociolinguistic profile of individuals were found to be good predictors of reported adoptive usage, while additional variables need to be specified and tested for the prediction of reported variable usage by sociolinguistic context. While the majority of respondents are members of the group which believes translators and interpreters should be active agents of diffusion, missing data on this item suggests that it is controversial. Mother tongue French and years of experience were good discriminators of group membership. Schools, as a group, were not found to be functioning as active agents of diffusion. Language activity/affiliation of a school was a good predictor of school policy, however French identity correlated negatively with support of official terms. Terminological resources were found to be diffusing both official terms and competing alternatives as well as providing information to users about the source of authority for an innovation. It is suggested that translators and interpreters, schools training them, and terminological organizations could be powerful agents of diffusion of planned lexical innovations primarily through their many weak links with francophones worldwide. Evidence of some of the difficulties in implementing the planning of an international language by a national government, such as loyalty to regional sources of authority or client demands, was found in the data analysis.U of I OnlyETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permissio