Shortenings

Shortenings and abbreviations help the interpreter take notes quickly, saving time spent on other activities in the process of interpreting.

At first, some general methods of shortening words well be considered here, i.e., those used any persons both professional interpreters and laymen who are not engaged in interpreting. Then, we shall turn to those techniques peculiar to the interpreter’s note-taking system.

There are two basic methods of producing shortenings: 1) clipping and 2) graphical abbreviations:

Clipping (shortening proper) means that the word is formed from the syllable of the original word, which may loose its beginning, its ending, both beginning and ending, its central part, or the whole form of the word may be transformed:

1) so called aphaeresis,the process when the word looses its beginning, e.g.: phone (telephone), bus (omnibus, autobus), cycle (bicycle), copter (helicopter), car (motor-car), coon (raccoon), cola (coca-cola), etc.;

2) so calledapocope – the process when the word looses its ending, e.g.: exam (examination), prof (professor), vac (vacation), lab (laboratory), alg (algebra), algo (algorithm), ad (advertisement), admin (administrator, administration), cab (cabriolet), lib (liberty, liberation), gym (gymnasium, gymnastics), cert (certificate, certainly), demo (demonstration), movie (moving-picture), Oct. (October), perm (permanent wave), pop (from popular music, art, singer) etc.;

3) word looses both beginning and ending, e.g.: fridge (refrigerator), flu (influenza),tec (detective) etc.;

4) so calledsyncope – the process when the word looses its central part, e. g.: circs (circumstances), conds (conditions), pants (pantaloons), combs (combination garments), specs (spectacles, specifications), maths (from mathematics) Dr. (doctor), Mr. (mister), St (saint), etc.;

5) the whole form of the word may be transformed, e.g.: Mrs. (mistress, missis), Xmas (Christmas), bike (bicycle), nightie (nightdress), hanky (handkerchief), mike (microphone), ammo (ammunition).

O.V. Rebriy, the Ukrainian author of the manual on interpreter’s note-taking, has set up the following rules of “shortened literal note-taking”:

1) It is reasonable to take shortened literal notes in Ukrainian. English is less suitable for such shortenings as the difference between spelling and pronunciation is more considerable.

2) Redundancy of language allows partial writing of the word letters. In Ukrainian, is it possible to omit vowels inside the word longer than 4 letters (the vowel at the beginning of the word should be kept).

3) Adjectives if noted together with the defined nouns can be written even more shortened and without inflexional ending.

4) Writing of double consonants is optional. [14:19-20]

S.Y. Maksimov, another Ukrainian scholar, the Associated Professor of Kyiv National Linguistic University, also says about the “occasional individual interpreter’s shortenings”, like: K for Kyiv; Kmin for Cabinet of Ministers; ~~hgo~~ for he did not go, E for employment; E for unemployment, dr for draft, bdg for budget, прзд for президент, сгдн for сьогодні, крв for керівник, чит for читання, etc. [8:108]

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Verb Tenses	\|	Abbreviations

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