English-Persian Translation of Neologism

Abstract

The teachers who are somehow involved in the task of translation most often hear their students' complaining: "Sir, we couldn't find some special words in our dictionaries." Fromkin and Rodman (1988, p. 123) categorize all strings of sounds into three sets of existing words, possible but nonoccuring words and impossible words. Newmark claims there may be at least eighteen types of unfindable word in a source language text (1988, pp. 176–177). However, in this paper, we will focus on one of the most important categories of unfindable words called neologisms. Neologisms in this study may include any newly-coined words, new collocations, compound words, new terminology, old phrases with new senses, acronyms, abbreviations, blends, eponymous words and derivational combinations. We will categorize neologisms into nineteen groups according to their structures and then an attempt will be made to give samples for each group with special attention to semantic transparency and phonaesthetic and synaesthetic effects in the process of translation. This paper hopefully seeks to become a head start towards opening perspectives to further researches on behalf of the interested researchers and educators.