Glossary

acronym

an abbreviation that is formed from the first letter or letters of a group of words. Acronyms are pronounced like words, as in NATO (NAY-toh). By contrast, initialisms are pronounced by saying the name of each letter, as in RCA (R-C-A).

clause

a unit of sentence structure that includes a verb and usually a subject. See also main clause, subordinate clause.

cognitive dissonance

psychological discomfort that arises when an individual encounters something that is contrary to his or her beliefs, values, or expectations.

collocation

two or more words that are used in close proximity to each other more frequently than would be expected by chance. For example, the verbs perform and schedule are used more frequently with the noun surgery than other verbs.

colloquialism

an expression that is not appropriate for formal speech or writing. Example: One way of avoiding spam is to munge your e-mail address.

complement

See verb complement.

controlled-authoring software

software that parses texts and brings style errors, grammar errors, and terminology errors to the user’s attention.

controlled English

any of several versions of controlled language that have been developed for English. See also controlled language.

controlled language

a subset of a natural language in which syntax, style, and terminology are restricted. Controlled languages are used to facilitate translation, to make the language easier for non-native speakers to understand, or both.

dangling participle

a participial phrase in which the subject of the participle is not the same as the subject of the main clauses. For example, the following sentence begins with a dangling participle: Driving through the tunnel, an accident brought traffic to a standstill. An accident is not the subject of Driving.

deprecate

to designate as incorrect or undesirable.

deprecated term

a term whose use is incorrect or undesirable.

determiner

a word that precedes a noun and that either quantifies or helps to identify the noun. In English, determiners include the following:

articles (a, an, and the)

• numbers
• quantifiers (many, much, some, several, a few, and so on)
• demonstrative pronouns (this, that, these, and those)
• possessive pronouns (my, your, their, and so on).

ellipsis

in a sentence or phrase, the omission of one or more words that the author assumes are understood by the reader, but without which a construction is syntactically or semantically incomplete.

finite verb

a form of a verb that is inflected for person and tense. For example, in I go, she goes, we went, they have gone, the verb forms and endings change depending on the subject and the tense. See also infinitive.

gerund

an -ING word that is used as a noun. For example, in Gardening is hard work, and Suzy hates swimming, the -ING words are gerunds. In this book, the term -ING word encompasses gerunds and present participles. See also -ING word, present participle.

head noun

the main noun in a noun phrase. The head noun can be preceded by one or more articles (a, an, or the), adjectives, adverbs, determiners, or other nouns.

idiom

a group of words whose meaning is not derived from the literal meanings of the individual words.

infinitive

a form of a verb that is not inflected or conjugated. Infinitives are usually preceded by to, as in El Niño conditions started to develop in the Central Pacific Ocean during August. See also finite verb.

-ING clause

See “-ING Clauses” in Chapter 7, “Clarifying -ING Words.”

-ING phrase

See “-ING Phrases” in Chapter 7, “Clarifying -ING Words.”

-ING word

a word that is formed by adding the suffix -ing to the root form of a verb. For example, doing, excavating, and restoring are -ING words. -ING words are discussed in detail in Chapter 7, “Clarifying -ING Words.” See also gerund, present participle.

initialism

an abbreviation that is formed from the first letter or letters of a group of words. Initialisms are pronounced by saying the name of each letter, as in RCA (R-C-A). By contrast, acronyms are pronounced like words, as in NATO (NAY-toh).

intransitive verb

a verb that, in standard English, is not used with a direct object.

language technology

any type of software that helps solve problems of communicating via human language. Speech recognition, controlled authoring, and computer-assisted translation are examples of language technologies.

localization

the process of adapting products or services for a particular geographical region or market. Translation is a large part of the localization process.

machine translation

the use of software to translate texts from one language, such as English, to one or more other languages, such as French or Japanese.

main clause

a clause that can stand alone as a complete sentence. For example, in the following sentence, the underlined clause is a main clause: While running through the woods, I tripped and sprained my ankle. See also clause, subordinate clause.

metaphor

a term or expression that is used in a non-literal sense in order to suggest a similarity.

MT

See machine translation.

non-native speaker of English

someone for whom English is a second language. For example, someone who grew up speaking Japanese but learned English later on is a non-native speaker of English. Non-native speakers usually are less fluent than native speakers of a language.

non-restrictive relative clause

one of two types of relative clauses. A non-restrictive relative clause provides non-essential information about the noun that it modifies. For example, the relative clause in the following sentence is non-restrictive: Butterfly taxa, which have a low risk of extinction, are listed in the Least Vulnerable column. See also relative clause, restrictive relative clause.

noun clause

a clause that can fill the same grammatical role as a noun phrase. For example, a noun clause can be a direct object, as in Please ensure that your seat backs are locked in their full upright positions. A noun clause can be a subject, as in Whatever you dream can become a reality. And a noun clause can be the object of a preposition, as in I heard about what you said about me.

noun phrase

a phrase that has a noun or a pronoun as its head. For example, a beautiful sunset is a noun phrase in which sunset is the head. A noun phrase can also consist of a single noun or pronoun without any articles or modifiers.

orthography

how terms are written—as one word or two, hyphenated or not, capitalized or not, and so on. By contrast, spelling refers to the sequence of non-blank characters that are used, without regard to capitalization or hyphenation.

parallelism

a writing technique in which the same or similar grammatical constructions are used for related words, phrases, or clauses.

participial phrase

a group of words that consists of either a past participle or a present participle, plus a number of other words. Here is an example of a past participial phrase: The CD flew across the room, ejected by the drive in an apparent rejection of gangsta music. And here is an example of a present participial phrase: The piston moved downward, compressing the mixture of air and fuel in the crankcase. See also past participle, present participle.

participle

See past participle, present participle.

past participle

the form of a verb that is used in all perfect tenses (as in I have seen the light) and to form the passive voice (as in That remains to be seen). Past participles are also used as adjectives (as in a fully developed implementation plan) and to introduce participial phrases (as in The CD flew across the room, ejected by the drive in an apparent rejection of gangsta music).

phrase

a word or group of words that form a syntactic unit and that have a single grammatical function. For example, English has noun phrases, verb phrases, adjective phrases, adverb phrases, prepositional phrases, and so on.

post-editing

the task of improving the quality of machine-translation output by correcting errors in word choice, grammar, and style. Post-editing is performed by human linguists, translators, or editors.

predicate adjective

an adjective that follows the main verb in a clause and that also follows the noun that it is modifying. For example, in The night was dark and stormy, dark and stormy are predicate adjectives that modify night. In The dark night was stormy, only stormy is a predicate adjective. In It was a dark and stormy night, neither is a predicate adjective.

present participle

a word that is derived from a verb and that ends in -ing. Present participles are used as follows: 1) to form the progressive aspect of verbs (as in Sean will be running in the Boston Marathon); 2) as adjectives (as in a charging rhinoceros); 3) to introduce present participial phrases (as in The piston moved downward, compressing the mixture of air and fuel in the crankcase). In this book, the term -ING word encompasses present participles and gerunds. See also -ING word, gerund.

progressive verb form

a form of a verb that indicates that an action is or was in progress at the time that a clause or sentence focuses on. Progressive tenses are formed by a form of the verb to be plus the –ING form of another verb, as in Shirley was unloading her groceries when a thief stole her wallet from the grocery cart.

referent

the noun that a pronoun such as it or they refers to.

relative clause

a clause that begins with a relative pronoun (that, which, who, or whom) and that modifies a preceding noun phrase. However, as explained in guideline 4.3, “Clarify what each relative clause is modifying,” a relative clause doesn’t necessarily modify the closest preceding noun phrase.

restrictive relative clause

one of two types of relative clauses. A restrictive relative clause provides information that is necessary in order for the reader or listener to identify which specific instance of a noun is being referred to. For example, the relative clause in the following sentence is restrictive: (Only) butterfly taxa that have a low risk of extinction are listed in the Least Vulnerable column. See also relative clause, non-restrictive relative clause.

SAS

an acronym for SAS Institute, Inc. SAS is a large, privately owned software company whose headquarters is in Cary, North Carolina. Because SAS is an acronym rather than an initialism, it is pronounced “sass.” In some of the example sentences in this book, SAS refers to SAS software.

scope of conjunction

the parts of a sentence that are joined by and or or. The scope of these conjunctions is often ambiguous. See guideline 6.5, “Clarify which parts of a sentence are being joined by and or or,” for examples.

source language

the language in which a text was originally written. See also target language.

subordinate clause

a clause that cannot stand alone as a complete sentence. For example, in the following sentence, the underlined clause is a subordinate clause: While running through the woods, I tripped and sprained my ankle. See also clause, main clause.

syntactic cue

an element or aspect of language that helps readers to identify parts of speech or to analyze sentence structure correctly, but which can be omitted in some contexts without making a clause or sentence completely incomprehensible or ungrammatical. For example, suffixes, articles, prepositions, and auxiliary verbs, are syntactic cues.

target language

the language into which a translated text has been or will be translated. See also source language.

TM software

See translation memory software.

transitive verb

a verb that, in standard English, is used with a direct object.

transitivity

See transitive verb, intransitive verb.

translation memory software

software that stores matching segments of source-language text and (translated) target-language text in a database for future reuse. When a new or updated document is processed by the software, any segments that are identical or similar to previously translated segments are presented to the translator. The translator then decides whether to reuse, modify, or disregard the previous translations.

translation segment

a unit of translation that is used by translation memory software. Translation segments are delineated by punctuation marks (typically, periods, semicolons, colons, question marks, and exclamation points) and by formatting characters (for example, paragraph delimiters, tabs, and carriage returns). As a result, translation segments can be complete sentences, titles, headings, list items, the contents of table cells, and so on.

verb complement

a grammatical construction such as a direct object, indirect object, prepositional phrase, or infinitive phrase that helps to complete the action or idea in the predicate of a sentence. See guideline 2.4, “Use standard verb complements,” for examples.